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

这项拟议的研究分析了家庭暴力索赔如何从非政府组织网站转移到印度新德里的民事法院。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对案件结果的影响比索赔的具体内容更重要。这是因为印度法律体系中家庭暴力案件的内容往往差别相对较小。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。该项目将分析如何根据法律提供不同形式的证据，无论是在非政府组织现场最初审理案件时，还是在民事法庭对案件进行争议时。本研究将侧重于证据陈述的形式和内容。具体地说，它将调查最初投诉中的妇女声音如何转化为非政府组织虐待的书面证据。然后，它将探索女性及其书面陈述是如何进入法庭的，在那里，她们将与其他证据(如相互竞争的证词)以及媒体(如家庭快照)一起接受评估。这项研究考察了在审判期间索赔是如何受到道德评估的，以及在确立亲属之间的义务时，使用一种证据类型与另一种证据类型有什么利害关系。该项目将包括为期十个月的人种学田野调查。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法律服务规定，特别是研究网站中的法律服务规定。

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.