Includes bibliographical references and index.

Laws of metamorphosis : from nomad to offender / Meena Radhakrishna -- Victims and villains : the construction of female criminality in colonial Calcutta / Sumanta Banerjee -- 'That despicable specimen of humanity' : policing of homosexuality in India / Arvind Narrain -- Sexual assault and the law / Kalpana Kannabiran -- Social exclusion and criminal law / S.R. Sankaran -- Building a subaltern women's perspective / Jayshree P. Mangubhai and Aloysius Irudayam S.J. -- Whose life is it anyway? : Adivasi communities and entitlements to life / Seema Misra -- Preserving wellness and personhood : a psychosocial approach to the child / Shekhar P. Seshadri and Kaveri I. Haritas -- Penal strategies and political resistance in colonial and independent India / Ujjwal Kumar Singh -- Communities, gender and the border : a legal narrative on India's North East / Paula Banerjee -- Parens Patriae : exercising patriarchal prerogative in post-partition India / Ritu Menon -- Law and life in the state of nature : archiving stories from legal literacy / Abha Singhal Joshi -- Revisiting impunity and criminality : of corruption, collusion, consequences and victims / Vijay K. Nagaraj -- Khap Panchayats in Haryana : sites of legal pluralism / K.S. Sangwan -- Crimes, passion and detachment : colonial foundations of rule of law / Ranabir Samaddar -- Conspiracies of association : associational offences, associational freedoms and the rule of law / K.G. Kannabiran -- Of strong medicine and weak stomachs : the resort to enhanced punishment in criminal law in India / Bikram Jeet Batra -- The contexts of criminology : a brief restatement / Kalpana Kannabiran.