Swethaa Ballakrishnen
Biographic Data
| ID | 224751 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Swethaa Ballakrishnen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Swethaa |
| FAMILY NAME | Ballakrishnen |
| SIGNATURE | BALLAKRISHNEN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5555-8779 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Blasé
Using 60 interviews with a range of minority law students and early career legal professionals (primarily differentiated by race, gender identity, religion, and disability), this Article illuminates the cruciality of empirical Critical Race Theory to understand individual deviance within the legal profession and develops a framework - blasé - for considering interactional violence that is not legally or socially cognizable as discrimination but s…
Rules, with Swethaa Ballakrishnen
Rules -with Swethaa BallakrishnenWhat are rules for?What's at stake if we assume that they're neutral?And if we want rules to be progressive, does it matter who makes them?Socio-legal scholar Swethaa Ballakrishnen joins Uncommon Sense to reflect on this and more, highlighting the value of studying law not just in theory but in action, and drawing on a career spanning law and academia in India and the USA.As the author of "Accidental Feminism", wh…
Kanoon’s Sarange
This article uses three main global visual sites—the popular Korean drama Hometown Cha Cha Cha (2021), the Hindi-English movie, The Lunchbox (2013), and the British-American television series Ted Lasso (2020–2023) to engage with two main strains of Peter Goodrich’s scholarship: the interconnectedness between law, justice, and love; and the role of minor jurisprudences. Heeding Goodrich’s advice to consider media as an important node for legal ana…
Diverse Disconnectedness
Law school students are encouraged frequently to “network.” However, depending on demographic categories, they may have access to differently resourced social networks in law school. In this article, we draw from our mixed-methods research to explore this diversity of experience, its limitations of access, and the possible network inequalities that may limit the value of legal education to diverse students across different institutional contexts.…
Categorical closure
Rethinking Inclusion
Using preliminary observations from three parallel projects that employ a range of methods (network and content analysis, surveys, focus groups, and interviews), this article traces the experience of navigating different kinds of identity as useful capital within the legal profession. Identity is not the first kind of non-economic capital to influence professional navigation, but it is distinct in that it is owned and deployed primarily by minori…
Anti/Aunty as Critical Method
This article chronicles the author’s transformation from an anti-aunty Tamil South Asian socialisation to a more critical acceptance of aunty–ness as a queer ethnographer. Committing to reflexive ethnographic methods, I contemplate on the figure of the ‘invisible aunty’ as a way of disrupting the field while also being self-serving to one’s queer body and psyche. Particularly, in drawing from the nourishing strain of critical aunty dialogue, espe…
At Risk
Institutional Memory Papers
Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1296
Law, Legal Socializations, and Epistemic Injustice
This review essay looks at the relationship between Deborah Tuerkheimer’s Credible (2021) and Meera Deo’s Unequal Profession (2019) in order to make a substantive point about inequality in legal institutions and the methods that are employed in dissecting them. At first glance, the connections between these projects might not seem apparent, although each deals with the inequalities in which its actors in focus are embedded. But both projects go d…
Accidental Feminism
Exploring the unintentional production of seemingly feminist outcomes In India, elite law firms offer a surprising oasis for women within a hostile, predominantly male industry. Less than 10 percent of the country’s lawyers are female, but women in the most prestigious firms are significantly represented both at entry and partnership. Elite workspaces are notorious for being unfriendly to new actors, so what allows for aberration in certain works…
Patterned remittances enhance women's health-related autonomy
The consequences for women "left behind" by virtue of temporary male migration are mixed. On the one hand, concomitant changes in fertility, participation in the labor force, and social norms are often associated with increased independence for women. On the other hand, women left behind can be vulnerable to increased dependency on members of their husbands' family or face limited access to social institutions. These shifts in women's capacity fo…
A NEW Minority? International JD Students in US Law Schools
This Article reveals the significance of a new and growing minority group within US law schools—international students in the Juris Doctor (JD) program. While international students have received some attention in legal education scholarship, it mostly has been focused on their participation in the context of programs specially designed for this demographic (e.g. postgraduate programs like the LLM and SJD). Drawing from interview data with fifty-…
Just Like Global Firms
Against most male-dominated accounts of professional work, elite law firms in India pose a puzzling exception: women make up about half of these firms, even at senior levels of partnership. Using in-depth interviews with over 130 professionals in India's elite litigation, transactional law, and consulting firms, this research suggests that elite law firms-as new local organizations-aggressively differentiate themselves from their more traditional…
