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Bureaucratizing Sensitivity: Documents and Expertise in North Indian Antiviolence Counseling
Author(s) -
Kowalski Julia
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
polar: political and legal anthropology review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.529
H-Index - 27
eISSN - 1555-2934
pISSN - 1081-6976
DOI - 10.1111/plar.12243
Subject(s) - plaintiff , bureaucracy , legislation , context (archaeology) , state (computer science) , political science , service (business) , public relations , service provider , domestic violence , sociology , law , business , poison control , suicide prevention , politics , medicine , paleontology , environmental health , algorithm , marketing , computer science , biology
Following transnational legal standards, India's antidomestic violence legislation is designed to sensitize the state to gendered violence by appointing nongovernmental organizations to help plaintiffs document abuse. Drawing on fieldwork at a family counseling center in Rajasthan, I show that staff balanced their roles as family counselors and “service providers” to plaintiffs as sensitization discourse revalued the complex documentary practices required by both activities. In this context, bureaucratic elements of counselors’ practices were highlighted, and the role of documents in supporting expert interactions with clients was erased, consolidating expertise along existing hierarchies of class and status that organized activists and staff at the center. By consolidating expertise, “gender‐sensitive” state policies may erase precisely the vernacular modes of responding to gendered inequality that they are meant to incorporate.