How are vulnerability and violence governed? - Poulami Roychowdhury, Capable Women, Incapable States. <i>Negotiating Violence and Rights in India</i> (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, 252 p.)

It is no longer new to pursue a sociology of human rights in line with a sociology of other phenomena associated with sacred values, such as religion, art, or science, but in the context of interdisciplinary debates, it is still or again precarious.In this context, Poulami Roychowdhury's book "Capable Women, Incapable States" exemplifies some foundational sociological virtues; it also reaches beyond the established repertoire of the discipline to raise open-ended questions about vulnerability and violence, which seem crucial to understanding contemporary transformations of the political order but could also be used to re-examine what we thought we knew about the past.I begin with the foundational virtues."Capable Women, Incapable States" focuses on observing rights claims among women affected by domestic violence in the Indian state of West Bengal.This focus on rights claims is not itself unusual: interdisciplinary discussions of human rights can focus on rights claims in some detail, but the underlying goal is often to determine which ones can be considered true and valid and which ones should be dismissed as false or ideological.This basic motivation can be a shared element across some rather legalistic and some very critical approaches.Given the extra-worldly authority of human rights, there is often not much room for ambivalence.Advancing the right kind of claims and denouncing the wrong kind is a matter of urgency, and it can be difficult to find the time to investigate other questions that might arise about these claims.By contrast, "Capable Women, Incapable States" pauses to observe carefully how claims are articulated and to track their effects in the world.Roychowdhury describes rights claims as the result of a shift in the way these women interpret their situation.She highlights that the women in her study do not start from thinking of themselves as having experienced a violation of their "rights" or "human rights".They are trying to "run a family" and when they encounter violence and non-cooperation from their husbands, they initially enlist outside help in this project of "running a family".Only when these efforts fail, and when they are encouraged by 1