Lars Aaberg

Lars Aaberg joins Max-Weber-Kolleg as a fellow of ICAS-MP (The M.S. Merian - R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies 'Metamorphoses of the Political') in New Delhi, India.

He completed his PhD in Gender Studies at SOAS University of London after his MPhil in Gender Studies at University of Oslo and his BA degrees in Philosophy and Women's Studies at UCLA (University of California-Los Angeles). His scholarship theorizes how identity, difference, and culture become valued commodities and the significance this has for those minorities seeking representation in markets. To these ends, he applies methodologies from economic anthropology and economic geography like fieldwork and concerns of expertise to queer, feminist, and postcolonial theories of normativity, homogeneity, area, and geopolitics. His recent research, and that which comprises his focus while at MWK, is the emergence of India's so-called 'pink rupee' and what he argues is the attendant rise of the LGBTQ-friendly workplace in India.

His research is informed by and developed through his pedagogy. Before ICAS-MP, he held teaching appointments at SOAS (Politics and International Studies; Gender Studies), University College London (Anthropology), and the London School of Economics (Anthropology; Geography and the Environment).

Owning Sexuality in India: Value, Difference, and Authenticity in the Emerging Market of LGBTQ Diversity Management Consultancy in Corporate Bengaluru

Building from my doctoral thesis and currently being developed into a book manuscript, my research is an ethnography of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in India, with a particular focus on the emergence of gender and sexual minorities as a new 'stream' of CSR beneficiaries there. Of particular interest is how corporations, and advocates of CSR, utilize a range of discursive techniques to position private sector organizations as the proper bodies to govern gender, including historical narrativizing.

Selected Publications

Aaberg, L. (2022). Corporate India after Section 377: haphazardness and strategy in LGBTQ diversity and inclusion advocacy. Gender, Place & Culture, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2022.2146660