Hunger For Healing: Is There a Role for Introducing Restorative Justice Principles in Domestic Violence Services?

Academicians and practitioners have increasingly recognized domestic violence, particularly the battering of women by their intimate partners, as a social and public health risk to women (Cherlin, Burton, Hurt, and Purvin 2004; Holtz and Furniss 1993; Johnson 2006, 2008; Mills 2008; Roberts 1996; Rosenbaum and O\u27Leary 1981). Despite the difficulty in estimating accurately the prevalence and incidence of intimate violence, the American Bar Association\u27s Commission on Domestic Violence (2005) reported the following: 28 percent of all annual violence against women is perpetrated by intimates; by the most conservative estimate, each year one million women suffer nonfatal violence by an intimate and chat four million American women experience a serious assault by an intimate partner during an average twelve-month period; nearly one in three adult women experience at least one physical assault by a partner during adulthood; and that domestic violence crosses ethnic, racial, age, national origin, sexual orientation, religious, and socioeconomic lines. More locally, the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence (2007) reported that, in the year 2006, Californians placed about twenty thousand calls to the National Domestic Violence Hotline; in the same year, California law enforcement received 176,299 domestic violence-related calls. There has been a rich history of theorizing about why violence in family relationships occurs as well as about the process and resolution of violence. Implicitly or explicitly associated with such theorizing about family violence are programs and services to address the problem. The earlier theoretical chinking, guided by feminist perspectives of gendered violence, focused primarily on the legal problematics in the relationship between the victim and batterer (for example, Dobash and Dobash 1979, 1992; Dobash, Dobash, Wilson, and Daly 1992; Ferraro 1993; Yllo and Bograd 1988). The resulting programs were retributive in nature (Zehr 2002, 2005), centered on legally addressing the crime of family violence. More recently, there have been cautious attempts to introduce restorative justice principles into programs that address family violence, with an emphasis on repairing the harm caused by the violence and reintegrating the victim and batterer into their communities of care (see Cunis-Fawley and Daly 2005; Ptacek 2010; Umbreit, Vos, Coates, and Brown 2003; Van Ness and Strong 2006; Zehr 2001, 2002, 2005). In this monograph, we will examine women\u27s voices as they describe the violence they experienced in intimate partner relationships and make an evidence-based case for the imperative need to introduce restorative justice principles into the existing menu of domestic violence services. In the process, the linkages between the two research traditions, of domestic violence and restorative justice, will a so be explored

The Indian Information Technology Sector: The New Caste Inequality Frontier

My conversations with IT professionals, and Indians I met in social settings, about the current state of \u27caste\u27 in India and in Indian IT sector often went like this:1 \u27Why are we talking about caste in this modern age? Aren\u27t we perpetuating caste distinctions by continuing to talk about it? Isn\u27t it time to get rid of reservations as IT has done? Look at the progress the IT sector has brought to the country! It is merit, pure merit that matters, and not caste or any other background\u27. Such were the assessments, often angry and even dismissive, of many Indians and professionals who work in the IT sector. These vociferous denials notwithstanding, the Indian IT occupational sector has become a new vector of caste inequality. A singular focus on \u27Merit, Pure Merit; assiduously honed in ideology and in practice, has ironically become responsible for reproducing caste structures in IT. How is this merit constructed and practiced in the IT sector:\u27 And how does caste factor into, even if implicitly, the merit constructions? Theoretically guided empirical answers to this set of questions are offered to clarify the broad assertion that Indian IT is the new caste inequality vector. Pure merit in the Indian IT world, simply put, refers to technical skills and qualifications that are earned through a much heralded Horatio Alger model of personal aspiration, initiative, and hard work. It is the opposite of caste-reservation or caste-earmarked2 merit-merit acquired through the constitutionally mandated caste-based social redress and justice programs, popularly referred to as reservation and affirmative action.3 These programs were designed to reduce, and even to eliminate, the vestiges of centuries-long caste-based inequalities. But, how pure is \u27pure merit\u27 after all:\u27 Because, often left unspoken and not examined in the valorized abstract IT merit discourse is, the \u27symbolic4 merit\u27 -the fact that the cultivation and practice of pure-merit is deeply embedded in, supported by, and \u27hidden\u27 behind the social and material privileges of the dominant castes and middle classes. In this sense, symbolically embedded merit is, ironically, not that different after all from reservation merit. But, unlike symbolic merit, reservation or earmarked-merit is foregrounded on minority caste status and authorized by the government, but not culturally accepted in the broader societal context

Deconstructing Discourse within a Discourse: an Inter-Textual Aspect on Blogging

The ability of the participants to perceive situations around them and bring in various resources to reinforce their belief and opinions, illustrates how an individual’s awareness builds up certain ideologies. This study involves a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the comments of various respondents on the issues being discussed in the Yahoo! News articles, using Appraisal as a tool in the analysis. The analysis found, various attitudes through language use. Also, different stances from respondents are used to refute or agree with someone else’s comments by using ‘direct quotations’, ‘direct reference’, ‘unreferenced sources’ as well as ‘hypothetical text’ that respondents obtain from various resources. These devices determine the inter-textual aspect of blogging which contribute to a continuing flow of discussion. This sometimes leads to the agreement or argumentation with the previous respondents and often shapes the individual’s ideology