Hi Vimal,

I am not an expert on studies of caste violence but I have had some experience on studying village communities in Rajasthan and Gujarat in India. I will try to answer your question on methods based on my experiences in fieldwork. Your topic, although not clearly spelled out, raises many interesting possibilities for fieldwork.

Caste violence involves asking the community many contentious questions, that they may or may not choose to answer. For instance, asking one community if they blame another for caste violence - that is easy, right? However, you don't want to be an arbitrator in such issues that may force you to take a political position. In my opinion- using proxy questions, such as related to development issues, or religious leaders can prove to be insightful to study caste fissures. Now coming to sampling - I find that purposive, over snowball when there is limited time at hand, may turn out to be more effective. You can use triangulation, and therefore be able to collate quantitative data with your qualitative codes.I would recommend triangulation (for purposes of validity, most of all), but detailed ethnographic work can allow more insights, allowing for new theories to emerge. 

Now, coming to the last point, you haven't clarified what you mean by vulnerable communities of the village. Are you speaking of economically or socially vulnerable communities? More often than not, as we have seen in an Indian village, despite continued legislation - the socially backward communities (such as S.Cs and S.Ts) rank low on the human development indicators. The situation can be more precarious in a dynamic environment of caste-related violence - how do the tribal communities suffer, for instance? And how differently do they suffer from the Harijans? such questions need to be clarified before you venture into the field. Thereafter, there are more questions here: what point of the caste conflict are you interested in? during an emergency? or at the very beginning of the peace process? Such questions will allow you to clarify your specific interest before you enter the field. As one of my final points, I am curious to know if you have looked into the strong co-relation between the role of political leaders and caste conflicts in village communities, there can be much that can be gleaned from that. A reference for this kind of work that you can look into:

Wacquant (2007). Urban Outcasts: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality. Polity Books. 

All the best!

Hi Janvi,

Thank you so much for your precious time to answer my question!

My plan is to study violence through Ethnography of a village. By this i can study different types of violence like Direct violence and structural violence on Scheduled castes by the dominant caste group. 

I am going to study the field as an insider. Therefore i am confused about my stay at village. where should i stay in village? among Scheduled castes or among Dominant castes. I have to start my field visit within 40 days.

Lets see...

Thanks again Janvi!

How exciting.  Congrats!  It sounds like this is a new area of study.  As such, would it make sense to do a qualitative study?  Perhaps include assessments on depression, PTSD, and anxiety as well as post-traumatic growth and/or cognitive emotional regulation assessments (these are resilience assessments for trauma/violence).  Then you can look for themes to identify.  You might look at how studies on LGBT identified violence against this minority community and mirror this approach.  Look for a couple of interesting qualitative studies and email that researcher to ask them for suggestions/support as it will be really helpful to have someone to answer questions that come up during your time there.  Then you can include this person as an author on a paper down the road.  Are you limited to only staying with one household?  Perhaps you can rotate?  When you get to the village look for someone who comes into contact with multiple casts such as a priest or local individual that villagers go to for medical help.  This person can help you find people to interview for the qualitative study.  If you want to measure physcial violence experienced in the past 12-months and lifetime, IPV is the Conflict Tactics Scale (Straus 1979) or its revised version (CTS2; Straus, Hamby, McCoy, & Sugarman, 1996), just change the timeframe for the questions. The majority of studies either utilize of this assessment or they select questions from this measure (Capaldi et al., 2012; Cummings, Gonzalez-guarda, & Sandoval, 2013).

