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| 1 |
ID:
130732
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| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Disputes within the family and cases of domestic violence in Bangladesh have traditionally been resolved either among kinsmen or in village panchayats where young women have had less opportunity to be heard. This article describes a third-sector initiative in alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in cases of domestic violence in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Data from 20 case studies of female victims of domestic violence, interviews with six lawyers, and participant observation in 10 mediations in a counselling centre are used to examine how this kind of social innovation affects the bargaining position of battered women in a kin-based, patrilineal and patrilocal society. The battered women involved in these mediations were rural or urban, less educated, and economically disadvantaged. The findings illustrate the limitations of ADR in cases of domestic violence. ADR as practiced in Sylhet, Bangladesh provides poor women a chance to be publicly heard in mediations of their domestic crises. However, ADR often fails to deliver lasting, just, and socially progressive solutions. The adoption of ADR practices should not be considered as an alternative to the development of the formal judicial system, because it lacks the power to enforce agreements and supports the hegemonic status quo, leaving the battered woman and her natal family with very limited options.
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| 2 |
ID:
130727
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| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This special issue examines innovation as social change in South Asia. From an anthropological micro perspective, innovation is moulded by social systems of value and hierarchy and simultaneously potentially transforms them. The articles in this special issue examine a number of innovations in South Asian contexts: the printing press's changing technology and its intersections with communal and language ideologies in India (Peterson); mobile telephony, gender, and kinship in West Bengal (Tenhunen); microcredit and its relationship with social capital in Bangladesh (Uddin); imbalanced sex ratios and the future of marriage payments in north-western India (Jeffery); and how alternative dispute resolution as a social innovation affects battered young wives' life situation options in Sylhet, Bangladesh (Ashrafun and Säävälä). These case studies give insights into how the deeply engrained cultural models and values affect the forms that an innovation process can take. In a social field, actors are not situated symmetrically vis-à-vis an innovation. In South Asian societies that are starkly hierarchical and holistic, innovations may have unpredictable sociocultural repercussions.
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