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Paper short abstract:

NGO-led community mobilization to address violence against women in urban India produced heterogenous community responses, ranging from remedial action to vigilante violence. We analyze contextual reasons for such responses and discuss implications for conceptualisations of power and violence.

Paper long abstract:

Mobilizing communities to provide safety and support for women facing risks of violence is a long-standing goal for feminist activists. Yet, evidence on community participation in the prevention of violence against women (VAW) remains scarce. We conducted a grounded theory study of community responses to an NGO programme to prevent VAW in informal settlements in Mumbai, India. We held 30 focus group discussions and 36 semi-structured interviews with 113 community members and 9 NGO staff, along with over 170 hours of field observation. We found that NGO-led community mobilization produced heterogeneous responses and identified three major strategies used by community members to address VAW: remedial action, institutional redress, and vigilante violence. Residents’ choice of strategy was interpretable with reference to their ecological context, in particular, factors such as extreme poverty, violent (sword- or gang-related) crime, and corrupt institutions, including the police. Remedial action became the default strategy in neighbourhoods with low levels of social capital. Institutional redress was favoured in neighbourhoods with strong institutions. Vigilante violence arose from the intersection of weak institutions combined with ample social capital. However, institutional redress did not necessarily equate to non-violence, as the police were widely reported to have used violence against offenders under arrest. We argue that these contextual features force VAW prevention programmes to take explicit ethical positions on contentious issues such as the legitimate use of violence by the state and caution against straightforward importation of Global Northern, 'social service-oriented' models of VAW prevention.