Everyday Violence, Institutional Denial and Struggles for Justice in Kashmir HALEY DUSCHINSKI and BRUCE HOFFMAN
SAGE Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC Everyday violence, institutional denial and struggles for justice in Kashmir HALEY DUSCHINSKI and BRUCE HOFFMAN Abstract: In the summer of 2009, the apparent murder and rape of two young women in the small town of Shopian sparked a year of popular protest in heavily militarised Kashmir Valley expressing outrage at the everyday forms of violence that accompany Indian occupation in the contested region. Here, the authors analyse the case by drawing on ethnographic field research conducted via research visits in 2009–2010, to show how the state has exercised occupational authority through practices of denial and cover-up that are built into the legal systems that claim to protect the rights and interests of Kashmiris. They demonstrate how various local actors have worked to establish alternative forums to challenge state violence and the institutionalised denial of justice, illuminating the ways in which they have sought justice in this context of intense militarisation, characterised by routine state violence through legal and criminal justice processes. The event, and the responses to it, reshaped the interplay between legal authority, social protest and political power under conditions of occupation, with implications for future formations of popular resistance against Indian rule in Kashmir. Haley Duschinski, who conducts ethnographic research on violence and militarisation, popular protest and political resistance, and local meanings of human rights in Kashmir Valley, is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ohio University. Bruce Hoffman researches genocide, the cultural boundaries of criminological science and the ways in which social and political movements strategically engage with law and science and is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ohio University and a visiting fellow at the American Bar Foundation.
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