1 UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH Graduate School of Social and Political Science Social Anthropology CULTURES OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIANISM PGSP11295 Course Handbook: Semester 2, 2017/18 Course Organiser: Dr. Leila Sinclair-Bright [email protected]Room 3.22, 18 Buccleuch Place Guidance and Feedback Hours: Tuesdays 11:00 – 13:00, or by appointment Course Secretary: Ms Morag Wilson Graduate School Office Room 1.20, Chrystal Macmillan Building [email protected]
The need to save humanity from itself has become one of the dominant cries in contemporary politics. The claims of human rights and humanitarianism have been at the forefront of this global urge to mend, ameliorate, or even transform the circumstances of disorder and atrocity, bringing with them very particular visions of what it means to be human. However, the languages of human rights and humanitarianism are not a human constant. We therefore need to ask how have the approaches of human rights and humanitarianism become dominant, what assumptions do they hold and what tensions do they contain?
As such, this course provides an examination of the nature of contemporary thinking and practice in the fields of human rights and humanitarianism. The core of the course is rooted in a broadly anthropological approach to the issues, but draws widely on history, politics, and sociology. Contemporary case studies will be used in order to illustrate the issues.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The course’s aim is to provide students with a critical understanding of the historical and cultural specificity of contemporary notions of human rights and humanitarianism. This involves the following: analysing the common origins and differences between human rights and humanitarians; analysing the specific assumptions about what it means to be human embedded within human rights and humanitarianism; analysing the ways in which human rights and humanitarianism are embedded within specific political configurations; analysing the relationship between the aspiration and practice of human rights and humanitarianism; and applying social science approaches to key controversies within the fields of human rights and humanitarianism.
SUMMARY OF INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of the course, students should:
• Have an extensive and critical understanding of key debates relating to human rights
and humanitarianism.
• Have an advanced and critical understanding of the contribution of anthropology and other qualitative social sciences to the critical analysis of human rights and humanitarianism.
• Have an advanced and critical understanding of the historical and cultural
particularity of contemporary ideas about human rights and humanitarianism.
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COURSE DELIVERY
The course will consist of 10 one hour lectures with an accompanying one hour seminar. The seminar will give students the opportunity to raise questions, to discuss topics brought up in the lecture and the readings, and to give short presentations on themes of their interest.
The seminars will be partially structured around a close analysis of the readings marked * on the syllabus. Students should come to the seminars prepared to say two things they like and two things they do not like about the starred reading.
Lecture: Mondays 16.10-17.00 (3.2 Lister, Lister Learning and Teaching Centre)
Seminars: Students have been allocated a seminar to attend, based on your availability on the
Timetable. Please check your My Timetable on MyEd for your seminar allocation.
ASSESSMENT
For Assessment requirements you should consult the Taught MSc Student Handbook 2017-18 which is available on LEARN.
Write a short critical essay, answering the following question:
What image of the human condition is presented in this photograph? In answering this question, you are being asked to examine how the photograph represents humanity and the idea of human rights. You are not being asked to analyse the actual work that the organisation does, or the issues it faces. Limit your analysis to the photograph. You may include some information about the broader political context that is represented by the photo although your analysis should be focused on the photograph rather than the context in which it was taken. Please include the photograph you have decided to focus on. You are also welcome to include other pictures to illustrate your assignment. Use at least three readings from the reading list.
Development and coherence of arguments Demonstration of an advanced and critical understanding of relevant key debates relating to human rights and humanitarianism as examined on the course Use of supporting evidence Degree of reflexivity and critical thinking in relation to arguments and evidence Drawing together major arguments by way of conclusion in relation to the assignment Formal presentation of report: correct referencing and quoting; spelling, grammar and style; layout and visual presentation.
Long Essay
The 3000 word essay to be submitted after the end of the course. Long essay titles will be provided in the second half of the course
MARKING AND FEEDBACK
Feedback on formative and summative in-course assessed work will be provided within 15 working days of submission.
Feedback from the Short Essay will be returned via ELMA by 8th March 2017.
Feedback from the Long Essay will be returned via ELMA on 1st
May 2017.
EXTERNAL EXAMINER
The External Examiner for the course is Dr Anke Schwittay, University of Sussex.
ATTENDANCE
Attendance and participation in the lectures and discussion are essential for developing and understanding of the topics.
