Incorporating Organized Women: Theorizing Police Responses to Domestic Violence

• In Event: Policing and Pluralism in South Asia

Abstract

Gender and legal scholars argue that states administer women's rights against violence by selectively entitling "good victims" and using legal protections to expand social control. Using twenty-six months of participant observation and interview data with Indian law enforcement personnel, this article details an alternate system I term incorporation: where police officers eschew control and integrate women with organizational connections into regulatory practices. Incorporation responds to specific challenges, namely the limited capacity of the police to enforce laws in the face of organized demands for women's rights. Through these findings, I theorize how institutional conditions shape the governance of gendered violence by altering the perceptions and tactical interests of the front-line state.

Author

• Poulami Roychowdhury, McGill University