The political geographies of transitional justice

Bibliographic Data

ID8964313
AuthorsA Jeffrey (0000-0002-4753-5825, Newcastle University, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume36
Issue3
Pages344-359
Publication date2011-03-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00429.x
OpenAlexW2112016806
LanguageEN
Citations received22
References cited20

This paper examines how geographers can contribute to debates concerning transitional justice. Recent scholarship in criminology has identified a residual ‘legalism’ in the enactment and study of transitional justice: trial processes and the perspectives of jurists have been prioritised over wider processes of social healing and the perceptions of non‐legal actors. This paper explores how geographers can contribute to challenging this prioritisation of legal processes within the study and practice of transitional justice. This is achieved through an examination of attempts to establish forms of transitional justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the end of the war in 1995. Specifically, the paper explores the establishment in 2005 of the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the civil society‐based strategies it has employed to reach out to witnesses and victim populations. The paper makes two interlinked arguments. First, it examines how the international response to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina placed justice at a distance from victim communities. Second, the paper argues that civil society activities undertaken to widen access to justice have opened up new spaces of deliberation and critique. It is argued that these spatialities point to possibilities of deliberative conceptions of justice fostered beyond legal institutions and processes

Criminology · Deliberation · Economic Justice · Legalism (Western philosophy · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Transitional justice · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Global Security and Public Health · International Law and Human Rights · Law

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