Public Hearings as Social Performance

Addressing the Courts, Restoring Citizenship

Bibliographic Data

ID2634830
AuthorsStéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal, Stéphanie Tawa Lama‐rewal (0000-0002-4746-7586, National Council for Scientific Research, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume17
Issue17
Publication date2018-03-21
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSouth Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1960-6060 • E-ISSN: 1960-6060
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/samaj.4413
OpenAlexW2793248255
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited17

Since the late 1990s, major claims addressed to the Indian state by, or on behalf of, the underprivileged, have been formulated in terms of rights (right to work, to food, etc.). Collective action increasingly addresses the courts as much as governments or legislative assemblies. This paper aims to show, through an analysis of public hearings (jan sunwai in Hindi), that such “legalism” of Indian progressive social movements is at work not only in the language, but also in the form of mobilizations. In order to interpret public hearings as social performance, I compare them with two modes of judiciary intervention that depart from the ordinary—the PIL in India, Truth commissions in other countries—and thereby highlight a series of affinities, both substantive and procedural, between the three dispositives. This interpretive analysis points at the deep originality of public hearings as a form of collective action, and at their political significance insofar as they can, in the best of cases, restore citizenship

Citizenship · Collective action · Law and economics · Legislature · Political science · Politics · Public space · Sociology · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Psychology · Public Administration · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

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