Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: Expression, Reporting, and Documentation of Domestic Violence Law

拟议的研究分析了家庭暴力诉讼如何从非政府组织网站转移到印度新德里的民事法庭。指导这项研究的假设是，妇女和机构行为者提出家庭暴力索赔的方式比索赔的具体内容对案件结果更重要。这是因为印度法律体系中家庭暴力案件的内容往往变化相对较小。因此，预计案件陈述将在很大程度上决定妇女的申诉是否得到承认。该项目将分析不同形式的证据在法律下是如何呈现的，无论是在非政府组织网站上最初审理的案件，还是在民事法庭上有争议的案件。本研究将着重于证据陈述的形式和内容。具体而言，它将调查妇女在最初投诉中的声音如何被非政府组织转化为虐待的书面证据。然后，它将探讨女性和她们的书面声明是如何进入法庭的，在法庭上，她们与其他证据一起被评估，比如相互竞争的证词，以及家庭快照等媒体。该研究考察了在审判过程中索赔是如何受到道德评价的，以及在确定亲属之间的义务时，使用一种证据类型与另一种证据类型的利害关系。该项目将包括十个月的人种学实地考察。通过审查索赔是如何提出的，并最终根据法律进行评估，该项目将有助于更好地了解一般的法律服务规定，特别是在研究地点。

The proposed research analyzes how domestic violence claims move from NGO sites to civil courts in New Delhi, India. The hypothesis guiding the study is that the way domestic violence claims are presented by women and institutional actors is more important to case outcomes than the specific content of claims. This is because the content of domestic violence cases in the Indian legal system tends to vary relatively little. Consequently, it is expected that case presentation will largely determine whether women's grievances are recognized. The project will analyze how different forms of evidence are presented under the law, both when cases are initially heard in the NGO site and when they are disputed in civil court. The study will focus on the form and content of evidentiary presentations. Specifically, it will investigate how women's voices in the initial complaint are translated into written evidence of abuse by the NGO. It will then explore how women and their written claims travel into the courtroom, where they are evaluated alongside other evidence, such as competing testimonies, and media such as home snapshots. The research examines how claims are subjected to moral evaluation during the trial and what is at stake in using one evidentiary genre, versus another, in establishing obligations between kin. The project will consist of ten months of ethnographic fieldwork. By examining how claims are presented, and ultimately, assessed under the law, the project will contribute to a better understanding of legal services provisions generally, as well as specifically in the research site.