Intentional Invisibility
Drawing on an in-depth case study at a large nonprofit organization, we find, in line with previous scholarship, that women professionals continue to face biased expectations at work and at home. We leverage data from interviews and participant observation to identify a new strategy that women use to navigate professional constraints created by the second shift and workplace double binds: 'intentional invisibility.' Intentional invisibility refer…
Nevertheless They Persisted
This article uses the Indian case to offer nuance to narratives about the gendered experience of professional work. I find that while gendered constructs certainly infiltrate all workspaces, there remain occupational and organizational differences in the ways in which women experience their environments. Particularly, while Indian women lawyers overall are more disadvantaged than their international counterparts, the experience of women lawyers i…
Ratna Kapur
Rethinking Inclusion
Using preliminary observations from three parallel projects that employ a range of methods (network and content analysis, surveys, focus groups, and interviews), this article traces the experience of navigating different kinds of identity as useful capital within the legal profession. Identity is not the first kind of non-economic capital to influence professional navigation, but it is distinct in that it is owned and deployed primarily by minori…
Just Like Global Firms
Against most male-dominated accounts of professional work, elite law firms in India pose a puzzling exception: women make up about half of these firms, even at senior levels of partnership. Using in-depth interviews with over 130 professionals in India's elite litigation, transactional law, and consulting firms, this research suggests that elite law firms-as new local organizations-aggressively differentiate themselves from their more traditional…
Intentional Invisibility
Drawing on an in-depth case study at a large nonprofit organization, we find, in line with previous scholarship, that women professionals continue to face biased expectations at work and at home. We leverage data from interviews and participant observation to identify a new strategy that women use to navigate professional constraints created by the second shift and workplace double binds: 'intentional invisibility.' Intentional invisibility refer…
A NEW Minority? International JD Students in US Law Schools
This Article reveals the significance of a new and growing minority group within US law schools—international students in the Juris Doctor (JD) program. While international students have received some attention in legal education scholarship, it mostly has been focused on their participation in the context of programs specially designed for this demographic (e.g. postgraduate programs like the LLM and SJD). Drawing from interview data with fifty-…
Blasé
Using 60 interviews with a range of minority law students and early career legal professionals (primarily differentiated by race, gender identity, religion, and disability), this Article illuminates the cruciality of empirical Critical Race Theory to understand individual deviance within the legal profession and develops a framework - blasé - for considering interactional violence that is not legally or socially cognizable as discrimination but s…
Anti/Aunty as Critical Method
This article chronicles the author’s transformation from an anti-aunty Tamil South Asian socialisation to a more critical acceptance of aunty–ness as a queer ethnographer. Committing to reflexive ethnographic methods, I contemplate on the figure of the ‘invisible aunty’ as a way of disrupting the field while also being self-serving to one’s queer body and psyche. Particularly, in drawing from the nourishing strain of critical aunty dialogue, espe…
Nevertheless They Persisted
This article uses the Indian case to offer nuance to narratives about the gendered experience of professional work. I find that while gendered constructs certainly infiltrate all workspaces, there remain occupational and organizational differences in the ways in which women experience their environments. Particularly, while Indian women lawyers overall are more disadvantaged than their international counterparts, the experience of women lawyers i…
Nevertheless They Persisted
This article uses the Indian case to offer nuance to narratives about the gendered experience of professional work. I find that while gendered constructs certainly infiltrate all workspaces, there remain occupational and organizational differences in the ways in which women experience their environments. Particularly, while Indian women lawyers overall are more disadvantaged than their international counterparts, the experience of women lawyers i…
Ratna Kapur
Patterned remittances enhance women's health-related autonomy
The consequences for women "left behind" by virtue of temporary male migration are mixed. On the one hand, concomitant changes in fertility, participation in the labor force, and social norms are often associated with increased independence for women. On the other hand, women left behind can be vulnerable to increased dependency on members of their husbands' family or face limited access to social institutions. These shifts in women's capacity fo…
A NEW Minority? International JD Students in US Law Schools
