Aparna Rao

Written work In Les Ġhorbat d'Afghanistan. Aspects Économiques d'un Groupe Itinérant 'Jat,' Rao discussed the livelihood of the Jat people of Afghanistan, with a focus on the Ghorbat people. Asta Olesen suggested that in the book, Rao had filled "an almost complete gap in the knowledge of the ethnic puzzle of Afghanistan".

While reviewing Culture, Creation, and Procreation: Concepts of Kinship in South Asian Practice, a book that was co–authored by Rao in 2000, Ann Grodzins Gold of Syracuse University pointed out that a large proportion of its content had been drawn from anthropological field studies concluded or initiated in the 1970s and early 1980s and that the book lacked "new ethnography". Gold also said that a one-sided presentation of cultural essentialism didn't give much credence to a postcolonial interpretation. She noted that the authors substantially covered the "geographic and ethnographic contexts" of South Asia. According to Denison University's Bahram Tavakolian, the book clarified the understanding of how "environment, structure, and agency" interacted in nomadic cultures.

Rao was given the Choice award in 1999, for her book Autonomy: Life Cycle, Gender, and Status among Himalayan Pastoralists.

Death Rao died of cancer on 28 June 2005.

Works

Books authored

Books edited

Selected papers