ECPR General Conference, Bordeaux, September 4-7 2013
Political Sociology Section
Panel 2: Human Rights Violations and Transitional Justice: A Critical Analysis of the Evolution of a Field
Chaired by Olga Martin-Ortega, University of Greenwich
This panel seeks to improve our understanding of how the different interpretations to account for mass atrocities and human rights abuses have shaped and still impact the relations among different actors who are part of this field. Interestingly, however, these actors also interact in other fields, such as law, human rights, and government. Put differently, the transitional justice field consists of many actors including human rights activists, non-profit actors, jurists, academics, various experts and civil servants who have originated from these other fields. This phenomenon raises a challenging set of issues and the panel thus welcomes contributions that address in particular some of the following issues: How has this field emerged especially from a socio-historical perspective? Who constitute its main actors and who are the leading respectively most powerful actors? What shape has it taken and why? Are its boundaries flexible? What overlap exists with other related fields?
This panel invites ethnographic case studies or comparative examinations of transitional justice mechanisms in order to ground the broader theoretical discussion of the field we intend to engender here.
Papers can be submitted here
Deadline February 1st