Building Symbolic Power Through Distance and Proximity: The Circulation of International Criminal Justice Professionals and Narratives

The paper explores the narratives and practices of international criminal justice professionals who work to end impunity and ensure justice for victims of mass atrocity. The paper tracks the international circulation of these ideas and how they are exported to local conflict zones where they format patterns of intervention, interaction and cooperation. At the same time, these narratives and practices try to extract symbolic resources from local sites, leveraging the ability to conceptually connect internationalized norms to the perceived needs of local stakeholders, including victims and victim organizations. Building symbolic power by flipping local investments into international prestige, the justice narratives of international criminal law professionals often comes into conflict with those of local stakeholders working on the basis of different ideas and practices. These competing narratives shape how international criminal justice plays out on the ground close to conflict zones as well as what types of knowledge and power can be built by professionals working in this field.