Meet our new faculty member:
Monica Bhatia

This fall, the department was thrilled to welcome our newest Assistant Professor, Monica Bhatia. Monica recently completed a PhD in sociology from the University of Texas-Austin with interests in environmental sociology, gender, and ecological intentional communities. If you have ever wondered how a middle school social science project might lead to a tenure-track position in sociology, read on.

Thomas Rotolo: How did you get into sociology? 

Monica Bhatia: I’ve always been interested in social science for as long as I can remember. The first social science research project I remember doing was in seventh grade, and it was for fun for a state social studies fair. I’ve been interested in the social sciences for a long time. First, because I’m multiracial and come from a multicultural background. I have always had this awareness that society doesn’t inevitably have to look the way that it does—it can take different shapes and forms, and I found that interesting. Then, as soon as I became aware of inequality in the world, that was something that really called to me.

But I didn’t know sociology was a thing, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a long time. When I was in college, I was doing a minor in women’s gender studies and I took a sociology of gender class. As soon as I took that class I was, oh, this is what I’ve been looking for my whole life. I studied abroad that summer with my sociology of gender professor, I did some ethnography, and I was hooked. I changed my major right away. I tried working in nonprofits, but that didn’t feel like what I wanted to do. Graduate school was the other path at the time. So, I did that, and the rest is history. 

Thomas Rotolo: I’d like to follow up on a few things you mentioned. What was the topic of the seventh-grade project that got you started in sociology? 

Monica Bhatia: I was in a social studies class, and I learned that military draft was only for men and not women. That blew my mind, because at the time I thought that we had solved gender inequality! I thought we lived in a society where men and women were equal. But why is this institution gendered? I became interested in the gender discrepancy. 

I ended up doing this project about sexism in the military. At the time, I lived in Georgia and I was 12, so I wasn’t supported in calling it sexism. I had to call my project gender inequality in the military, because the thought was that sexism was an inappropriate word for me to be using. So, thinking back on that makes me think it was kind of inevitable that I ended up where I am today. 

Thomas Rotolo: You mentioned working for nonprofits. What was your work experience with these organizations before graduate school?

Monica Bhatia: I went to Northeastern University in Boston as an undergraduate, and they are well known for their co-op program. All students do at least one six-month internship instead of a semester of classes. I took a gap year but then I started grad school at the University of Texas-Austin, and I was there for six years. 

Thomas Rotolo: What did you study in graduate school? 

Monica Bhatia: At the start, I was very interested in gender inequality. I wrote my whole proposal for grad school based on some gender topics I was interested in at the time. I lived in a housing cooperative in undergrad while in Boston, and so when I moved to Austin, Texas, I knew I wanted to live in a housing cooperative. 

During the gap year I mentioned earlier, I was on a farm, and I was getting into agriculture and growing stuff. I ended up moving into this housing cooperative in Texas that called itself an urban eco village. They were trying to live as sustainably as possible, and I thought that was very interesting. This is around the time that Extinction Rebellion (a global environmental movement) was a big thing, and some of my housemates were co-founders of Extinction Rebellion, Austin. I got to know a lot of environmental activists. And I became curious about who else was trying to do this kind of thing. 

But as a gender sociologist, my master’s took a gender angle to this question: What does gender have to do with people who are trying to build sustainable communities? I was going to India for a cousin’s wedding, and I went to Vandana Shiva’s eco-village in India, which connected to feminism, gender essentialist kind of stuff. Then, I compared this form of environmental feminism to the form in the commune in the United States. Through this, I learned more about environmental racism and racial inequality, and class inequality started to come more into the picture. For my dissertation, I focused on all forms of inequality and how that relates to sustainability.

Thomas Rotolo: Can you provide a bit of insight into your current research? 

Monica Bhatia: My research is always a little bit more difficult to explain because the organizations that I study aren’t ones immediately familiar to a lot of people. The general term I use for the organizations I study is ecological intentional communities. These are collective, democratically organized living groups where people are intentionally practicing alternatives to mainstream institutions. Not all intentional communities have a focus on ecological sustainability, but the intentional communities that I have selected to study are ones that all have ecological sustainability as one of their primary goals. 

Their claim is that they want to live more sustainably. And they’re practicing these alternative ways of life in order to implement sustainable ways of living. I look at this from an environmental justice perspective. Sustainability isn’t just using less carbon. How do ecological impacts affect people differently based on race, class, and gender inequality? In terms of their reducing carbon footprint, we know these communities are doing well. But how do the ways that they’ve arranged their lives influence inequality? Do they recreate inequality in terms of gender, race, and class? Are these sustainability practices also environmental justice practices? 

Safiya Hafiz: Students are excited about your interests in environmental sociology and qualitative methods. How did you become interested in qualitative methods and ethnography? 

Monica Bhatia: I feel I was always going to be a qualitative methods person, but, as I mentioned, I studied abroad when I was in college with my sociology of gender professor. We were following the migration of Turkish immigrants to Germany. I became interested in LGBTQ populations in those two countries. For ethnography, I was going into the community and spending time with people. I hung out with LGBTQ members of the communities and got to know them. I thought it was so cool that this experience could be your job. You are going out and learning about something that you’re interested in, reading about the subject you’re interested in, and you can do that for a living. I just thought, wow, ethnography is so cool!

UT-Austin has a large ethnography training program with an urban ethnography lab. I was a fellow of the urban ethnography lab during my whole time there. The fact that I was interested in ethnography probably has something to do with me getting into UT. And then, when I was there, there was so much support for it. There were summer fellowships to give you a little bit of money to travel and do ethnography, and luckily staying in a commune is pretty cheap, so I didn’t need to get that much funding. I made it work on a tight budget. But for certain things, like the kinds of questions that I’m interested in, that you can get at qualitatively but that are harder to get at quantitatively—the why behind things; the way people think about things; the discourses that people use to organize their decisions. You can get at these research questions in a different way qualitatively. I was interested in being within the communities that I was studying rather than just looking at them as numbers on a screen. Not to criticize quantitative methods, but I just found this application more interesting. 

Safiya Hafiz: How do you feel about being at WSU, and how are you adapting to the area? 

Monica Bhatia: I was very, very happy and excited about the position at WSU. When I came here for my interview, it felt like a good fit in terms of vibe. I should find a better word for that! I liked the personalities of the faculty members. And the department felt like a good fit for me in terms of research interest because I ended up becoming someone who studies environmental sociology in a department that has an established history in this area. I think it’s really helpful professionally to conduct my research in a place where people study environmental sociology.

I like Pullman. I hadn’t been to the Pacific Northwest at all until my brother moved here to Portland, OR, a couple years ago. I went to Portland once for a few days, but I hadn’t been to Washington until I came up here for the interview. But for many, like the eco-village people I know in Texas, the Pacific Northwest has always been the dream land where people want to go. 

Thomas Rotolo: What do you do when you’re not doing sociology? 

Monica Bhatia: My dogs are my main occupation outside of school. I have a puppy named Tofu. He’s in training right now, and that kind of stuff takes up a lot of time. I’ve also been trying to go on a hike every week. I’m interested in exploring more of the Pacific Northwest. Pretty low-key overall. I really like food and cooking. I’m vegetarian, and I cook a lot of Indian food at home. And then I like reading and watching TV, normally things with strong female characters. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an all-time favorite of mine.