New Books in Human Rights

In recent years, calls for reparations and restorative justice, alongside the rise of populist grievance politics, have demonstrated the stubborn resilience of traumatic memory. From the transnational Black Lives Matter movement's calls for reckoning with the legacy of slavery and racial oppression, to continued efforts to secure recognition of the Armenian genocide or Imperial Japan's human rights abuses, international politics is replete with examples of past violence reasserting itself in the present. But how should scholars understand trauma's long-term impacts? Why do some traumas lie dormant for generations, only to surface anew in pivotal moments? And how does trauma scale from individuals to larger political groupings like nations and states, shaping political identities, grievances, and policymaking?In From the Ashes of History: Collective Trauma and the Making of International Politics (Oxford University Press, 2022), Dr. Adam B. Lerner looks at collective trauma as a foundational force in international politics—a "shock" to political cultures that can constitute new actors and shape decision-making over the long-term. As Dr. Lerner shows, uncovering collective trauma's role in international politics is vital for two key reasons. First, it can help explain longstanding tensions between groups—an especially relevant topic as scholars examine the transnational resurgence of nationalism and populism. Second, it pushes the discipline of International Relations to more completely account for mass violence's true long-term costs, particularly as they become embedded in longstanding structural inequalities and injustices.While IR scholarship has largely dismissed non-systematic, latent phenomena like trauma, Dr. Lerner argues that collective trauma can help draw the lines between international political groups and frame the logics of international political action. Drawing on three historical cases that uncover the impact of collective trauma in Indian, Israeli, and American foreign policymaking, From the Ashes of History demonstrates the broad utility of collective trauma as a theoretical lens for investigating how mass violence's legacy can resurge and dissipate over time.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Life Worth Living: Disability, Pain, and Morality (U Minnesota Press, 2022) investigates the exclusion of and discrimination against disabled people across the history of Western moral philosophy. Building on decades of activism and scholarship, Joel Michael Reynolds shows how longstanding views of disability are misguided and unjust, and he lays out a vision of what an anti-ableist moral future requires.More than 2,000 years ago, Aristotle said: "let there be a law that no deformed child shall live." This idea is alive and well today. During the past century, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. argued that the United States can forcibly sterilize intellectually disabled women and philosopher Peter Singer argued for the right of parents to euthanize certain cognitively disabled infants. The Life Worth Living explores how and why such arguments persist by investigating the exclusion of and discrimination against disabled people across the history of Western moral philosophy.Joel Michael Reynolds argues that this history demonstrates a fundamental mischaracterization of the meaning of disability, thanks to the conflation of lived experiences of disability with those of pain and suffering. Building on decades of activism and scholarship in the field, Reynolds shows how longstanding views of disability are misguided and unjust, and he lays out a vision of what an anti-ableist moral future requires.The Life Worth Living is the first sustained examination of disability through the lens of the history of moral philosophy and phenomenology, and it demonstrates how lived experiences of disability demand a far richer account of human flourishing, embodiment, community, and politics in philosophical inquiry and beyond.Joel Michael Reynolds is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Disability Studies at Georgetown University, Senior Research Scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Senior Bioethics Advisor to The Hastings Center, Faculty Scholar of The Greenwall Foundation, and core faculty in Georgetown’s Disability Studies Program. He is the founder of The Journal of Philosophy of Disability and co-founder of Oxford Studies in Disability, Ethics, and Society from Oxford University Press.Dr. Reynolds’ work explores the relationship between bodies, values, and society. He is especially concerned with the meaning of disability, the issue of ableism, and how philosophical inquiry into each might improve the lives of people with disabilities and the justness of institutions ranging from medicine to politics. These concerns lead to research across a range of traditions and specialties, including philosophy of disability, applied ethics (especially biomedical ethics, public health ethics, tech/data ethics, and ELSI research in genomics), 20th c. European and American philosophy (with an emphasis on phenomenology and pragmatism as practiced in connection with the history of philosophy), and social epistemology (particularly issues of epistemic injustice as linked to social ontology).Autumn Wilke works in