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- Name: Pathways from Injury: Naming, proving, Interpreting
- Project leader: Julia Eckert
- Hosting institution: Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Bern
- Funding: SNSF
- Duration: 48 months
- Short description of the research project: Over the past decade, there has been increasing controversy in India over the social meaning of hate crime laws. Targeted attacks against Dalits (former untouchables) and Muslims have escalated under the current BJP government, which pursues a policy of majoritarian Hindu nationalism rooted in traditional caste hierarchies. While India’s Prevention of Atrocities Act (PoA) of 1989, which criminalizes discriminatory acts against Dalits and indigenous groups, provides a legal safeguard against hate crimes, religious minority groups such as Muslims lack specific legal protections. This project represents the first systematic attempt to shift debates about the social and political impact of hate crime legislation into a postcolonial context, and to analyze whether and how hate crime legislation is suited to address contemporary violence and the history of structural violence and inequality in which it is grounded. By comparatively analyzing how hate crime laws shape the lives of historically marginalized communities that fall under their protection and those that do not, the project makes an innovative and important analytical contribution into the legal and social dynamics that unfold when hate is legally addressed in a majoritarian political landscape, such as that of India. It is one of the first studies to trace how legal arguments around discrimination, violence, and identity, as well as legal evidentiary procedures in trials involving allegations of hate and discrimination, are shaped by hate crime laws. The project uses an analytical feedback loop to trace how identity-based violence is named, proven, judicially interpreted, and subsequently re-named. In doing so, it provides exceptional insight into the social and political lifecycle of hate crime litigation in particular and legal processes in general. The project will contribute to debates about the socially transformative potential of legal anti-discrimination measures as well as the limits of hate crime laws to counteract experiences and social practices of prejudice and hate.
- Contact person: eckert@anthro.unibe.ch