Preliminary Programme

Post-colonial scholarship, in the wake of Edward Said’s penetrative insights on orientalism, has argued that an eager British government was anxious to prove to Indians the debased nature of their civilisation in order to legitimate its rule. Consequently the great social reforms enacted by the Raj over infanticide are often cited in support of their arguments. The occurrence of female infanticide – murder of females at birth, discovered by Company officials in the 1770s was only outlawed as late as 1870. Although the historiography on female infanticide is impressive, the paradox regarding the extreme caution of the government in outlawing female infanticide remains unexplained. The core aims of this study are: to explain the conundrum of the ‘reluctant’ state by studying the information-gathering techniques of the Raj, in particular the culture of ‘prize giving’ for the best essays written against the practice of female infanticide by Indians in 1844 and 1868. Second, to understand how the Indian mother/midwife emerged as the chief criminal in the debates over female infanticide.
Alice Clark has argued that pragmatic concerns of revenue-gathering prevented the Company from going beyond measures such as levying fines for the crime. Recently Singha has acknowledged the complexities in colonial reasoning whereby the early state severed the private sphere from the reach of politics by designating them as ‘domestic’ matters and thus retained the patriarchal authority of the ‘head of household’ in his home. This acknowledged the doer of the crime as the ‘men’ of such communities and it locked Company rule in an uneasy struggle with Indian chiefs. And, thus the status remained till 1844. I will utilise a combination of micro history and linguistic models in understanding the intentions and content of these essays solicited from and written by high-caste Hindu ‘natural leaders.’ The prize-winning essays closely paralleled the representations of colonial discourse of Hindu society as degenerate. But more significantly, by applying the theory of ‘molecular structure’ of discourse [Lukacs:1909; Scholes: 969] to the culture of prize-giving, I will demonstrate how western-educated Hindu elites became collaborators in the ‘civilising mission’. The devices of ‘narration’ and ‘persuasion’ embodied in the arguments of the indigenous collaborators helped the Raj to move from the position of ‘coercion’ to seeking the ‘consent’ of Indians. The solutions embedded in the prize-winning essays solved the Raj’s dilemma of over-riding the Indian patriarch by making the Indian mother and/or midwife the ‘natural executioners’ of female children. Shifting the culpability from ‘male heads of households’ to women for the crime of female infanticide at once allowed the government to co-exist with indigenous men and facilitated the passing of the Infanticide Act of 1870.
The primary source materials for the construction of arguments in this essay are primarily official records namely the prize winning essays taken from parliamentary reports or tracts published privately by the essayists. The author will also ‘read against the grain’ the essays that were rejected by the Prize Committee in order to examine the content and practice of official discourses. (Show less)

This paper is part of a research-project which aims to a more comprehensive analysis of women as perpetrators of violence and violent crime. Concerning violence and violent crime we still know relatively little about women as perpetrators. A historical analysis of violent women can contribute to explanations on why violence has been seen as almost exclusively a domain for men, and why society provides such a narrow discourse for situating violent women. In the case of Sweden the lack of knowledge on the subject is greatest regarding the 19th and first half of the 20th century. Earlier research shows that these periods brought new discourses on gender and violence, but have only marginally discussed their findings in relation to violent women.
Crime and other norm-breaking acts produce and reflect meanings that take in central elements in society’s social and cultural structure. Consequently, this study of women’s violence, in terms of assault, can develop our knowledge of women and gender in the past, but also of society and culture in a broader sense. In order to deepen our understanding of gender and violence it is important to investigate different forms of female violence and different subject positions shaped by discourses on gender and violence. Based on a comprehensive understanding of violence, this paper focuses on narratives of women’s (minor) assault. From a study of court records the paper discusses in what spatial contexts the violence took place, and how it was gendered. The analysis revolves around where and how women's violence was enacted and interpreted by those involved. With inspiration from poststructuralist theories on gender and violence the paper also discusses a methodological strategy that position women as actors at the center of the analysis. (Show less)

The paper analyzes a 1931 High Court murder case in Southern Rhodesia involving two sisters, Hlobili and Malinga, accused of murdering the younger sister's husband. They were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.. They were represented by the colonial authorities as almost superhuman furies, requiring the strength of three white men to subdue. While it was not unheard of for women to be convicted of murder and sentenced to death, it was exceedingly rare for the sentences to be carried out. In fact, between 1900 and 1952, Hlobili and Malinga were two of a total of six African women who were executed by the colonial state. This compares to 857 African men during that same time period. All others received the "mercy" of the Governor, having their sentences commuted to short terms of imprisonment with hard labour. The paper analyzes the context of the case i.e. colonial social order and political economy that consigned African women to the margins, the informal sector and illegal spaces of the colony. Jackson explores the execution as an exception, and speculates about why, and what aspects of the case and the sisters' demeanour and social profile moved them beyond reach of the governor’s mercy. The boundaries that they transgressed were numerous. The sisters worked as prostitutes; or at least they admitted to selling sexual services to men working on the mines on occasion, particularly the older sister. Jackson will engage with the historiography relating to African women’s mobility and criminalization; African women the state and the law; and theories and concepts of sovereign, regulatory and disciplinary power. She draws on archival sources, including criminal case files and police reports, historical literature on African women and criminality, executions in colonial Africa. Finally, she looks at European, America and comparative literature on gender and criminality in general, and executions in particular. (Show less)