This Article reveals the significance of a new and growing minority group within US law schools—international students in the Juris Doctor (JD) program. While international students have received some attention in legal education scholarship, it mostly has been focused on their participation in the context of programs specially designed for this demographic (e.g. postgraduate programs like the LLM and SJD). Drawing from interview data with fifty-…
Just Like Global Firms
Against most male-dominated accounts of professional work, elite law firms in India pose a puzzling exception: women make up about half of these firms, even at senior levels of partnership. Using in-depth interviews with over 130 professionals in India's elite litigation, transactional law, and consulting firms, this research suggests that elite law firms-as new local organizations-aggressively differentiate themselves from their more traditional…
Intentional Invisibility
Drawing on an in-depth case study at a large nonprofit organization, we find, in line with previous scholarship, that women professionals continue to face biased expectations at work and at home. We leverage data from interviews and participant observation to identify a new strategy that women use to navigate professional constraints created by the second shift and workplace double binds: 'intentional invisibility.' Intentional invisibility refer…
Accidental Feminism
Exploring the unintentional production of seemingly feminist outcomes In India, elite law firms offer a surprising oasis for women within a hostile, predominantly male industry. Less than 10 percent of the country’s lawyers are female, but women in the most prestigious firms are significantly represented both at entry and partnership. Elite workspaces are notorious for being unfriendly to new actors, so what allows for aberration in certain works…
Institutional Memory Papers
Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1296
Law, Legal Socializations, and Epistemic Injustice
This review essay looks at the relationship between Deborah Tuerkheimer’s Credible (2021) and Meera Deo’s Unequal Profession (2019) in order to make a substantive point about inequality in legal institutions and the methods that are employed in dissecting them. At first glance, the connections between these projects might not seem apparent, although each deals with the inequalities in which its actors in focus are embedded. But both projects go d…
Rethinking Inclusion
Using preliminary observations from three parallel projects that employ a range of methods (network and content analysis, surveys, focus groups, and interviews), this article traces the experience of navigating different kinds of identity as useful capital within the legal profession. Identity is not the first kind of non-economic capital to influence professional navigation, but it is distinct in that it is owned and deployed primarily by minori…
Anti/Aunty as Critical Method
This article chronicles the author’s transformation from an anti-aunty Tamil South Asian socialisation to a more critical acceptance of aunty–ness as a queer ethnographer. Committing to reflexive ethnographic methods, I contemplate on the figure of the ‘invisible aunty’ as a way of disrupting the field while also being self-serving to one’s queer body and psyche. Particularly, in drawing from the nourishing strain of critical aunty dialogue, espe…
At Risk
Rules, with Swethaa Ballakrishnen
Rules -with Swethaa BallakrishnenWhat are rules for?What's at stake if we assume that they're neutral?And if we want rules to be progressive, does it matter who makes them?Socio-legal scholar Swethaa Ballakrishnen joins Uncommon Sense to reflect on this and more, highlighting the value of studying law not just in theory but in action, and drawing on a career spanning law and academia in India and the USA.As the author of "Accidental Feminism", wh…
Kanoon’s Sarange
This article uses three main global visual sites—the popular Korean drama Hometown Cha Cha Cha (2021), the Hindi-English movie, The Lunchbox (2013), and the British-American television series Ted Lasso (2020–2023) to engage with two main strains of Peter Goodrich’s scholarship: the interconnectedness between law, justice, and love; and the role of minor jurisprudences. Heeding Goodrich’s advice to consider media as an important node for legal ana…
Diverse Disconnectedness
Law school students are encouraged frequently to “network.” However, depending on demographic categories, they may have access to differently resourced social networks in law school. In this article, we draw from our mixed-methods research to explore this diversity of experience, its limitations of access, and the possible network inequalities that may limit the value of legal education to diverse students across different institutional contexts.…
Categorical closure
Blasé
Using 60 interviews with a range of minority law students and early career legal professionals (primarily differentiated by race, gender identity, religion, and disability), this Article illuminates the cruciality of empirical Critical Race Theory to understand individual deviance within the legal profession and develops a framework - blasé - for considering interactional violence that is not legally or socially cognizable as discrimination but s…
Sociology (16 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Law (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Public relations (5 works) · Gender Diversity and Inequality (4 works) · Legal Education and Practice Innovations (4 works)