higher education as an ADA coordinator and diversity officer and is also an author and doctoral candidate with research/topics related to disability and higher education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Though human rights monitors talk of fact-finding missions and reports, human rights facts are, like all social phenomena, not in fact found but made — through processes by which we come to know and talk about them. But how exactly does that happen? And how, by attending to these processes, might we arrive at a more robust understanding of human rights facts? These are the kinds of questions animating Ken MacLean’s new book, Crimes in Archival Form: Human Rights, Fact Production and Myanmar (University of California Press, 2022). In this episode Ken joins New Books in Southeast Asian Studies to explore some of the answers he arrived at after years of research on the complexities of human rights fact production about crimes against humanity in eastern Myanmar, or Burma, and to discuss how it is possible to cast a critical eye over how human rights facts are made and not only remain engaged in causes for human rights, but to make them even stronger at a time that human rights facts are sorely tested, and the truth about facts has never been more contested.Like this interview? If so you might also be interested in: Lynette Chua, The Politics of Love in Myanmar: LGBT Mobilisation and Human Rights as a Way of Life Tyrell Haberkorn, In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand Ken MacLean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam Nick Cheesman is Associate Professor, Department of Political & Social Change, Australian National University and Senior Fellow, Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, University at Buffalo (Fall 2022). He hosts the New Books in Interpretive Political & Social Science series on the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With much existing research on migration focusing on the Global North—like Europe and the US—Pugh’s The Invisibility Bargain: Governance Networks and Migrant Human Security (Oxford UP, 2021) shifts the focus to the Global South, which hosts 86% of refugees. With particular attention to Ecuador and other parts of Latin America, The Invisibility Bargain approaches questions of governance, human security, and international politics with an eye towards how both state and non-state actors enforce an “invisibility bargain,” wherein migrants must stay politically and socially invisible in order to remain welcome. Drawing on over 170 interviews, 15 months of fieldwork, and discourse analysis of over 400 presidential speeches and 800 Ecuadorian news stories, The Invisibility Bargain will be of great interest to those in Latin American Studies, Migration Studies, Sociolegal Studies, and Political Science.Dr. Jeffrey Pugh is Associate Professor in the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, & Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is also the executive director of the Center for Mediation, Peace, and Resolution of Conflict (CEMPROC).Rine Vieth is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at McGill University, where they research the how UK asylum tribunals consider claims of belief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This comprehensive three-volume reference work collects and summarizes the wealth of information available in the field of transitional justice. Transitional justice is an emerging domain of inquiry that has gained importance with the regime changes in Latin America after the 1970s, the collapse of the European and Soviet communist regimes in 1989 and 1991, and the Arab revolutions of 2011, among others. The Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice (Cambridge UP, 2013), which offers 287 entries written by 166 scholars and practitioners drawn from diverse jurisdictions, includes detailed country studies; entries on transitional justice institutions and organizations; descriptions of transitional justice methods, processes and practices; examinations of key debates and controversies; and a glossary of relevant terms and concepts. This podcast will review both the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice and preview the second edition, forthcoming in March 2023. We explore new country entries, an expanded scope of formal and informal transitional justice and accountability mechanisms, and a broader range of civil society groups, informal organizations, national and international actors engaged in global transitional justice processes. Dr. Stan provides some comments on the evolution of the field of transitional justice over the past 25 years, hinting at some of the legal and normative shifts in the future.  