Interdisciplinary Studies Field

Associate Director - Ph.D., UC Berkeley

Research Interests:  Heterodox political economy, Theories of the Self and the Posthuman in the Age of AI and Biotechnology, History and Theory of Racism, Critical Theory, and Classical social and political theory.  Rakesh’s diverse interests come out of graduate studies in Political Theory at Harvard where he began his graduate work, Comparative Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley where he wrote his dissertation, and the History of Science at Princeton University where he studied the history of Social Darwinism. He has also worked at a microprocessor firm and served in the California Board of Education.

Publications include: “The Disguises of Wage Labour”, Historical Materialism; On Luxury Spending in Science and Society; “On the Critique of Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man”, International Journal of Political Economy; “Wage Labor and Slavery in History”, Rethinking Marxism. Rakesh was recently an invited participant for a conference at the University of Minnesota on the interdisciplinary social science of the early Frankfurt School and participated on a panel on neo-liberalism at a conference sponsored by the Critical Theory Program at UC Berkeley. He was also a participant on a Blum Center panel on political economy.

Courses taught

• ISF 100A: Introduction to Social Theory and Cultural Analysis
• ISF 100B: Interdisciplinary Theories of the Self and Identity
• ISF 100D: Introduction to Technology, Society, and Culture
• ISF 100F: Theorizing Modern Capitalism: Controversies and Interpretations
• ISF 100H: Introduction to Media and International Relations