Beyond Transitional Justice

Transformative Justice and the State of the Field (or non-field)

Matthew Evans

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000564785
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: International Law
• Index: Law

Beyond Transitional Justice reflects upon the state of the field (or non-field) of transitional justice in the current conjuncture, as well as identifying new possibilities and challenges in the fields with which transitional justice overlaps (such as human rights, peacebuilding, and development).

Chapters intervene at the cutting edge of contemporary transitional justice research, addressing key theoretical and empirical questions and covering critical, international, interdisciplinary, theoretical, and practice-oriented content. In particular, the notion of transformative justice is discussed in light of the emerging scholarship defining and applying this concept as either an approach within or an alternative to transitional justice. The book considers the extent to which transformative justice as a concept adds value to scholarship on transitional justice and related areas and asks what the future might hold for this area as a field – or non-field.

A timely intervention, Beyond Transitional Justice is ideal reading for scholars and students in the fields of human rights, peace and conflict studies, international law, critical legal theory, development studies, criminology, and victimology.

1 In, against, and beyond transitional justiceThemes and dilemmas for the field (or non-field)

Matthew Evans

DOI: 10.4324/9781003169451-2

Introduction

In 2009, Christine Bell highlighted developments and dilemmas relating to the constitution of transitional justice as an interdisciplinary field – or non-field – of scholarship in an influential article in the International Journal of Transitional Justice (Bell 2009). In the more than a decade since then, developments have continued apace, existing dilemmas have deepened, and new ones have emerged (see, for example, Buckley-Zistel et al. 2014; Corradetti, Eiskovits and Rotondi 2016; McAuliffe 2017; Gready and Robins 2019; Evans 2019). This chapter introduces the volume and the key themes with which it is concerned. It draws attention to the ways in which transitional justice has been conceived and practised as a field – and non-field – as well as its overlaps and interactions with other areas. The book reflects upon the state of the field (or non-field) of transitional justice. The chapters explore questions around the present state of transitional justice as well as identifying new possibilities and challenges in the fields with which transitional justice overlaps, such as human rights, peacebuilding, and development.

Intervening at the cutting edge of contemporary transitional justice research, the chapters which follow address key theoretical and empirical questions. Key themes of the volume are the current developments and trends in transitional justice research and the interface between transitional justice and other concepts. Indeed, as explored in a variety of ways in the chapters that follow, defining what transitional justice is – and what it is not – continues to be just as much of a key issue (perhaps even more so) for scholarship (and by extension, practice) as it was when Christine Bell (2009) first wrote what she now terms her ‘battlefield’ piece (see Chapter 9). Whether transitional justice ought to be defined by the mainstream toolkit of (predominantly legal and quasi-legal) mechanisms, such as truth commissions, trials, reparations, and institutional reforms, or by wider notions of societal repair, and whether its focus ought to be narrowly on responding to periods of conflict or authoritarian rule, or more widely on a range of historical and contemporary societal injustices – including those affecting ostensibly peaceful and democratic societies – remain live issues which this volume explores (more broadly, see, for example, Gready and Robins 2019; Lykes and van der Merwe 2017; Waldorf 2021). Likewise, the degree to which transitional justice is, or ought to be, connected to and overlapping with – or conversely, distinguished from – other areas of practice (and scholarship) is a question which continues to motivate much debate in the field (or, indeed, non-field) and which the chapters in this collection engage with (see further, for example, Miller 2020; Waldorf 2021).

Much recent scholarship is concerned with debates over whether and how transitional justice ought to be expanded (or constrained), and the extent to which alternative concepts ought to be deployed in addition to, or instead of, ‘transitional justice’ in contending with the past (and perhaps, the present) in societies affected by conflict, authoritarian rule, genocide, colonialism, and, indeed, other injustices (Lykes and van der Merwe 2017; Waldorf 2021; Bell 2016; Gready and Robins 2019). A related issue is the increasing recognition that transitional justice and related areas of scholarship and practice are implicated in wider dynamics of global knowledge production (see, for example, van der Merwe and Lykes 2020; Zimbalist 2020). As the Editors in Chief of the International Journal of Transitional Justice put it:

The powers that shape transitional justice policy are still largely seated in the global institutions controlled mainly by the West … . New scholars being trained in the field and consuming this Journal are mainly from Europe and North America, and many South-based scholars are educated in these countries.

