Gopika Solanki
Identity politics; Indigeneity and politics; Law and society; Cultural pluralism and intercultural accommodation; State-society relations; Gender and politics
| Degrees: | MA (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) PhD (McGill University) |
| Phone: | 613-520-2600 x 1752 |
| Email: | gopika.solanki@carleton.ca |
| Office: | C674 Loeb Building |
Associate Professor
Gopika Solanki’s research straddles disciplines of Political Science, Legal Anthropology, Women’s Studies, and Law. Her research interests include gender and politics, state-society relations, cultural pluralism and citizenship, legal pluralism and judicial politics, ethnicity, religion and politics, criminal law and governance, and South Asian politics. She is the author of Adjudication in Religious Family Laws: Cultural Accommodation, Legal Pluralism, and Gender Equality in India (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and the co-author of Journey from Violence to Crime: A Study of Domestic Violence in the City of Mumbai.
Along with colleagues based in various Universities in Norway, Sweden, Germany, and the UK, Gopika is involved in the research project titled “Dwelling and Crossing: The Socio-Cultural Dynamics of Religious Spaces in Mumbai.” The project is housed in the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (AHKR), University of Bergen, and is funded by the Norwegian Research Council. Here is the link to the project: http://mumbai.b.uib.no/
She is currently working on book project on indigeneity, politics and the law. The book is tentatively titled “The Split Personality of Law: Political Decentralization, Gender, and Adivasi Legal Mobilization in Western India.”
Selected Publications
Solanki, Gopika. 2018. “Adjudication in a Pluralized Legal Field: Proposing Communication as an Analytical Device.” In Kyriaki Topidi ed., Normative Pluralism and Human Rights: Social Normativities in Conflict. London: Routledge. Chapter 13.
Solanki, Gopika. 2017. “A Court of Her Own: Autonomy, Gender, and Women’s Courts in India.” In Bano, Samia ed., Gender and Justice in Family Law Disputes: Women, Mediation, and Religious Arbitration. Waltham: Brandeis University Press. 215-245.
Solanki, Gopika and Geetanjali Gangoli (2016) “Defining Domestic Violence and Women’s Autonomy in Law.” The Socio-Legal Review 12(1): 51-80.
Solanki, Gopika (2015). “Invoking Human Rights: Dalits and the Politics of Caste Violence in India.” In Peetush, Ashwani, and Jay Drydyk, eds., Human Rights: India and the West. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 256-292.
Solanki, Gopika (2014). “Doing Caste, Making Citizens: Differing Conceptions of Religious Identities and Autonomy in Hindu Law.” In Beaman, Lori, and Sonia Sikka, eds., Religion and Diversity in India and Canada. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press.
Solanki, Gopika (2013). “And the Retelling of Tales: Disentangling Feminist Evolutionary Approach, Legal Pluralism, and Gender Justice.” Politics and Gender, 9(1): 105–110.
Solanki, Gopika (2011). Adjudication in Religious Family Laws: Cultural Accommodation, Legal Pluralism, and Gender Equality in India. Cambridge, Delhi, and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Reviews for this book: Law and Politics Book Review; Feminist Legal Studies; Law and Society Review; Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice; Berkeley Journal of International Law; South Asia Research; Südasien-Chronik – South Asia Chronicle 5/2015