Violence Studies

Description

Violence is embedded in our everyday. We encounter not only its overt, raw, and brutal nature but also the deeply buried invisible and insidious forms that normalize violence in the collective conscience, making it less noticeable and more tolerable. This volume opens out the field of violence studies with a focus on its myriad habitations and experiences in India. It interrogates the numerous ways in which omnipresent violence is interpreted and represented, and delves into the interconnections between the identifiable normative axes of power and the engendering of violence. Bringing together fresh methodological and conceptual perspectives on the way violence is understood and analysed, the contributors to this volume investigate its occurrence across sites—law, family, state, gender, labour, caste, sexuality, communalism, and so on—to explore the normal as well as the exceptional. The case studies in this book are all drawn from the Indian experience. This volume aims towards a coherent and more nuanced understanding of violence that moves beyond the episodic to the systemic, structural levels of society and consciousness.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Habitations of Violence in India by Kalpana Kannabiran
I VIOLENCE AND THE POLITICAL

1. Violence and the Political: Thinking across Traditions by Aditya Nigam
2. Violence and the Colonial Order: India under British Rule by David Arnold
3. State Formation, Minoritization, and Violence in Postcolonial India by T.K. Oommen
4. Muslim Citizenship, Identity, and Violence in India by Abdul Shaban

5. Caste Violence against Dalits: Causes and Remedy by Anand Teltumbde
6. Violence and Politics: Two Cases of Dalit Women in Uttar Pradesh by Badri Narayan
7. ‘A Part Apart’: Dr Ambedkar’s Indictment of the Hindu Social Order by V. Geetha

8. The Unruly Margins: Reflections on Violence in Public in Mumbai by Shilpa Phadke
9. Witches: Through Changing Contexts Women Remain the Target by Dev Nathan, Govind Kelkar, and Shivani Satija
10. Unearthing a Terrible Beauty: Violence and the Politics of Choices in Assam by Sanjay Barbora

11. Indian Maoism: As Victim and Agency of Violence by Sumanta Banerjee
12. The Violence of Postcolonial Spaces: Kudankulam by Itty Abraham
13. On Structural Violence by Akhil Gupta
14. The Economics of Violence and the Violence of Economics by Jayati Ghosh