The Politics of Livability: Tutoring “Kinwork” in a New Delhi Women's Arbitration Center

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of dispute adjudication in a women 's arbitration center, or mahila panchayat, in New Delhi, India. In analyzing two exemplary cases from my fieldwork, I argue that mahila panchayat adjudication tends to tutor kinwork as a means of producing livable lives within a context of material and ideological constraint. Successfully adjudicated cases culminate in contracts that explicitly enumerate the demands of marriage and the requirements of reconciliation, thereby rendering disputants responsible subjects who are accountable to the contracts' terms. This formal conclusion to the adjudication process reflects the mahila panchayat's politics of livability, which entail teaching women to live with and through kinship norms by recognizing and rationally relating to them.[India, Muslim, dispute adjudication, kinship] On a Wednesday afternoon in April 2007, I sat with Farida, 1 the twenty-year-old head of the east Delhi women's mahila panchayat (arbitration center) that I analyze in this article, to discuss both a hearing that had just ended and the center's approach to arbitration. Farida worked tirelessly at the mahila panchayat, encouraging women involved in domestic disputes to stand up for their needs and desires, leading discussions with mahila panchayat members who had been tasked with resolving domestic disputes, keeping case records and charts of outcomes, running formal adjudication hearings, and holding informal daily meetings. Her dedication to the mahila panchayat was palpable. Privately, however, Farida expressed doubts about the institution's success. This particular Wednesday afternoon, she sighed before telling me:

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