The Paper examines criminalisation of illicit relations between captive prisoners of war and German women in Nazi Germany. Though fraternisation with the enemy has always been considered an undesirable and unpatriotic act by warring regime but it traditionally meant stigmatisation, public condemnation, and social ostracism of the involved woman. However, in anticipation of such acts Nazi Germany already introduced article 4 on November 11, 1939, which was called the decree for the defence of the fatherland. German men who consorted West European women went scot-free, while those who were involved with Eastern women sometimes received a warning and in the worst case such as rape or bad publicity received a three month simple imprisonment. German women, however, were treated more severely as they were understood to be the custodians and carriers of racial purity and sexual morality. While men were largely tried for sharing tobacco and discussing politics with alien captives, women were prosecuted more for sleeping with the captive enemy. Depending on the depth and duration of involvement, the decree invited criminal punishments from fines (for exchange of kisses) to long prison or penitentiary sentences along with a loss of citizenship and sometimes the evacuation of children to welfare homes for a longer period. The crime was worse for a war wife who was castigated for betraying the front soldier and undermining his morale. A typical verdict in such cases ran as follows: “After careful consideration of the circumstances, the accused is being punished for the display of a dishonourable conduct wilfully and repeatedly, and thus, for causing severe damage to the healthy racial instinct. By conducting herself in this manner the defendant has put herself outside the racial community’. Joshi culls evidence from Gestapo investigation reports, judicial trials, secret coverage of everyday life by the Security Service and Nazi propaganda to simultaneously examine the state’s construction of a negative discourse on the war wife and its corrosion through the social practice of consorting with the enemy on an everyday basis. This well acknowledged mass crime gives us telling insights into history if crime and sexuality in a war zone; the construction and deconstruction of the enemy; the lust and zest for life in the face of death and the increasing brutality of a revengeful state. (Show less)

The revolutions of 1917 initiated massive changes in Russian society at all levels, from the political to the personal. While many Russian institutions had already been in the process of reform, as a response to modernization, the revolutions accelerated these transformations and made them much more radical. Ultimately, the revolutions hoped to fundamentally change the ways that people behaved on a personal level through the establishment of a socialist society.
This paper focuses on how the revolutionary government re-imagined the state-individual relationship by looking at the intersection where individual actions clashed with state needs-through deviance and in the courts and prisons. Historically in the modern period, state actors have attempted to reinforce gender norms in periods of upheaval, change, and anxiety. Emphasizing the “proper” traditional role of women in society generally helps to reassert the status quo and reassure individuals about the structure and function of society and social hierarchies. Despite massive changes and social needs that encouraged women to leave the home and participate in public life on a more equal footing with men, when women committed crimes, and generally crimes traditionally associated with women, the courts and the law still treated women as inferior and needing protection. In revolutionary Russia, this remained the case even as women were being encouraged to engage in wage labor and become participants in public political discourses. Social observers believed that as women became integrated into the public sphere and engaged with what they called the “struggle for existence,” they would change their behavior—including their criminal actions—to more closely resemble men. Indeed, new Soviet family laws attempted to treat men and women on a more equal basis by expecting both parties in a union to contribute to the maintenance of the family and by allowing both to initiate divorce procedures based on personal desire rather than economic or sexual behavior.
However, when women encountered the legal system they were generally treated not as equals but as inferior members of society who could not be held responsible for their actions. This dynamic can be seen in the treatment of women by the courts when they committed criminal offenses. In the 1920s women were still arrested predominantly for “traditional” female offenses—infanticide, spouse murder, creating public disorder, and so on. When evaluating the actions of these women, observers pointed to women’s biology and sexuality and to their lack of awareness about the social dangers of their actions. Instead, men were held responsible for women’s actions, for instance in receiving a longer prison term for encouraging a lover to commit infanticide, compared to a relatively short sentence for the female defendant. Thus traditional gender norms were reinforced, even as gender roles were being challenged. This paper draws on a variety of sources—including archival records, published journal articles and monographs and statistics, newspaper reports, and criminal case summaries—to explore the ways that the treatment and assessment of female criminals helps us understand gender norms and their transformation during the revolutionary period in Russia . (Show less)