(van der Merwe and Lykes 2020, 419)

Whilst, ‘[t]he transitional justice field is … deeply self-critical and has aligned itself with the voices from the margins and from below’ (van der Merwe and Lykes 2020, 419), it remains that ‘[e]fforts to reform this system’ of global knowledge production ‘from within have been exceedingly challenging and may seem doomed to failure’ (van der Merwe and Lykes 2020, 419). These, as yet unsettled (and at times, for some at least, unsettling), debates motivate, in part, this book, and the volume builds upon and responds to the existing literature in this area. As Zinaida Miller (2020, 357) notes, transitional justice ‘developed a robust industry out of scattered histories of makeshift bargains, trials, and truths and then made habitual a combination of certainty (about the need for justice) and uncertainty (about whether justice could be achieved, particularly through these practices)’. Questions are invited as to how transitional justice ought to be understood in the current conjuncture, what its future might hold, and how these relate to other – related and/or opposing – concepts (and fields, and disciplines). The chapters in this book begin to put forward potential answers to these questions.¹

1 The extent to which this volume is able to address the problems presented by the fact that ‘the field is dilemma-centric and largely white’ (McEvoy 2018, 189), and Global North-dominated (van der Merwe and Lykes 2020) is (perhaps unsurprisingly) limited. Nevertheless, it is not quite true (as a reviewer suggested) that all the contributors to this volume are based in the UK, Canada and the US – and those that are currently based in these countries do not all originate from them. Furthermore, some chapters in the book focus in part on transitional (and transformative) justice in Global North contexts, and several of the chapters discuss the national contexts of authors’ home countries (by birth and/or citizenship), as well as questions of whether and how transitional and transformative justice might contribute to decolonisation, or might themselves be decolonised. Nevertheless, without pronouncing definitively upon whether all the authors identify or would be identified as white (particularly given contextual variation in the definitions and borders of whiteness), it is true that this book cannot claim to meaningfully undermine Kieran McEvoy’s (2018, 189) observation that it is ‘incontrovertible that transitional justice remains quite white’.

In particular, one response to the questions which emerge from the current conjuncture – wherein transitional justice scholarship and practice has ‘expanded frequently over both geographic space and thematic areas even as an entangled network of scholars and advocates continuously invoked its limitations and deformations’ (Miller 2020, 357) – is the application of the notion of transformative justice. An emerging body of scholarship has appeared in recent years (for example, Evans 2018, 2019; Gready and Robins 2019) defining and applying this concept as either an approach within or an alternative to transitional justice, and which seeks to shape the field (or perhaps non-field) in theory and practice. This volume discusses the notion of transformative justice in light of this literature and the established and emerging debates and dilemmas for transitional justice and related areas of scholarship and practice.

The book considers the extent to which transformative justice as a concept adds value to scholarship on transitional justice and related areas and asks what the future might hold for this area as a field – or non-field. As such, the chapters of this book occupy spaces which are – to draw on John Holloway (2016) – variously, and at times simultaneously, in, against, and beyond transitional justice as it has tended to be understood. Some chapters seek to clarify, expand, or improve transitional justice as a field of practice and scholarship (‘in’ transitional justice). Others look to alternatives (‘against’) and parallel frames (‘beyond’) with a view to complementing or rejecting the transitional justice (non-)field. At times, several of these positions (‘in, against, and beyond’) are present within a single chapter as they grapple with the dilemmas and questions raised by contemporary scholarship and practice in transitional justice and related areas. Indeed, throughout the book, two related themes which recur in a variety of forms across the chapters are complexity and synthesis.

