Justice and Time at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal: In Memory of Vann Nath, Painter and S-21 Survivor

This essay explores the interrelationship of justice and time at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia [ECCC hyperlink: http://www.eccc.gov.kh/en] (ECCC, or “Khmer Rouge Tribunal”). In doing so, it follows the trial participation of the late Vann Nath, a survivor of S-21, a torture and detention center operated by the Khmer Rouge. From April 15, 1975 to January 6, 1979, this Maoist-inspired group of revolutionary implemented policies resulting in the death of up to two million of Cambodia’s eight million inhabitants, almost a quarter of the population. This essay argue that, even as they seek to help post-conflict societies like Cambodia “move forward through justice” (as the ECCC slogan goes), transitional justice mechanisms like the ECCC are premised on a set of temporal assumptions that are part of a larger transitional justice imaginary. Scholars and practitioners need to attend to such assumptions as well as the sorts of “vernacular time,” or local conceptions of temporality that also mediate the understanding and responses of people like Vann Nath

Annihilating difference: the anthropology of genocide

Genocide is one of the most pressing issues that confronts us today. Its death toll is staggering: over one hundred million dead. Because of their intimate experience in the communities where genocide takes place, anthropologists are uniquely positioned to explain how and why this mass annihilation occurs and the types of devastation genocide causes. This ground breaking book, the first collection of original essays on genocide to be published in anthropology, explores a wide range of cases, including Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Bosnia

Man or Monster?

During the Khmer Rouge's brutal reign in Cambodia during the mid-to-late 1970s, a former math teacher named Duch served as the commandant of the S-21 security center, where as many as 20,000 victims were interrogated, tortured, and executed. In 2009 Duch stood trial for these crimes against humanity. While the prosecution painted Duch as evil, his defense lawyers claimed he simply followed orders. In 'Man or Monster?' Alexander Hinton uses creative ethnographic writing, extensive fieldwork, hundreds of interviews, and his experience attending Duch's trial to create a nuanced analysis of Duch, the tribunal, the Khmer Rouge, and the after-effects of Cambodia's genocide. Interested in how a person becomes a torturer and executioner as well as the law's ability to grapple with crimes against humanity, Hinton adapts Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil" to consider how the potential for violence is embedded in the everyday ways people articulate meaning and comprehend the world

Critical Genocide Studies

Over the last two decades, the interdisciplinary field of genocide studies has dramatically expanded and matured. No longer in the shadow of Holocaust studies, it is now the primary subject of journals, textbooks, encyclopedias, readers, handbooks, special journal issues, bibliographies, workshops, semi- nars, conference, Web sites, research centers, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and a unit at the United Nations. If not yet fully theorized, the discipline is characterized by a number of debates and approaches. As the outlines of the field emerge more clearly, the time is right to engage in critical reflections about the state of the field, or what might be called critical genocide studies. The goal is not to be critical in a negative sense but to consider, even as a canon becomes ensconced, what is said and unsaid, who has voice and who is silenced, and how such questions may be linked to issues of power and knowledge. It is, in other words, a call for critical thinking about the field of genocide studies itself, exploring our presuppositions, decentering our biases, and throwing light on blind spots in the hope of further enriching this dynamic field

Biocultural Approaches to the Emotions

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Man or Monster?

During the Khmer Rouge's brutal reign in Cambodia during the mid-to-late 1970s, a former math teacher named Duch served as the commandant of the S-21 security center, where as many as 20,000 victims were interrogated, tortured, and executed. In 2009 Duch stood trial for these crimes against humanity. While the prosecution painted Duch as evil, his defense lawyers claimed he simply followed orders. In 'Man or Monster?' Alexander Hinton uses creative ethnographic writing, extensive fieldwork, hundreds of interviews, and his experience attending Duch's trial to create a nuanced analysis of Duch, the tribunal, the Khmer Rouge, and the after-effects of Cambodia's genocide. Interested in how a person becomes a torturer and executioner as well as the law's ability to grapple with crimes against humanity, Hinton adapts Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil" to consider how the potential for violence is embedded in the everyday ways people articulate meaning and comprehend the world

Plenary 2: Anti-Rights Movements And Democratic Regression

Moderator: Shelley Inglis, University of Dayton Human Rights Center Participants: Anne-Marie Goetz, Center for Global Affairs, NYU Alexander Laban Hinton, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University Chloe Schwenke, Center for Values in International Development Mabrouka Mbarek, former member of the Constituent Assembly of Tunisia [virtual] Jo Weiss, Head of Global Citizenship, White & Cas

New Pathways in Transitional Justice

Transitional justice mechanisms are increasingly considered in the context of long-term historical injustices, including in relation to racial injustice in the U.S. This roundtable explores past experiences along with new approaches and the current challenges in the pursuit of accountability and coming to terms with systemic human rights violations