Ethan Michelson and Ke Li "Delivering Justice in Rural China"

The East Asian Studies Center at Indiana University presents Ethan Michelson and Ke Li.

Presenter:
Ethan Michelson (EALC, Sociology, and Law, IU Bloomington) and Ke Li (doctoral candidate, Sociology IU Bloomington)
 
Under the banner of the “New Socialist Countryside” policy program, Chinese villages have been transformed in recent years by massive investments in healthcare, education, transportation, power, irrigation, and other public goods. The larger policy effort to reduce rural-urban inequality and improve state-society relations also includes measures designed to expand access to justice. In this talk, Li and Michelson will attempt to synthesize their independent research findings on grievances, disputes, and the pursuit of justice by focusing particular attention on the help-seeking experiences of rural divorcées. They will show that divorce, more than any other type of dispute, connects villagers to the legal system and to legal service providers. However, as they will also show, access to law does not imply access to justice. Beneath the growing volume of people pursuing justice through the law are persistent barriers to the delivery of justice.

Ethan Michelson is Associate Professor of Sociology and Law at Indiana University-Bloomington. His research on Chinese lawyers and social conflict in rural China has been published as articles in a variety of disciplinary and area studies journals, including the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, The China Quarterly, Law & Society Review, Social Problems, and Journal of Conflict Resolution, and as chapters in a number of edited volumes. His research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the U.S. Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays), the American Bar Foundation, and the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. He is currently co-directing the IU Center for Law, Society, and Culture.

Ke Li is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University.  Her research centers on the interplay of law, politics, and gender in contemporary China. She is currently conducting research on divorce litigation in rural China for a dissertation titled, “Seeking Divorce in the Countryside: Marital Grievances, Dispute Resolution, and Gender Inequalities in Contemporary China.”

(Light refreshments will be served. You are also welcome to bring your own lunch.)

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