Challenging The Rules(s) of Law: Colonialism, Criminology and Human Rights in India - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0761936653 ISBN 13: 9780761936657

Publisher: SAGE Publications Pvt. Ltd, 2008

Synopsis

This rare comprehensive critique of criminology in India brings together widely respected activists, advocates, bureaucrats, scholars and practitioners who share their concerns about the Indian criminal justice system through an interdisciplinary lens and discuss the need to entrench human rights in Indian polity. It is a significant step towards mapping the ways in which interdisciplinary research and human rights activism might inform legal praxis more effectively and holistically.

Challenging the Rule(s) of Law: Colonialism, Criminology and Human Rights in India contests unproblematic assumptions of the rule of law and opens out avenues for a renewed and radical study of criminal law in the country. The collection looks at the problem of criminal law from the early colonial period to the present, examining the problem of overt violence by state actors and their compliance with dominant private actors. It calls into question the denial by the state of the wherewithal for bare life, which compounds people’s vulnerability to a repressive rule of law.

This work is a must read for students, researchers and faculty of Law, Criminal Law, Criminology, Legal History, Human Rights, Sociology of Law and Colonial History. It will also be invaluable for law historians, legal scholars and policy makers, especially the judiciary.

About this title

Review:

The book is, both a challenging and an exciting preposition, challenging, because it brings together the intellectual initiatives of the nineteen contributors drawn from different social sciences disciplines, working on diverse crime themes, in pre-colonial, colonial and post colonial time-frame in one large volume; and exciting, because it endeavors to run the two thought streams, namely, human rights and criminology in almost all the essays.... In a sense all the essays can be seen as an excellent basic material for developing indigenous or subaltern criminology for India that needs to be different and more society focused than the prevalent mainstream criminology.

(The Book Review)

The book is a serious attempt at a critical assessment of the theory and practice of the rule of law, criminology and human rights in India.... This volume is a solid contribution to the study of criminology, criminal law, criminal justice and human rights in India and should be of great interest to scholars and activists in the field.

(Economic and Political Weekly)

About the Author:

Kalpana Kannabiran is the recipient of the inaugural Amartya Sen Award for Social Scientists, 2012, for her work in Law. She is a sociologist and legal researcher and is currently Director, Council for Social Development, Hyderabad, an autonomous research institute supported by the Indian Council for Social Science Research. She was awarded the VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research in the field of Social Aspects of Law by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) in 2003. She was part of the founding faculty of National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR) University of Law where she taught sociology and law for a decade (1999–2009) and is a founder member of Asmita Resource Centre for Women where she has coordinated research and legal outreach for women. Kannabiran has been the general secretary of the Indian Association for Women’s Studies (1998–2000) and is active in the International Sociological Association. She was a member of the Expert Group on the Equal Opportunity Commission, Government of India (2007–2008) and member of the Expert Group on Legal Education Reform in Kerala, Government of Kerala. She has been an activist in the women’s movement since the late 1970s.

About this edition

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Pvt. Ltd
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0761936653
• ISBN 13: 9780761936657
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 516
• Editor: Kannabiran Kalpana, Singh Ranbir