Cynthia M. Horne is a Professor of Political Science at Western Washington University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It has become both a normative expectation as well as a practical policy recommendation that context-specific transitional justice measures are needed to repair the state and society following a conflict or an authoritarian transition. The assumption that transitional justice programs benefit both a state and its society is so strongly held that international actors will step in to design and even implement measures when a government is unable or unwilling to do so. In her acclaimed book Building Trust and Democracy: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Countries, published with Oxford University Press in 2017, Prof. Cynthia Horne examines these claims with respect to transitional justice measures in post-communist states, exploring whether, how, and under what conditions transitional justice supported political and social trust-building, societal reconciliation, and democratization in twelve former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union over the period from 1989 to 2012. Recognized for her exceptional scholarship, Prof. Horne discusses in this interview not only the link between trust and transitional justice, but also her views on a field that has gained in relevance internationally during the past several decades.Lavinia Stan is a professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode Ari Barbalat talked to Ali Jameel, a researcher for Mwatana for Human Rights, about "Returned to Zero: The Case for Reparations to Civilians in Yemen." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Looking across time and the globe, a critical history of sexual violence--what causes it and how we overcome it. Disgrace: Global Reflections on Sexual Violence (Reaktion, 2022) is the first truly global history of sexual violence. The book explores how sexual violence varies widely across time and place, from nineteenth-century peasant women in Ireland who were abducted as a way of forcing marriage, to date-raped high-school students in twentieth-century America, and from girls and women violated by Russian soldiers in 1945 to Dalit women raped by men of higher castes today. It delves into the factors that facilitate violence--including institutions, ideologies, and practices--but also gives voice to survivors and activists, drawing inspiration from their struggles. Ultimately, Joanna Bourke intends to forge a transnational feminism that will promote a more harmonious, equal, and rape- and violence-free world.Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam Jones will be familiar to anyone interested in the field of genocide studies. He's published one of the leading textbooks in the field. He's been influential in drawing attention to the intersection of gender and mass violence. And he's particpated in the emergence of attention to genocides of indigenous peoples over the past decade.Sites of Genocide (Routledge, 2022) is a compilation of Jones' work over the past ten years. The book is comprised of essays, interviews and reflections. Each individual piece stands alone. But together the pieces reflect a decade-long discussion of mass violence. A careful reading of the section on gender reveals, among other things, the gradual emergence of male victims of gender-based violence as an area of interest for Jones. Also prominent is a wrestling with an ever-deeper understanding of mass violence in Central Africa and how to write about this truthfully in a politically fraught environment. These are only two of several throughlines of the essays.The book is valuable for anyone interested in the subject. But graduate students in particular will benefit from witnessing an expert wrestle with ideas over time.  Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In research on 'mass killings' such as genocides and campaigns of state terror, the role of ideology is hotly debated. For some scholars, ideologies are crucial in providing the extremist goals and hatreds that motivate ideologically committed people to kill. But many other scholars are skeptical: contending that perpetrators of mass killing rarely seem ideologically committed, and that rational self-interest or powerful forms of social pressure are more important drivers of violence than ideology. In Ideology and Mass Killing: The Radicalized Security Politics of Genocides and Deadly Atrocities (Oxford University Press, 2022), Dr. Jonathan Leader Maynard challenges both these prevailing views, advancing an alternative 'neo-ideological' perspective which systematically retheorises the key ideological foundations of large-scale violence against civilians.Integrating cutting-edge research from multiple disciplines, including political science, political psychology, history and sociology, Ideology and Mass Killing demonstrates that ideological justifications vitally shape such violence in ways that go beyond deep ideological commitment. Most disturbingly of all, the key ideological foundations of mass killings are found to lie, not in extraordinary political goals or hatreds, but in radicalised versions of those conventional, widely accepted ideas that underpin the politics of security in ordinary societies across the world. This study then substantiates this account by a detailed examination of four contrasting cases of mass killing - Stalinist Repression in the Soviet Union between 1930 and 1938, the Allied Bombing Campaign against Germany and Japan in World War II from 1940 to 1945, mass atrocities in the Guatemalan Civil War between 1978 and 1983, and the Rwandan Genocide in 1994.This represents the first volume to offer a dedicated, comparative theory of ideology's role in mass killing, while also developing a powerful new account of how ideology affects violence and politics more generally.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices