Victimology in transitional justice: Victimhood, innocence and hierarchy

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 527-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kieran McEvoy ◽  
Kirsten McConnachie
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Transitional Societies ◽  
Victim Status ◽  
Victims Of Crime ◽  
Anglo American

Although addressing the needs of victims is increasingly proffered as the key rationale for transitional justice, serious critical discussion on the political and social construction of victimhood is only tentatively emerging in the field. Drawing from Anglo-American victimology, the first part of this paper suggests that victims of crime as a category are often perceived as the mirror opposite of perpetrators of crime. It suggests that such a perspective narrows the notion of victims’ rights or needs so they become intrinsically linked to the punishment of perpetrators; that victims and perpetrators are reified and distinct categories; and that ‘true’ victim status demands innocence. The second part of the paper takes these insights and applies them to the context of transitional justice. In particular, it questions the notion of ‘innocence’ as a prerequisite for victim recognition and explores the ways in which victims and perpetrators are not always easily identified as distinct categories in conflicted or transitional societies. The paper concludes that incorporating blame in the calibration of human suffering results in the morally corrosive language of a ‘hierarchy of victims’.

scholarly journals ‘Let Me Tell You’: Transitional Justice, Victimhood and Dealing with a Contested Past

2020 ◽  
pp. 096466392097407
Author(s):  
Cheryl Lawther
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Transitional Societies ◽  
The Creation

This article explores the intersection between the politics and construction of victimhood in transitional societies and the use of truth recovery as a platform for the creation of hierarchies of truth. It explores how, in a context of contested victimhood and an unresolved past, the ‘political currency’ of victimhood may lead to the domination and embellishment of certain voices and narratives and the concurrent silencing of others. As this article will then demonstrate, when applied to the debate on truth recovery, the capturing of victims’ voice and agency can manifest in a damaging ‘truth as trumps’ dynamic and recourse to ‘whataboutery’ in which one call for truth or the recovery of truth as significant to one side of the community is countered by that of a more ‘significant’ or more ‘important’ truth on the part of the other. The paper argues for the inculcation of a culture political generosity in transitional contexts as a way to begin to ameliorate these challenges.

The Political Economy of Debt

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Menz
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Models ◽  
The Political ◽  
Private Debt ◽  
Credit Access ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Scholarly Attention

The explosive rise in not just public, but also private debt has recently attracted more scholarly attention. This is a novel development and might expose politico-economic models of governance to instability from an angle previously underappreciated. The liberalization of credit access in the Anglo-American countries, and, somewhat later, beyond those, might be seen as liberating for some, but they also create the potential for entrapment in debt. The term ‘privatized Keynesianism’ has been proposed to suggest a systematic agenda behind the facilitated access to lending. In this chapter, the broader access to investment vehicles is also being scrutinized, although upon closer inspection any claims of mass ownership of shares turn out not to be tenable.

Jus Tempus in the Magna Carta: The Sovereignty of Time in Modern Politics and Citizenship

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (03) ◽  
pp. 463-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth F. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Political ◽  
Place Of Birth ◽  
Political Status ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Right ◽  
Constitutional Tradition

In the English constitutional tradition, subjecthood has been primarily derived from two circumstances: place of birth and time of birth. People not born in the right place and at the right time are not considered subjects. What political status they hold varies and depends largely on the political history of the territory in which they reside at the exact time of their birth. A genealogy of early modern British subjecthood reveals that law based on dates and temporal durations—what I will call collectivelyjus tempus—creates sovereign boundaries as powerful as territorial borders or bloodlines. This concept has myriad implications for how citizenship comes to be institutionalized in modern politics. In this article, I briefly outline one route through whichjus tempusbecame a constitutive principle within the Anglo-American tradition of citizenship and how this concept works with other principles of membership to create subtle gradations of semi-citizenship beyond the binary of subject and alien. I illustrate two main points aboutjus tempus: first, how specific dates create sovereign boundaries among people and second, how durational time takes on an abstract value in politics that allows certain kinds of attributes, actions, and relationships to be translated into rights-bearing political statuses. I conclude with some remarks about how, once established, the principle ofjus tempusis applied in a diverse array of political contexts.

History, Politics, and the Constitution: Ethnic Conflict and Constitutional Adjudication in Postcommunist Bulgaria

Slavic Review ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Venelin I. Ganev
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Constitutional Adjudication

Infamously, the 1991 Bulgarian Constitution contains a provision banning political parties “formed on an ethnic basis.” In the early 1990s, the neo-communist Bulgarian Socialist Party invoked this provision when it asked the country's Constitutional Court to declare unconstitutional the political party of the beleaguered Turkish minority. In this article, Venelin I. Ganev analyzes the conflicting arguments presented in the course of the constitutional trial that ensued and shows how the justices’ anxieties about the possible effects of politicized ethnicity were interwoven into broader debates about the scope of the constitutional normative shift that marked the end of the communist era, about the relevance of historical memory to constitutional reasoning, and about the nature of democratic politics in a multiethnic society. Ganev also argues that the constitutional interpretation articulated by the Court has become an essential component of Bulgaria's emerging political order. More broadly, he illuminates the complexity of some of the major issues that frame the study of ethnopolitics in postcommunist eastern Europe: the varied dimensions of the “politics of remembrance“; the ambiguities of transitional justice; the dilemmas inherent in the construction of a rights-centered legality; and the challenges involved in establishing a forward-looking, pluralist system of governance.

Legal Reform and Social Construction: Violence, Gender, and the Law

1994 ◽  
Vol 19 (04) ◽  
pp. 829-852 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Frohmann ◽  
Elizabeth Mertz
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
The Social

As scholars and activists have addressed the problem of violence against women in the past 25 years, their efforts have increasingly attuned us to the multiple dimensions of the issue. Early activists hoped to change the structure of power relations in our society, as well as the political ideology that tolerated violence against women, through legislation, education, direct action, and direct services. This activism resulted in a plethora of changes to the legal codes and protocols relating to rape and battering. Today, social scientists and legal scholars are evaluating the effects of these reforms, questioning anew the ability of law by itself to redress societal inequalities. As they uncover the limitations of legal reforms enacted in the past two decades, scholars are turning—or returning—to ask about the social and cultural contexts within which laws are formulated, enforced, and interpreted.

The Fall of New Netherland and Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Imperial Formation, 1654–1676

2014 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 666-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. H. Roper
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Netherland ◽  
Metropolitan Government ◽  
Anglo American

The English takeover of the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1664 illustrates the enduring centrality of colonial agendas in the political culture of the seventeenth-century English Empire but also provided an occasion by which the metropolitan government and its perspective ironically assumed greater weight in colonial-imperial relations.

scholarly journals A Pragma-Dialectical Approach to Political Discourse Analysis: A Case Study of the Former United State Trade Representative Ron Kirk’s Remarks on the Poultry Case

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Shi Wen
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Background Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
United State ◽  
Dialectical Approach ◽  
Political Discourse Analysis

<p align="LEFT">Under the research framework of Pragma-</p><p align="LEFT">Dialectics, this paper analyses and evaluates the</p><p align="LEFT">former United State trade representative Ron</p><p align="LEFT">Kirk’s remarks on the trade conflict of poultry.</p><p align="LEFT">Through this case study, I intend to develop a</p><p align="LEFT">pragma-dialectical approach to the political</p><p align="LEFT">discourse. Based on the argumentative</p><p align="LEFT">reconstruction, strategic maneuvering analysis</p><p align="LEFT">and critical evaluation of the remarks, this</p><p align="LEFT">paper finds that even if Ron Kirk’s remarks look</p><p align="LEFT">reasonable apparently, there are still some</p><p align="LEFT">fallacies hidden in them. In order to make the</p><p align="LEFT">US government benefit most from the trade</p><p align="LEFT">conflict, after considering comprehensively of</p><p align="LEFT">the potential topics, audience demands, and</p><p align="LEFT">presentational devices, Ron Kirk maneuvers</p><p align="LEFT">strategically by choosing beneficial starting</p><p>points and arranging argumentative schemes</p><p align="LEFT">technically. By doing so, he can transmit Anti-</p><p align="LEFT">China ideology to the international society</p><p align="LEFT">imperceptibly. In addition, by taking into</p><p align="LEFT">consideration the background information of</p><p align="LEFT">the poultry case and the Ten Commandments of</p><p align="LEFT">a critical discussion, this paper reveals that, the</p><p align="LEFT">accepted starting points and the argument</p><p align="LEFT">schemes are abused in Ron Kirk’s remarks.</p><p align="LEFT">Through the case study, this paper tries to study</p><p align="LEFT">political discourse from Pragma-Dialectical</p><p align="LEFT">approach and provide feasible analytical</p><p align="LEFT">methods and reasonable evaluative standards</p><p align="LEFT">for the political discourse analysis, so that a</p><p align="LEFT">new perspective will be offered for researches</p><p>on political discourse.</p>

scholarly journals Tunisia’s Re-Configurations and Transitional Justice in Process: How Planned Processes of Social and Political Change Interplay with Unplanned Political Dynamics

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-49
Author(s):  
Mariam Salehi
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Feedback Loops ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Shifts ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Justice Process

Abstract This chapter seeks to explain the developments of the Tunisian transitional justice process. Drawing on Norbert Elias’s ideas about social processes, it argues that dynamics of transitional justice processes can neither be understood solely in light of international norms and the “justice industry” that both shape institutionalized transitional justice projects, nor simply by examining context and the political preferences of domestic actors. Rather, these shifts are shaped by the interplay of planned processes with unplanned political and social dynamics; with a political context in flux, power shifts, and sometimes competing planned efforts in other realms. Empirically grounded in “process-concurrent” field research in post- “Arab Spring” Tunisia, the contribution shows that a technocratic/institutionalized transitional justice project can develop dynamics that are somewhat, but not entirely, independent of power shifts. However, the above interplays may lead to frictional encounters that trigger feedback loops, new processes, and new structures.

scholarly journals Critique. Division. An Archaeology of Separation and a Salvaging Etymology

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 123-151
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Trzeciak ◽  
Jakob Ziguras
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Aesthetic Autonomy ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
Ultimate Source ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Widespread Interest

The goal of this essay is twofold: firstly, it is a description a post-critical tendency within the contemporary, Anglo-American humanities; secondly, it presents propositions which broaden the boundaries current in the post-critical current, which lead to the replacement of critical sci-entificity with an affirmation of everyday readerly affects. The claims regarding the rejection of a criticism based on suspicion, formulated by, among others, Rita Felski, accentuate the elite character of reading, the goal of which is the unveiling of the economico- political entan-glement of the text as a product of historical reality. The distrust towards the surface of the text and the illusion of aesthetic autonomy, central for cultural studies, raised the critical atti-tude to the rank of an activity that is revelatory and privileged. The opponents of an unmask-ing criticism underline its limitations—unmasking reveals the ultimate source of every cultural production, the logic of capitalism, the total character of which leaves no chance for change. In defense of change, and in the hope of restoring to literature a widespread interest, there appear tendencies which bring back the individual experience of reading, the basis of which is to be aesthetic pleasure, freed from the historical context and its determinants. In the article, examples of such tendencies will be pointed out, as also will be their consequences caused by the elevation and universalisation of non-professional reading. The rejection of the political task of criticism leads to the questioning of its anti-systemic potential; in turn, the apotheosis of suspicion paralyses the postulative dimension of criticism. For this reason, in the last part of the essay, I propose going beyond oppositional con ceptualisations in the direction of a criti-cism that is situated and material, and whose model, in my rendering, is subordi nated knowledge.

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