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READINGS
All students should read the Key Readings for every lecture. Further Readings listed for each topic are intended to allow students to explore and consolidate their knowledge of particular themes. We have given extensive references in order to help students explore the wider literature if they so wish: we would not expect any student to read all the references for all of these weeks. However, if you are intending to write an essay on a particular topic, you must demonstrate that you have read many, if not all, the different readings suggested for that topic.
Readings Marked with * will be discussed in detail in the seminar groups.
Key Readings (and most Additional Readings) can also be obtained electronically via LEARN or the links in the main library catalogue. If you have any difficulty getting hold of any of the readings, contact the Course Organiser.
TUTORIAL PREPARATION
For some tutorials, students are requested to do non-reading preparation before coming to class. These exercises are marked in the handbook after the lecture readings. Please come to tutorial classes prepared.
The imperative to prevent suffering no matter where it occurs, in the name of a universal humanity, plays a central, if not uncontested role in modern political life. But this has not always been so. How is it that the desire to prevent suffering has taken on its contemporary forms? What visions of humanity does it contain? What is the relationship between human rights and humanitarianism? What forms of harm and suffering do they focus on? What forms of political action do they call into place?
Key Readings
* Wilson, Richard A. and Richard Brown, eds. 2008. Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Read “Introduction” pp.1-28
(Available from Learn).
Hunt, Lynn. 2004. "The 18th-Century Body and the Origins of Human Rights," Diogenes 51(3): 41-56.
Further Readings
Moyn, Samuel. 2010. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge: Belknap. Read Chapter 1 “Humanity before Human Rights”, pp. 11-44 (Available from Learn).
Stockton, Nick 1998. “In Defence of Humanitarianism”, Disasters 22(4): 352–360.
Kennedy, David. The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Asad, Talal. 2011, “What do Human Rights do: An Anthropological Enquiry”, Theory and Eevnt 4(4).
Rorty, Richard. 1993. “Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality” pp.110-243. In On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993. Shute, Stephen and Hurley, S. (eds). New York: Basic Books (Available from Learn).
Haskell, Thomas. 1985. “Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility: Part 1”, American Historical Review 90(3): 547-566.
Redfield, Peter. 2005 “Doctors, Borders, and Life in Crisis”, Cultural Anthropology
20(3): 328-361.
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WEEK 2: COLONIALISM, HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIANISM (January 22) (LSB)
Historically, human rights and humanitarianism have their origins in a particular Euro-American history, and have always placed sharp limits on the forms of humanity that they seek to protect. Do contemporary interventions in the name of humanity represent a benign desire to alleviate common human suffering, or do they re-inscribe colonial forms of domination?
Key Readings
* Matua, Makau 2001. “Savages, Victims, and Saviours: The Metaphor of Human Rights”, Harvard International Law Journal 42(1): 201
Massad, Joseph. 2002. Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World Public Culture, 14(2), pp.361-385.
Additional Readings
Cubukcu, Aysa. 2013. “The Responsbility to Protect: Libya and the Problem of Transnational Solidarity”, Journal of Human Rights 12(1): 40-58.
Anghie, Antony. 2006. “The Evolution of International Law: Colonial and Postcolonial Realities”, Third World Quarterly 27(5): 739-753.
Cubukcu, Aysa. 2011. “On Cosmopolitan Occupations: The Case of the World Tribunal in Iraq”, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 13(3): 422-442.
Douzinas, Costas. 2003. “Humanity, Military Humanism, and the New Moral Order”, Economy and Society 32(2): 159-183.
Donnelly, Jack. 2007. “The Relative Universality of Human Rights”, Human Rights Quarterly 29(2): 281-306.
Engle, Karen. 2001. “From Skepticism to Embrace: Human Rights and the American Anthropological Association from 1947-1999”, Human Rights Quarterly 23(3): 536-559.
Lattas, Andrew. 1996. “Humanitarianism and Australian Nationalism in Colonial Papua: Hubert Murray and the Project of Caring for the Self of the Coloniser and Colonized”, Australian Journal of Anthropology 7(2): 141-166.
Tutorial preparation:
Watch the following video by Radi-Aid. Make sure you watch the video right until the end? What politics does this video intend to subvert?
WEEK 3: HUMAN RIGHTS AND PHOTOGRAPHY: VISUALISING HUMAN SUFFERING (January 30) (Guest Lecture by Dr. Astrid Jamar)
The lecture will explore the role of photography in the visual representation of human rights and humanitarianism. Combining historical and aesthetics literature with visual material, we will discuss the complex relationship between ethics and activism in visualising human suffering. It will analyse the debates and ethical issues in arts engaging with human suffering (such as the work of Salgado) and the continuous contemporary debates in relations to the imagery used in human rights and humanitarian advocacy and fundraising campaigns. This lecture will encourage students to think about aesthetic representations of suffering, issues of agency, mobilisation, and (dis)empowerment beyond the normative discourse of human rights.
