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We are delighted to congratulate Sinja Graf of the London School of Economics and Political Science on winning our second-ever Political Theory Prize for her book The Humanity of Universal Crime: Inclusion, Inequality, and Intervention in International Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 2021).
The Political Theory Prize is awarded to an outstanding first book on political theory written in English and is co-sponsored by Contemporary Political Theory (CPT). It was conceived in collaboration with the ECPR Standing Groups on Kantian Political Thought, Political Theory and International Political Theory, along with the convenors of the ECPR General Conference Section on Methodology of Political Theory.
We have created this short video to celebrate Sinja’s achievement and to share her work with our community.
Congratulations, Sinja!
The international crime of 'crimes against humanity' has become integral to contemporary political and legal discourse. However, the conceptual core of the term—an act against all of mankind—has a longer and deeper history in international political thought. In an original excavation of this history, The Humanity of Universal Crime examines theoretical mobilisations of the idea of universal crime in colonial and post-colonial contexts.
Sinja Graf demonstrates the overlooked centrality of humanity and criminality to political liberalism's historical engagement with world politics, thereby breaking with the exhaustively studied status of individual rights in liberal thought. Graf argues that invocations of universal crime project humanity as a normatively integrated, yet minimally inclusive and hierarchically structured subject. Such visions of humanity have in turn underwritten justifications of foreign rule and outsider intervention based on claims to an injury universally suffered by all mankind.
Overall the book offers a novel view of how claims to act in the name of humanity are deeply steeped in practices that reproduce structures of inequality at a global level, particularly across political empires.
Sinja Graf’s research combines international political theory, international law and imperial studies to analyse mobilisations of normative universals for arguments about order, justice and the (il-)legitimacy of violence in international politics in (post-)colonial contexts. Reviews of The Humanity of Universal Crime are published or forthcoming in eight prominent publications including Contemporary Political Theory and the Journal of Genocide Research.
Sinja’s broader work on the political productivity of norms is published in Political Theory, International Relations and Law Culture and the Humanities. Her most recent article, published in the American Journal of Political Science, offers a first-time reading of Carl Schmitt’s engagement with Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, which is based on original archival research in the Carl Schmitt Nachlass.
Her current work examines questions about the relationship between justice, law and historical time while focusing on the contested role of international law in debates about reparations for colonial genocides. Before joining the London School of Economics and Political Science, Sinja taught at the National University of Singapore. She earned her doctorate from the Department of Government at Cornell University.
She tweets @sinja_graf
'I am delighted that The Humanity of Universal Crime has received recognition in the ECPR community. The selection committee and those who have read, reviewed and endorsed my book have my warmest thanks for their time and their work. I look forward to continuing the conversations, within and beyond ECPR.'
'This is a fascinating book on a topic of primary political and legal interest – i.e., the formulation of the concept of universal crime and/or crimes against humanity […] The author draws an important anti-Schmittian distinction between criminals against humanity and 'enemies' of humankind. It presents a sophisticated rejection of merely 'instrumentalist' accounts of international intervention.
The main argument is particularly captivating and intriguing – the author argues that there is a 'political productivity of crime' in the sense that the humanity of some offenders is prominently (and sometimes exclusively) secured through their subjection to criminal law (and criminal trials in particular). […]
The jury found this work on the political productivity of the concept of crimes against humanity really promising, and a distinctive contribution to the recent discussion and development in political theory.'
Our jury wish also recognise Avia Pasternak's Responsible Citizens, Irresponsible States: Should Citizens Pay for Their State´s Wrongdoings (Oxford University Press, 2021) with an honourable mention. They were impressed by the way this book elegantly builds on recent social and political philosophy scholarship on the responsibility of corporate agents and adds a new argument to this scholarship.
Congratulations, Avia!
Keywords: Political Theory