Parijat Chakrabarti

I am Parijat Chakrabarti, a multidisciplinary social scientist whose research and practice examines how we organize economic life and innovation systems to sustain long-term social and ecological well-being.

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Erb Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, having previously completed my PhD in Sociology from Princeton University. Drawing on 24 months of fieldwork in Kenya and blending multi-sited ethnography, in-depth interviews, original survey data, and analysis of large-scale platform log data, my doctoral work documents how efforts to digitize Nairobi’s food markets transformed the social-ecological system of moving food from farm to table with unanticipated consequences for small farmers and retailers. This body of work has been supported by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Grant and has won several awards including two Best Dissertation Paper Awards from the Academy of Management. See my research page for more details.

My doctoral work has led me to become interested in the strategies that organizations use to tackle complex social problems (such as driving food systems change). Even when well-meaning, standard management approaches are often inadequate for making sense of and managing social problems with complex interdependencies. Yet, these kinds of “wicked” problems— climate change, entrenched inequality, and political polarization among them— are among our most pressing concerns. Building on rigorous research, I develop organizational theory and practical strategies to inform how scholars and practitioners work to drive systems change for a more sustainable and humane economy.

I am particularly interested in rapidly-growing and proliferating market systems intended to better align social and environmental well-being. These include regenerative approaches to agriculture, investments in the “blue economy,” and corporate sustainability and carbon offset programs. As these new market systems continue to develop, they pose open questions for practitioners and scholars: How can we develop these markets without replicating our mistakes of the past? Can we ensure that these systems genuinely promote social-ecological well-being, offer value to local communities, share opportunities equitably, and have the capacity to respond and adapt to problems as they emerge? And how can we organize to achieve these goals?

As part of my practice, I work with mission-driven practitioners (e.g. INGOs, public agencies, foundations, development organizations, and innovation hubs) to translate research into actionable frameworks for designing and building sustainable market systems. This not only tests social theory against the grist of reality, it also often yields new insights (and new questions)— useful both for practitioners and for research.

While I am a methodological omnivore— I count ethnographic methods, survey design and analysis, and machine-learning methods as part of my repertoire— undergirding my work is a shared philosophy, an orientation towards possibilism. In other words, I strive to conduct research that points to opportunities for creativity and innovation in everyday life and that opens our eyes to new possibilities for social organization.

Beyond research, I am interested in art and photography as a way of communicating.