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The Art of Justice: Roles, Performance and Audience in Human Rights and Transitional Justice

Conflict Resolution
Human Rights
Memory
Peace
Transitional justice
S53
Carles Fernández Torné
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
Sayra van den Berg
University of York
Julie Bernath
University of Basel

Endorsed by the ECPR Standing Group on Human Rights and Transitional Justice


Abstract

Recognition of the limitations within the formal application and study of human rights and transitional justice mechanisms has grown. Increasingly, conventional spaces and approaches to research and practice in these fields are questioned and criticized for failing to meet their inclusive, transformative and agentic ambitions. How can (and do) the fields of human rights and transitional justice respond to this crisis of fact? Innovation in response to this crisis has increasingly recognized the existence, contributions and potential of unconventional expressions of human rights and transitional justice. For example, within transitional justice a growing body of research looks to the arts as meaningful spaces for the pursuit of truth-telling, reconciliation and resistance. Demands to address the legacies of colonial violence within the field of transitional justice have also brought to the fore the issue of restitution of looted art and plundered cultural heritage. Within human rights, social media is gaining recognition as a significant space for both the advancement and abuse of human rights. Across both fields, criticisms against western hegemony in human rights and transitional justice norms as a largely empty performance of justice are calling for the centralization of indigenous knowledge systems and practices. Such conceptual and empirical expansions are simultaneously creating new epistemological opportunities, challenges and debates around how to do research within an evolving understanding of these fields. Unifying these strands of research is the need to expand the gaze of transitional justice and human rights, beyond its formal mechanisms, to recognize the existence, contributions and potential of its unconventional embodiments. This Section aims to place scholars at different stages of their career in conversation with each other, to encourage, inspire and challenge a new generation of political scientists. Section Chairs therefore encourage submissions from early career as well as established scholars. The Section aims to create an intellectual community that fosters inspiring conversations and exchanges throughout the General Conference and beyond (e.g. through joint publication projects after the conference, such as blog contributions or a Special Issue).
Code Title Details
PRA052 Artistic sites of memory View Panel Details
PRA170 Digital spaces in human rights & transitional justice View Panel Details
PRA192 Embodied performance and story-telling in transitional justice View Panel Details
PRA240 Human Rights in retreat? View Panel Details
PRA368 Performing justice and human rights from the bottom-up View Panel Details
PRA409 Post-transitional Justice: Challenges and Opportunities View Panel Details
PRA557 Youth, families and neighbors in human rights and transitional justice View Panel Details
VIR241 Human rights, justice processes and the performance of truth-seeking Towards a better understanding of networked truth regimes and their societal impact View Panel Details