Courts of Law and Legal Practice

Berti, Daniela

doi:10.1002/9781444390599.ch19

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Many of the cases heard in family courts seek to validate and reinforce customary divorces decided by non‐state or informal processes at the customary level (Holden ; Solanki ). Given the multiple avenues for resolving marital disputes and ending a marriage, many of those seeking redress are engaged in what Holden (: 123) describes as “forum shopping strategies,” seeking to pressure the other spouse to settle unofficially and out‐of‐court (Berti ).…”

Section: Marriage and Dissolution In Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Divorce and Separation in India

Dommaraju¹

2016

Population & Development Rev

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PREMCHAND DOMMARAJUNON-MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE are becoming increasingly common in many parts of Asia. In East Asia, with the exception of China, marriage rates have fallen and divorce rates briefly reached levels as high as those seen in OECD countries (Dommaraju and Jones 2011). In Southeast Asia, too, marital dissolution through divorce or separation is rising (ibid.). In China, where marriage rates have not declined to the levels seen in other East Asian countries, divorce rates have tripled or quadrupled over the last two decades (Lu and Wang 2014). The major exception to this trend in Asia is South Asia, where marriage continues to be nearly universal and relatively early and divorce is relatively uncommon.In India, the focus of this article, despite wide social changes over the last three decades, marriage is still predominately caste endogamous, universal, and early and involves active participation of family and kin in spouse selection. Although changes have occurred in many aspects of the marriage system including marriage age and spouse selection (Allendorf 2013; Andrist, Banerji, and Desai 2013; Desai and Andrist 2010; Prakash and Singh 2013), these changes have not radically transformed the institution of marriage. While much is known about changes in marriage formation in India, there has been little socio-demographic research on marital dissolution. With the notable exception of Bose and South's (2003) article on son preference and marital dissolution, there has been no major quantitative study on divorce in India.This article has three broad objectives. First, it presents nationally representative estimates of prevalence, trends, and variations in divorce and separation. Media reports with headlines such as "The great Indian wedding is succumbing to the great Indian divorce" 1 have proclaimed dramatic increases in divorce and separation in India. These reports are, however, based on partial and incomplete data and non-rigorous analyses. Besides media reports there are scattered ethnographic data that by their nature are not generalizable, and quantitative information on divorce and separation is lacking. The estimates presented here provide a firmer quantitative basis for identifying trends and variations in marital stability by region, religion, family composition, and education.Second, the article examines how marriage stability is affected by broader changes in the social-cultural milieu and by specific changes in the marriage system. Some of the factors that are responsible for divorce trends POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW 42(2): 195-223 (JUNE 2016) 195

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Section: Marriage and Dissolution In Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Divorce and Separation in India

Dommaraju¹

2016

Population & Development Rev

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“…Legal anthropologists and feminist scholars have explained the gender politics and kin and community attachments and obligations that cause sexual assault victims to turn hostile witnesses in the Indian criminal justice system (Berti 2011;Baxi 2014;Roychowdhury 2019). In the context of rape trials in India, Baxi describes informal settlements between the accused and the victims outside the court in which the victim agrees not to testify against the accused.…”

Section: ) (E)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“These Girls Never Give Statements”: Anti-Trafficking Interventions and “Victim-Witness Testimony” in India

Ramachandran

2022

Social Sciences

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Framing sex trafficking as primarily a law enforcement and criminal justice issue, the U.S. State Department funds global South NGOs to work with the Indian legal system to strengthen prosecutions of sex trafficking cases. Though rescuing sex workers and training them to testify against alleged traffickers is key to these interventions, and though rescued sex workers do sometimes testify, my ethnographic research and interviews with NGOs, legal actors, and sex workers in India revealed that this is a rare occurrence. This article explores the reasons behind this reported pattern, as well as the challenges faced by those who do testify. Through these findings, it critically examines the possibilities and limitations of the prosecutorial focus of U.S.-driven, NGO-mediated anti-trafficking interventions. It situates anti-trafficking interventions centered on “victim-witness testimony” in the Indian socio-legal context, demonstrating how prosecution is shaped by a range of factors, circumstances, and contingencies involving foreign-funded NGOs, the procedures, political economy and culture of the Indian legal system, individual legal actors’ motivations, and rescued sex workers’ complex subjectivities, experiences, choices, and perceptions of justice. It draws upon and contextualizes these findings to challenge prevalent assumptions about the victimhood of global South sex workers, about global South legal systems necessarily lacking resources and commitment, and about anti-trafficking solutions rooted in criminal justice incontrovertibly benefiting trafficked sex workers.

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“…As mentioned previously, this is not to assert that the majority of people in India dismiss the law, or have insufficient respect for it. Indeed, people in India often expend an inordinate amount of time, attention, and even money on invoking or adhering to state law (Cohn [1956(Cohn [ ] 1987Eckert 2005;Berti 2010;Jauregui 2010). Nor do I mean to imply that a law that was "right in spirit" when it was codified has been "corrupted" in practice.…”

Section: Law and Social Inquirymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…. For other examples of ways in which people deny the criminal nature of their practices, as defined by legal codes, and defy state law not only vis-à-vis the police but also in court, seeCohn ([1965Cohn ([ ] 1987 andBerti (2010).LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY…”

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confidence: 99%

Beatings, Beacons, and Big Men: Police Disempowerment and Delegitimation in India

Jauregui¹

2013

Law soc. inq.

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It is a truism that police in India generally lack legitimate authority and public trust. This lack is widely understood by scholars, policy analysts, and police practitioners as being rooted in the institution's colonial development as a means of oppression, and its alleged corruption and criminalization in the postcolonial period. The social facts of situational hyper-empowerment and the widespread decadence of police do much to explain their poor image and performance, but these explanations do not account for the fact that police in India are also structurally disempowered by cultural-political and legal-institutional claims to multiple and conflicting forms of authority that challenge and often overwhelm the authority of police. This structural disempowerment and its performances in everyday interactions between the police and the public constitute an ongoing social process of delegitimation of police authority in contemporary India. Following ethnographic analysis of this process of delegitimation, I explore the implications of focusing on police disempowerment for theorizations of the sources and capabilities of state legal authority more generally.

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Courts of Law and Legal Practice

Cited by 9 publications

References 18 publications

Divorce and Separation in India

Divorce and Separation in India

“These Girls Never Give Statements”: Anti-Trafficking Interventions and “Victim-Witness Testimony” in India

Beatings, Beacons, and Big Men: Police Disempowerment and Delegitimation in India

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