Key Readings
* Sliwinski, Sharon. 2011. Human Rights in Camera. Foreword by Lynn Hunt. The University of Chicago Press. Read Introduction and Chapter 1: “The Spectator of Human Rights”.
Heide Fehren ach and Davide Rodogno. 2015. Humanitarian Photography: A History. Read Chapter
12: “Dilemmas of ethical practice in the production of contemporary humanitarian photography”
by Sanna Nissinen.
Further Readings
Azoulay, A., 2015. Civil Imagination: a political ontology of photography. Verso Books
Möller, Frank. 2017. “Witnessing violence through photography,” in Global Discourse, Volume 7 –
Special Issue 2-3: Visualizing violence: aesthetics and ethics in international politics.
Möller, Frank. 2013. Visual Peace: Images, Spectatorship, and the Politics of Violence. Macmillan.
Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. Penguin Books Limited.
Stuart. Allan. 2011. ‘Documenting War, Visualising Peace: Towards Peace Photography’. Expanding
Peace Journalism: Comparative and Critical Approaches, Eds. by Shaw, Lynch and Hackett, Sydney
University Press, 147–67.
Zelizer, Barbie. 2010. About To Die: How News Images Move the Public. Oxford University Press.
Tutorial preparation:
Print out one photo of your choice representing human rights and/or humanitarianism (these don’t have to be negative! It could be about human rights progress). Reflect on the emotional content, information conveyed, and ethics of the photograph. Bring these photographs to your tutorial groups.
WEEK 4: PROTECTING THE INNOCENT (February 6) (LSB).
Humanitarian intervention has historically sought to protect the innocent in the midst of armed conflict and disaster. What visions of innocence have been included in the humanitarian project and what are left out? What forms of violence are implicitly legitimised? What forms of suffering can be alleviated by the humanitarian imperative and what have to be put to one side?
Key Readings *Redfield, Peter. 2005 “Doctors, Borders, and Life in Crisis”, Cultural Anthropology 20(3): 328-361.
Dunant, Henri. 1947. A Memory of Solferino. London: Cassell. (Also available form the ICRC website: http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/publication/p0361.htm )
Additional Readings Stockton, Nick 1998. “In Defence of Humanitarianism”, Disasters 22(4): 352–360.
Barnett, Michael. 2003. “What is the Future of Humanitarianism?”, Global Governance 9 (3): 401-17.
Fassin, Didier. 2007. “Humanitarianism as a Politics of Life”, Public Culture 19(3): 499- 520.
Feldman, Ilana, 2007. "The Quaker Way: Ethical labor and humanitarian relief," American Ethnologist 34(4): 689-705.
Finkelkraut, Alain. 2001. In the Name of Humanity: Reflection on the Twentieth Century. London; Pimlico. (Humanitarian Amends).
Pandolfi, Mariella. 2003. “Contract of Mutual Indifference: Governance and the Humanitarian Apparatus in Contemporary Al ania and Kosovo”, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 10: 269-81.
Slim, Hugo. 2003. “Why Protect Civilians? Innocence, Immunity and Enmity in War. International Affairs
79(3): 481-501.
Terry, Fiona. 2002. Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action. Ithaca: Cornell University. (Humanitarian Action in a Second Best World).
It is often claimed that human rights are the last great utopian narrative of the early twentieth century, representing a hope for a better world based on equality and respect for human dignity. What happens when people articulate their claims in terms of human rights? What moral and political implications does it have for the types of claim that can made and the solutions found for inequality and injustice? This week explores the potential and limitations of human rights as a form of political activism.
Key Readings
* Hastrup, Kirsten. 2003. “Violence, Suffering and Human Rights: Anthropological Reflections”, Anthropological Theory 3(3): 309-323.
Brown, Wendy. 2004. ““The Most We Can Hope For…”: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism”, South Atlantic Quarterly 103 (2/3): 451-463.
Further Readings
Morreira, Shannon. 2015. Rights After Wrongs. Local Knowledge and Human Rights in Zimbabwe. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Read Chapter 4 “Personhood and Rights Amongst Migrants” pp.113-138. (Available as e-book through DiscoverED).
