
Poulami Roychowdhury
Biography
Research
How do states regulate violence and why do state officials use certain strategies over others? When does violence inspire political mobilization? How does mobilization impact gender inequality and people’s abilities to acquire justice? These are some of the questions that motivate Professor Roychowdhury’s academic work.
Professor Roychowdhury’s award-winning book, "Capable Women, Incapable States: Negotiating Violence and Rights in India," was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. Through ethnographic and interview-based accounts of survivors, civil society groups, and law enforcement personnel, this book develops a theoretical framework for understanding how collective action influences law enforcement decision-making and women’s access to justice.
Currently, Dr. Roychowdhury is working on three separate projects. The first examines the politics of sexual harassment in India, tracing the evolution of new policing practices around street harassment. The second focuses on the transnational politics of reproductive justice, asking how women respond to legal challenges against abortion. The third is an interdisciplinary, collaborative initiative that traces the inequality of COVID-19 in India.
Publications
BOOKS
2021. Capable Women, Incapable States: Negotiating Violence and Rights in India. New York: Oxford University Press. Forthcoming
2023. Pandemic Inequality: Citizens, States, and Covid 19 in India, with Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner (UVA). Under contract with Oxford University Press.
ARTICLES
2022. “Between Women and the State: Rights Brokers and Capital Accumulation in West Bengal.” Toward a Sociology of South Asia: Rethinking Politics, Labor, and Culture. Eds. Smitha Radhakrishnan and Gowri Vijayakumar. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
2021. “Incorporation: Governing Gendered Violence in a State of Disempowerment.” American Journal of Sociology, 124(4): 852-888. 2019. “Illicit Justice: Aspirational-Strategic Subjects and the Political Economy of Domestic Violence.” Law & Social Inquiry, 44(1): 1-24.
2016. “Desire, Rights, Entitlements: Organizational Strategies in the War on Violence.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 41(4): 793-820.
Teaching
SOCI 2330 States, Power, Politics