Examining Torture: Empirical Studies of State Repression. Edited by Tracy Lightcap and James Pfiffner. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 218 pp. $105 cloth.

• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Date: 01 September 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12161

discrepancies, the author had also indicated whether these arise

from different research questions, methodologies, or sites that

others may have been pursuing.

A book that begins quite promisingly with a reference to the

landmark controversial Shah Bano case (1985), in which the

Supreme Court of India upheld a divorced Muslim woman’s right

to maintenance under the Indian Criminal Procedure Code, and

aims to understand gender inequality across religious communities,

disappoints in its lack of attention to two aspects of legal reform in

the country: the agency of women in shaping personal law reforms,

and the role of the Constitution. The book is centrally focused on

the political (and to a lesser extent, on religious and legal) elites and

their visions and strategies, and admittedly does not seek to engage

with everyday practices of claim-making. However, an acknowledg-

ment of the ways in which visions of a just and equal society that

underlie legal claims women bring to courts (often in the normative

language of the State) also shape legal change would have helped

avoid what appears to be an omission in this book that seeks to

engage with pluralism and gendered citizenship. I can also not help

but wonder about the use of the phrase “feminine interpretations”

of law in the book as the author does not provide any explanation

of the same.

Despite the omissions, Nation and Family offers timely and valua-

ble insights into the complex ways in which interactions between

visions of nation, discourses of community and perceptions about

minorities shape multicultural societies. Recently renewed attempts

by certain groups to reimagine India as a particular Hindu nation

provide an interesting contemporary context for reading and

appreciating this book.

***

Examining Torture: Empirical Studies of State Repression. Edited by

Tracy Lightcap and James Pfiffner. New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2014. 218 pp. $105 cloth.

Reviewed by Rachel Wahl, Department of Leadership, Foundations,

and Policy, University of Virginia

Torture is a difficult subject to research. Perpetrators almost always

attempt to hide their acts, making any kind of systematicdata collec-

tion challenging. If one is able to gather data, research on such a

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