The chapters are grouped according to two overarching themes – ‘Concepts, definitions and borders’ (Part 1) and ‘New methods and approaches’ (Part 2). Part 1 includes the contributions by Maja Davidovic, Dustin N. Sharp, and Matthew Evans (Chapters 2–4, respectively). Part 2 includes the contributions by Joanna R. Quinn, Rachel Killean and Lauren Dempster, Dáire McGill, and Eric Hoddy (Chapters 5–8, respectively). These thematic parts are discussed in the next two sections of this chapter. Following this, the final section of the chapter concludes with key questions and dilemmas raised by the volume, which are explored in the subsequent chapters and which are reflected upon in Christine Bell’s concluding chapter (Chapter 9).

Concepts, definitions and borders

Chapter 2 opens the thematic part on ‘concepts, definitions and borders’. Davidovic highlights the ‘vagueness’ and ‘conceptual confusion’ which has tended to permeate attempts to define transitional justice as a field. Responding to this, the chapter adapts and employs Philip Abrams’s (1985) framework for conceptions of sociology as a knowledge field. Davidovic argues that some of the ‘spaces of vagueness’ in transitional justice as a field can be filled in by making use of the five different uses of sociology identified in Abrams’s (1985: 183) framework (as ‘policy-science’, ‘socio-technics’, ‘clarification’, ‘advocacy’, and ‘education’). Davidovic further argues for considering transitional justice as being defined as a process rather than – or as well as – being a set of mechanisms or policy outcomes.

In Chapter 3, Sharp builds on some of the same themes and questions as Davidovic in Chapter 2. Sharp considers responses to what he calls the ‘blindspots’ of mainstream transitional justice – particularly the concept of transformative justice. He argues that whilst transformative justice will ‘loosen old, seemingly intractable knots’, it will also ‘succeed in tying new ones’. Consequently, he calls for a ‘both/and’ position – suggesting that the messy, hybrid, and ‘essentially contested’ nature of ‘peace and justice work’ should be embraced, rather than seeking (and, perhaps, failing) to transcend this through shifting from (‘in’) transitional justice to an alternative (‘against’, ‘beyond’) such as transformative justice.

Closing the part on concepts, definitions and borders, Chapter 4 considers the concept of postdisciplinarity.² Applying this to the study and practice of transitional justice and related areas, Evans argues in this chapter that there is value added by looking beyond fields and beyond disciplines. In problematising definitions, and borders, of fields and disciplines, the chapter argues for the importance of looking beyond transitional justice (and beyond disciplines and beyond fields more broadly). The chapter suggests looking beyond transitional justice should be pursued both in terms of transitional justice as a category or set of expected behaviours (mechanisms, policy outcomes, and so on – as Davidovic highlights in Chapter 2) and in terms of their study in academic and other contexts. It is suggested that this approach could be useful in addressing the established shortcomings and limitations of transitional justice as well as to untangling the kinds of ‘knots’ Sharp (Chapter 3) identifies as emerging from transitional and transformative justice. This chapter’s consideration of concepts, definitions and borders then begins to lead on to the second major thematic part, which focuses on ‘new methods and approaches’.

2 On postdisciplinarity see, for example, Sayer (1999, 2000); Jessop and Sum (2001); Evans (2020).

New methods and approaches

The first chapter in Part 2 is Chapter 5. In this chapter, Quinn explores innovative approaches to the study and practice of transitional justice, drawing on ethnographic insights and lessons from social psychology. The chapter engages with the – perhaps necessary – limitations of transitional justice whilst also suggesting means by which meaningful progress towards at least minimalist aims of transitional justice might be achieved. In particular, Quinn focuses on what she calls ‘thin sympathy’. This is the idea ‘that for transitional justice to really take hold, there must be a concentrated effort to counteract the general lack of awareness that exists about how the conflict or abuse impacted the other side’. Quinn argues that by building at least basic understanding and awareness, ‘a kernel of sympathy can be built’, which then allows for possibility of more sustained transitional justice efforts. Drawing on evidence from a range of contexts where societies have been divided by conflict or atrocities (including Canada as a settler colony), Quinn suggests ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figure
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1 In, against, and beyond transitional justice: Themes and dilemmas for the field (or non-field)
• PART 1 Concepts, definitions and borders
• PART 2 New methods and approaches
• Index