Courses Taught: LG 603: Governance II, The Legal Dimensions LG 641: Law, Governance and Violence: Gendered Perspectives LG 642: Enculturing Law Optional Courses: A Brief Description “Enculturing Law” explores anthropological and sociological debates on law, culture and power. It critically interrogates classic and contemporary legal ethnographies detailing the cultural dimensions of law, and will focus on examining how the ethnographic method has been used to study law and legal institutions. In particular, the course will explore the colonial genealogies of legal anthropology to explicate how custom and law were defined through the study of “other cultures” that lacked western forms of law and legal institutions; the role of law during colonisation in India; the debate on “legal pluralism” and the impact of these debates on the study of law in India in four specific contexts: nyaya panchayats, lok adalats, nari adalats and caste panchayats. The course will raise the question whether “legal pluralism” is a useful category to understand the different sources of law and varied forms of institutions in India. Finally, the course will examine courtroom ethnographies to understand how the power of state law is dispersed over different sites, and how legal discourse is constitutive of everyday life. The course will maintain the emphasis on the ethnographic method as a technique of demonstrating how law is mediated by social and cultural categories. “Law, Governance and Violence: Gendered Perspectives” will explore the relationship between law, governance and violence through a gendered perspective. It will explore how practices of governance stabilise through law and how these practices open law to further contestation. The course will specifically address everyday and collective forms of violence to examine how “judicial governance” monopolises, sanctions and controls gendered violence. The course will examine how the state law on rape, sexual harassment, murder, unnatural sexual offences and domestic violence institutes hetero-normativity and regulates sexuality in everyday contexts; how specific forms of “democidal” governance are stabilised through the criminal law on riots in India; the histories of mass violence through a gendered analysis of the use of the writ of habeas corpus during the Partition in India; the practices of governance that are stabilised through non-state law, such as caste panchayats, and to explore how these forms of adjudication sanction and control gendered violence. The overall aim of this course will be to establish how competing modes of judicial governance engender violence. We will use a range of sources including documentary films, statutory provisions and judgments to establish the ways in which judicial governance permits, sanctions, normalises and/or challenges gendered violence.

Courses Taught:

LG 603: Governance II, The Legal Dimensions

LG 641: Law, Governance and Violence: Gendered Perspectives

LG 642: Enculturing Law

Optional Courses: A Brief Description

“Enculturing Law” explores anthropological and sociological debates on law, culture and power. It critically interrogates classic and contemporary legal ethnographies detailing the cultural dimensions of law, and will focus on examining how the ethnographic method has been used to study law and legal institutions. In particular, the course will explore the colonial genealogies of legal anthropology to explicate how custom and law were defined through the study of “other cultures” that lacked western forms of law and legal institutions; the role of law during colonisation in India; the debate on “legal pluralism” and the impact of these debates on the study of law in India in four specific contexts: nyaya panchayats, lok adalats, nari adalats and caste panchayats. The course will raise the question whether “legal pluralism” is a useful category to understand the different sources of law and varied forms of institutions in India. Finally, the course will examine courtroom ethnographies to understand how the power of state law is dispersed over different sites, and how legal discourse is constitutive of everyday life. The course will maintain the emphasis on the ethnographic method as a technique of demonstrating how law is mediated by social and cultural categories.

“Law, Governance and Violence: Gendered Perspectives” will explore the relationship between law, governance and violence through a gendered perspective. It will explore how practices of governance stabilise through law and how these practices open law to further contestation. The course will specifically address everyday and collective forms of violence to examine how “judicial governance” monopolises, sanctions and controls gendered violence. The course will examine how the state law on rape, sexual harassment, murder, unnatural sexual offences and domestic violence institutes hetero-normativity and regulates sexuality in everyday contexts; how specific forms of “democidal” governance are stabilised through the criminal law on riots in India; the histories of mass violence through a gendered analysis of the use of the writ of habeas corpus during the Partition in India; the practices of governance that are stabilised through non-state law, such as caste panchayats, and to explore how these forms of adjudication sanction and control gendered violence. The overall aim of this course will be to establish how competing modes of judicial governance engender violence. We will use a range of sources including documentary films, statutory provisions and judgments to establish the ways in which judicial governance permits, sanctions, normalises and/or challenges gendered violence.