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COMMENTARY: Understanding South Asian dowry violence

Intellectual debate is often generated by the problematisation of beliefs and practices considered ‘natural’ within the societies in which they are disseminated and practised. Although giving dowry has been part of South Asian peoples’ ways of being for centuries, the violence associated with contemporary dowry practices has come to represent, for many South Asian and Western social analysts, a grim marker of the continuing physical and psychosocial oppression faced by women in the region. Consequently it has become the focus of a rich and burgeoning scholarly literature—much of it informed by feminist perspectives. In this essay we investigate the work of a range of feminist writers on contemporary dowry violence and ask: what new insights have they provided? and which interpretations now rule the field?