Kennedy, David. 2002. “The International Human Rights Movement?: Part of the Pro lem?” Harvard Human Rights Law Review 15: 101-125.
Ignatieff, Michael. 2001. Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press. Read Section “Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry”, pp. 3- 107 (Available from Learn).
Allen, L. 2009. “Martyr bodies in the media: Human rights, aesthetics, and the politics of immediation in the Palestinian intifada”, American Ethnologist 36(1): 161–180.
Hopgood, Stephen. 2009. “Moral Authority, Modernity and the Politics of the Sacred”, European Journal of International Relations 15(2): 229-255.
TUTORIAL PREPARATION
In your groups, pick a current human rights debate (online, in newspapers) and reflect on the language in which the issue at hand is being discussed. How do the terms of the debate steer the discussion in a particular direction?
FEBRUARY 19
TH - NO LECTURE: FESTIVAL OF FLEXIBLE LEARNING WEEK
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WEEK 6: TRAUMA (February 26th) (LSB)
The idea that people who have been exposed to violence are traumatized in ways that leave long- term psychological and psychical traces has become ubiquitous in the early twenty-first century. The result has been a proliferation of clinical and legal intervention designed to alleviate the suffering of traumatized individuals and communities. But how has the idea that survivors of violence are uniquely marked in this way gained moral and political legitimacy, and what implications does this have for the ways in which we think about violence and its after effects?
Key Readings
* Showalter, Elaine. 1997. Hystories. New York: Columbia University Press. Read Chapter 1: The Hysterical Hot Zone pp.3-13. and Chapter 9: Gulf War Syndrome pp.133-143.
Fassin, Didier and Richard Rechtman. 2009. Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Read Chapter 1: “A Dual Genealogy” pp.25-39.
Further Readings
Summerfield, Derek. 1999. “A Critique of Seven Assumptions Behind Psychologic Trauma Programmes in War Affected Areas”, Social Science and Medicine 48: 1449 1462.
Basoglu, Metin. 2006. “Reha ilitation of Traumatised Refugees and Survivors of Torture”, British Medical Journal 333: 1230-1231. See also the response: Seltzer, Abigail, Alex Sklan and Nimisha
Patel. 2006. “Treating Torture Survivors - There is no ‘Quick Fix’ - Response to Metin Basoglu. 2006. Rehabilitation of Traumatised Refugees and Survivors of Torture” British Medical Journal 333: 1230- 1231 (Available from Learn).
Kroll, Jerome. 2003. “Posttraumatic Symptoms and the Complexity of Responses to Trauma”, Journal of the American Medical Association 290: 667-670.
James, Erica. 2004. “The Political Economy of ‘Trauma’ in Haiti in the Democratic Era of Insecurity.” Cultural, Medicine and Psychiatry 28(2): 127-149.
Breslau, Joshua. 2004. “Cultures of Trauma: Anthropological Views of Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder in International Health”, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 28(2): 113-126.
Herman, Judith Lewis. 1992. “Complex PTSD: A Syndrome in Survivors of Prolonged and Repeated Trauma”, Journal of Traumatic Stress 5(3): 377-391.
Pupavac, Vanessa. 2008. “Refugee Advocacy, Traumatic Representations and Political Disenchantment”, Government and Opposition, 43(2): 270–292.
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WEEK 7: THE PROFESSIONALISATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: ASSESSING EXPERT KNOWLEDGE
(Mar 5th) (Guest Lecture by Dr. Astrid Jamar)
In the next four lectures, we turn our attention to the organizational forms in which humanitarianis, takes shape and has effects. The professionalisation of human rights is evident in the creation of norms, networks and standardised best practices. This lecture aims to retrace the construction and development of human rights efforts as increasingly professionalised practices, as well as its causes and effects. The disenchantment towards human rights and the consequent critique of its empowering capacities brought attention to the professionalisation and technocratisaton of human rights. On the one hand, the new global elite of professionals seek impact towards social justice in contexts infused with particular struggles, hopes and despair; but also engages in the social fabrication of the expert knowledge that hold human rights together as a legitimate field of practice. The lecture will specifically question: How does the professionalisation of the human rights shape activist efforts? Why is the role of human rights professionals crucial to understanding how claims for social justice are formulated?
Key Readings: * Madlingozi, Tshepo. 2010. “On Transitional Justice Entrepreneurs and the Production of Victims.”
Journal of Human Rights Practice 2 (2).
Niezen, Ronald, and Maria Sapignoli. 2017. Palaces of Hope: The Anthropology of Global Organizations. Cambridge University Press. Read: Chapter 7 “Expertise and Quantification in Global Institutions” pp.152-171 by Sally Engle Merry.
Additional Reading:
Dezalay, Yves, and Bryant Garth. 2013. Lawyers and the Construction of Transnational Justice.
Routledge.
Alston, P. and Knuckey, S. eds., 2016. The transformation of human rights fact-finding. Oxford
University Press. Read Chapter 3: International Fact Finding Praxis: A TWAIL Perspective by Obiora
Okafar.
Englund Harri, Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor, University of California Press,
2006. Read Chapter 8: Redeeming Freedom.
Kothari, Uma. 2005a. “Authority and Expertise: The Professionalisation of International Development
and the Ordering of Dissent.” Antipode 37 (3).
O'Flaherty Michael, and Ulrich George. 2010. “The Professionalization of Human Rights Field
Work.” Journal of Human Rights Practice, Volume 2, Issue 1, 1.
Rodgers, Kathleen. 2010. “‘Anger Is Why We’re All Here’: Mo ilizing and Managing Emotions in a
Professional Activist Organization.” Social Movement Studies 9 (3).
Ron, James, Howard Ramos, and Kathleen Rodgers. 2005. “Transnational Information Politics: NGO
Human Rights Reporting, 1986–2000.” International Studies Quarterly 49 (3).
Roth, Silke. 2012. “Professionalisation Trends and Inequality: Experiences and Practices in Aid
Relationships.” Third World Quarterly 33 (8).
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WEEK 8: SEARCHING FOR THE NON-GOVERNMENTAL
(Mar 12th
) (Guest lecture by Ann-Christin Wagner).
In week 8, we explore ways in which humanitarian initiatives attempt to escape the constraints of a world of nation-states, through the medium of the non-governmental organization (NGO). The exponential growth of NGOs since the 1990s needs to e situated within a wider transition towards “the neoliberal restructuring of capitalism” (Hirsch 2003: 10). While neoli eralism refers to a macro-economic doctrine centred on private enterprise, free markets and a retraction of the welfare state, it also entails blurring the very boundaries between the private and the public sector, including the outsourcing of public services to NGOs. Hence, while NGOs tend to represent themselves as a “morally superior” civil society alternative to neoliberal states, they often remain deeply embedded in market-based logics. Drawing on a case study of young Syrian refugees in northern Jordan, we show that NGO-led educational trainings aim to turn refugees into “microentrepreneurs”, “good citizens” and “superwomen”, in line with wider neoliberal agendas. Overlooking Syrians’ limited access to the la our market and higher education in exile, they contribute to the creation of timepass instead. What is more, NGO programs often position themselves in an avowedly non-political way. In this week’s case study, NGOs’ “anti-politics” do not address the root causes of Syrians’ displacement and precarity in exile, failing to restore the displaced as political subjects and reinforcing existing inequalities between host and refugee communities.
Key Readings * Hirsch, Joachim. 2003. “The State’s New Clothes. NGOs and the Internationalization of States.” Politica y cultura, vol. 20, pp. 7-25.
Ferguson, James. 1994. “The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development” and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho.” The Ecologist, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 176-181.
Further Readings
Olivius, Elisa eth. 2014. “Displacing Equality? Women’s Participation and Humanitarian Aid Effectiveness in Refugee Camps.” Refugee Survey Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 93-117.
Wagner, Ann-Christin. 2017. ‘Frantic Waiting. NGO Anti-Politics and “Timepass” for Young Syrian Refugees in Jordan.’ Middle East – Topics and Arguments (META) 9: 107-121. http://meta- journal.net/article/view/7004/7525
Bornstein, Erica and Redfield, Peter. 2011. Forces of Compassion: Humanitarianism between Ethics and Politics. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press. Read Chapter 3 “The Impossi le Pro lem of Neutrality’ pp. 53-70.
Ferguson, James. 2010. “The Uses of Neoli eralism.” Antipode, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 166-184.
Michel, Feher; Gaelle, Krikorian; Yates, McKee. 2007. Nongovernmental Politics. New York: Zone Books. Read Feher, M. “The Governed in Politics” pp.12-27 and Fassin, D. “Humanitarianism: A Nongovernmental Government’ pp.129-160.
TUTORIAL PREPARATION:
International NGOs are not the only non-state actors providing humanitarian aid. Check out “Refugee Hosts”, the we site of a multiple-year research project on role of local communities and organizations in assisting refugees: https://refugeehosts.org/. Look at the Creative Archive tab. Choose one of the blog articles, preferably a piece that uses poetry and imagery. In your groups, come to tutorial prepared to present the blog article you have chosen.
For many of us, our most vivid encounters with humanitarianism come in the context of moments of declared “emergency”: wars, epidemics, famines, natural disasters. This week we will examine one such emergency, the Asian tsunami of December 2004, in order to examine how the space of the non-governmental is shaped and directed by the logic of market forces. The scale of public response to the tsunami forced NGOs to engage in the affected areas, often against their better judgement.
Key Readings
* Stirrat, R.L. 2006. “Competitive Humanitarianism: Relief and the Tsunami in Sri Lanka.” Anthropology Today, 22(5): 11-16.
Cooley, Alexander and Ron, James. 2002. “The NGO Scramble: Organisational Insecurity and the Political Economy of Transnational Action”. International Security, 27 (1): 5-39.
Further Readings
Hastrup, Frida. 2011. “Weathering the World: recovery in the wake of the Tsunami in a Tamil fishing village”. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books. Read Chapter 5 “Responsi ility: Agents and Agencies” pp. 78-97 (Available from Learn).
Hollenbach, Pia. 2013. “Dynamics of Multi-Local Gifts: Practices of Humanitarian Giving in Post-Tsunami Sri Lanka.” Development in Practice. 23(3): 319-331.
Simpson, Edward. 2013. The Political Biography of an Earthquake: aftermath and amnesia in Gujarat, India. London: C.Hurst. Read Section 1 “Chai wallahs and the carpet agger” pp.15-49 (especially
pp.29-49) (Available from Learn).
Schuller, Mark. 2012. Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers. [e-book] Read Chapter 5 “Tectonic Shifts and the Political Tsunami” pp.136-170.
Korf, Benedikt, et al. 2010. “The Gift of Disaster: The Commodification of Good Intentions in Post-Tsunami Sri Lanka.” Disasters, 34(S1): S60-S77.
Mosse, David. 1995. “Authority, Gender and Knowledge: Theoretical Reflections on Participatory Rural Appraisal”, Economic and Political Weekly, 30 (11): pp. 569-578.
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WEEK 10: TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE: ALTERNATIVE ARTICULATIONS (March 26th) (LSB)
How should we deal with the abuses and atrocities of past regimes? Should we seek to hold people to account or forgive in the name of reconciliation? In what ways do we do this? In the last twenty years a specific set of institutions have ecome associated with what has ecome known as ‘transitional justice’, with truth and reconciliation commissions and criminal tribunals at the fore. Many of these insist on particular ways of articulating human rights abuse and trauma. In this lecture we examine alternative articulations of abuse that do not fit within the narrow confines of TRC commissions and criminal tribunals. We examine the case of South Africa in order to explore the political, and social implications of TJ processes, as well as what is left out of these.
Key Readings * Krog, Antjie., Mpolweni-Zantsi, Nosisi Lynette. 2009. There was this goat: investigating the Truth Commission testimony of Notrose Nobomvu Konile. Scottsville, South Africa: University of Kwazulu- Natal Press.
Posel, De orah. 2008. “History as Confession: The Case of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission”, Public Culture 20(1): 119-141.
Further Readings
Garnsey, Eliza. 2016. “Rewinding and Unwinding: Art and Justice in Times of Political Transition”, International Journal of Transitional Justice 0:1-21.
Arthur, Paige. 2009. “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice”, Human Rights Quarterly 31(2): 321-367.
Minow, Martha. 2002. Breaking the Cycles of Hatred: Memory, Law and Repair. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Read: Chapter 1 “Breaking the Cycles of Hatred” pp. 14-76.
Roht-Arriaza, Naomi, and Javier Mariezcurrena (eds.) 2006. Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Read: Chapter 1 “The New Landscape of Transitional Justice”. pp. 1-16.
Ross, Fiona. 2003. “On Having Voice and Being Heard: Some After Effects of Testifying to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission”, Anthropological Theory 3(3): 325-342.
Sarkin, Jeremy. 2001. “The Tensions etween Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Politics, Human Rights, Due Process and the Role of the Gacaca Courts in Dealing with Genocide”, Journal of African Law 45(2): 143-172.
Wilson, Richard. 2000. “Reconciliation and Revenge in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Rethinking Legal Pluralism and Human Rights”, Current Anthropology 41(1) 75-98.
