Transitional justice as social control

Political Transitions, Human Rights Norms and the Reclassification of the Past

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5614656
AutoresRon Dudai (0000-0003-0660-0704, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, autor correspondente)
Ano2018
Volume69
Fascículo3
Páginas691-711
Data de publicação2018-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoBritish Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-4446.12300
PMID28895128
OpenAlexW2756272428
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas11
Referências citadas72

This article offers an interpretation of transitional justice policies - the efforts of post-conflict and post-dictatorship societies to address the legacy of past abuses - as a form of social control. While transitional justice is commonly conceptualized as responding to a core problem of impunity, this article argues that such formulation is too narrow and leads to lack of coherence in the analysis of the diverse array of transitional mechanisms, which include among others trials, truth commissions, reparations for victims and apologies. Building on the work of Stanley Cohen, the article contends that the core transitional problem is the denial of human rights violations, and consequently that the common purpose of all transitional justice mechanisms is to reclassify the past: redefining as deviant some acts and individuals which prior to the transition were considered 'normal'. The article identifies and analyses three themes in the application of a social control framework to transitional justice: (1)truth, memory and retroactive social control, pertains to the way truth-seeking transitional justice mechanisms reclassify past events by engaging in social control of and through memory; (2)censure, celebration and transitional social controlrefers to the reclassification of categories of individuals through expressions of both social disapproval and praise; and (3)civil society and social control from belowconcerns the role of social movements, organizations and groups as informal agents of social control during transitions. The concluding section recaps and briefly explores the concept of 'good moral panic' in the context of political transitions. While the concept of social control tends to have negative connotations for critical sociologists, this work suggests that efforts to categorize, punish and disapprove certain behaviours as deviant may not only be viewed as supporting a conservative status-quo, but also as promoting fledging human rights norms

Criminology · Human rights · Political science · Politics · Social control · Social science · Sociology · Transitional justice · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology · Social Psychology · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence