Fictions of Justice

The International Criminal Court and the Challenge of Legal Pluralism in Sub-Saharan Africa

Kamari Maxine Clarke author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:25th May '09

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Fictions of Justice cover

This book explores how notions of justice are negotiated through everyday practices and made to represent the real, the law. It takes on the challenge of mapping the growth of the rule of law criminal justice movement alongside a range of other justice formations and in that process explores the processes by which justice is made.By taking up the challenge of documenting how human rights values are embedded in rule of law movements to produce a new language of international justice that competes with a range of other formations, this book explores how notions of justice are negotiated through everyday micropractices and grassroots contestations of those practices. These micropractices include speech acts that revere the protection of international rights, citation references to treaty documents, the brokering of human rights agendas, the rewriting of national constitutions, demonstrations of religiosity that make explicit the piety of religious subjects, and ritual practices of forgiveness that involve the invocation of ancestral religious cosmologies - all practices that detail the ways that justice is made real.

'… this book is the first serious attempt to engage with the wider anthropological and political dimensions of the ICC's jurisdiction and power … a worthwhile read as it is an excellent dissection of the cases, current scholarship, and perceptions relating to the topic.' Journal of Law and Society
'… relevant and important … invite[s] us to think more carefully about the purpose of transitional justice - stated and implicit - and about the interaction of international and local culture.' Rachel Kerr, International Journal of Transitional Justice
'… the theoretical scope is ambitious, the data are fascinating, and the analysis is incisive. These qualities make the book a must-read in the anthropology of human rights and humanitarianism.' Niklas Hultin, American Anthropologist

ISBN: 9780521717793

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 19mm

Weight: 470g

352 pages