Additionally, it would be interesting to assess their lifetime exposure to adverse life experiences.  I would use two separate assessment.  One for childhood and one for adulthood.  It is quite possible that there will be distinct differences in frequency and possible types of events exposed to by cast which will impact depression and anxiety.  The two common assessments for childhood exposure are  Adverse Childhood Experiences Assessment (Felitti et al.’s (1998) and Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ) which has 34 types of victimization (14 that were non-violent) [non-pnysical violent forms of abuse can have more deleterious effects than physical violence and I would argue are a form of violence when this is a normalized experience for a class].  Research has demonstrated that the more items asked about the better the results.  Also keep in mind, that harsh parenting practices while are forms of abuse, if they are common would not be identified as abuse.  So, best to ask specific behavioral questions rather than asking if a parent ever abuse them.  Another thing, I would include asking about age of first instance.  This will allow you to get multiple papers from the same dataset.  For adult, a common assessment is The Life Stressor Checklist Revised (LSC-R) (McHugo et al., 2005) is a list of 31 events .  I would remove the childhood events -- it is really insufficient in this area.  

Another consideration, whatever assessment you use, mix up the questions don't simply have them do one assessment than another.  The results can be biases when having them answer all questions for one type of assessment in sequence. 

Wish I were going with you :) Sounds really interesting and fun.

P.S. You might also want to connect with Art of Living (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar)-- take their course here in the U.S. before you go.  They might have groups in those villages and could be a good contact.  

Dr. Michael W. Ross from University of Texas came to our university.  He was very kind and knowledgable.  He might be able to recommend someone for you to work with or be interested.  For, in the U.S. while we don't position it as a class society, if you look at behaviors and laws, it certainly has been for minorities.  This can be difficult to address becuase it allows others to deny it is there (e.g. Bill O'Reily).  

Also, I went to this woman's presentation at FIU.  She was really good and engaged in exploratory research such as yourself.  She may have changed universities.   "Black Land Loss in the Americas: Toward an Ethnography of Spatialized Justice," by Dr. Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, Brown University.

(P.S. I have found it best to read a couple of their articles before I contact another researcher and 90% of the time I hear back from them)

Another thought: an idea to explore for your theoretical model, you might want to consider behavior economics.  This article is an example of its application (free through google scholar): Shafir, E. (2014). POVERTY AND CIVIL RIGHTS: A BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS PERSPECTIVE. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW, (1), 205-230.

Behavioral Economics (BE) is an interdisciplinary science which, using models and knowledge from neighbouring sciences, aims to establish descriptively accurate findings about human cognitive ability and social interaction with implications on economic behaviors and processes. 

This idea has expanded into areas such as: neuropsychology, social psychology, motivation, and emotion regulation.  It is possible that the cast system is a form of economic stratification which has implications for skill set development that enables one to move beyond the caste one was born into.   This theory might be a good frame to use to explore these implications and how they influence one's exposure to violence.  In the area of Intimate Partner Violence, the research has identified that there are two forms  situational couple aggression (argument escalation) and coercive control IPV.  There appears to be a link between income/poverty, which, naturally, is associated with education level.  This association leads most people to think that the issue is one of education to stop IPV use.  However, based on my research review, it appears to me that the stressors related to low income as well as this populations' increased exposure to adverse life experiences (trauma) and limited access to continued skills set development to support executive functioning are stronger contributing factors than education against IPV or patriarchal attitudes.   Most likely, education and income level represent stronger skills sets which can reduce stress levels thereby decreasing IPV use.  

Fershtman, C., & Gneezy, U. (2001). Discrimination in a segmented society: An experimental approach. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 351-377.

Dear Kathy,

You have a great knowledge about violence research. Your suggestions are very important and valuable for me. I will surely implement your suggestions. 

Please keep in touch...

With Regards

Vimal

Douglas, E. M., & Straus, M. A. (2006). Assault and injury of dating partners by university students in 19 countries and its relation to corporal punishment experienced as a child. European journal of criminology, 3(3), 293-318.

some other articles that might be helpful:

Renner, L. M., & Whitney, S. D. (2012). Risk factors for unidirectional and bidirectional intimate partner violence among young adults. Child Abuse & Neglect, 36(1), 40-52. 10.1016/j.chiabu.2011.07.007

Lamers-Winkelman, F., Willemen, A. M., & Visser, M. (2012). Adverse Childhood Experiences of referred children exposed to Intimate Partner Violence: Consequences for their wellbeing. Child abuse & neglect, 36(2), 166-179.

Butler, J. C. (2013). Authoritarianism and fear responses to pictures: The role of social differences. International Journal of Psychology, 48(1), 18-24. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207594.2012.698392

Feldman, S. (2003). Enforcing social conformity: A theory of authoritarianism. Political Psychology, 24(1), 41-74. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0162-895X.00316

Stenner, K. (2005). The authoritarian dynamic. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Askeland, R., Evang, A., & Heir, T. (2011). Association of violence against partner and former victim experiences: A sample of clients voluntarily attending therapy. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 26:6, 1095-1110. 10.1177/0886260510368152

Skuja, K. & Halford, K. W. (2004). Repeating the errors of our parents? Parental violence in men’s family of origin and conflict management in dating couples. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 19:6, 623-638.

Sunday, S., Kline, M., Labruna, V., Pelcovitz, D., Salzinger, S., & Kaplan, S. (2011). The role of adolescent physical abuse in adult intimate partner violence. Journal of interpersonal violence, 26(18), 3773-3789.

Dackis, M. N., Rogosch, F. A., Oshri, A., & Cicchetti, D. (2012). The role of limbic system irritability in linking history of childhood maltreatment and psychiatric outcomes in low-income, high-risk women: Moderation by FK506 binding protein 5 haplotype. Development and Psychopathology, 24:4, 1237-1252.

Hamby, S., Finkelhor, D., Turner, H., & Ormrod, R. (2010). The overlap of witnessing partner violence with child maltreatment and other victimizations in a nationally representative survey of youth. Child abuse & neglect, 34(10), 734-741. 10.1016/j.chiabu.2010.03.001

Wareham, J., Boots, D., & Chavez, J. (2009). A test of social learning and intergenerational transmission among batterers. Journal of Criminal Justice, 37(2), 163-173. 10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2009.02.011

Roberts, A., McLaughlin, K., Conron, K., & Koenen, K. (2011). Adulthood stressors, history of childhood adversity, and risk of perpetration of intimate partner violence. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 40(2), 128-138. 10.1016/j.amepre. 2010.10.016

Major, B., & O'Brien, L. T. (2005). The social psychology of stigma. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 56, 393-421. 10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070137

English, D., Lambert, S. F., Evans, M. K., & Zonderman, A. B. (2014). Neighborhood Racial Composition, Racial Discrimination, and Depressive Symptoms in African Americans. American journal of community psychology, 1-10. 10.1007/s10464-014-9666-y

Gibbons, F. X., Kingsbury, J. H., Weng, C. Y., Gerrard, M., Cutrona, C., Wills, T. A., & Stock, M. (2014). Effects of perceived racial discrimination on health status and health behavior: A differential mediation hypothesis. Health Psychology, 33(1), 11. 10.1037/a0033857

Dear Kathy,

Thanks for your inputs, sorry for late reply because i was in field to study some cases related to women trafficking.

With Regards

Vimal

Might be that I could not understand your question well, however I had to suggest you some points from my side.

1. You should consider the people from all the castes equal as it is possible some brilliant mind people be there in a small village which is non-educated.

2. You had questioned where should you live in while making study - I think you should live as per your choice. But you have to discuss the matters from all those are interested or who are affected.

3. In Bihar and other states, the incidents of caste-based quarrels are considerable. The first such incident had occurred in Belachhi (Nalanda District). There are some books (literary books) on this incidents e.g. 'Gidhdhhon ka Mahabhoj'. I have not read such books. But these type of books will give you insights.

4. There is a film by Prakash Jha, 'Damool' which shows the problems and barriers to lower castes where two leading castes use them as they wish. It  also shows how the government policies are ineffective to search the truth. You should watch this movie.

5. You should also study that present Indian politics is widening the gap between the castes in India for vote bank politics.

6. You can also study the effect of reservations and effect of law-less-ness on the Indian societies.

If your try honestly , it will be very useful study to Indian societies where society is divided into castes.

Regards,

sorry, I just saw the question and it is surely too late to give constructive input. However I want to know, if the study has finally been done and what was the outcome?