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A. Dirk Moses, "The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
FromNew Books in Law
A. Dirk Moses, "The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
FromNew Books in Law
ratings:
Length:
73 minutes
Released:
May 14, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Genocide is not only a problem of mass death, but also of how, as a relatively new idea and law, it organizes and distorts thinking about civilian destruction. Taking the normative perspective of civilian immunity from military attack, A. Dirk Moses argues that the implicit hierarchy of international criminal law, atop which sits genocide as the 'crime of crimes', blinds us to other types of humanly caused civilian death, like bombing cities, and the 'collateral damage' of missile and drone strikes. Talk of genocide, then, can function ideologically to detract from systematic violence against civilians perpetrated by governments of all types. The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression (Cambridge UP, 2021) contends that this violence is the consequence of 'permanent security' imperatives: the striving of states, and armed groups seeking to found states, to make themselves invulnerable to threats.
Jeff Bachman is Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, DC.
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Jeff Bachman is Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, DC.
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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law
Released:
May 14, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
James Q. Whitman, “The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War” (Harvard UP, 2012): James Whitman wants to revise our understanding of warfare during the eighteenth century, the period described by my late colleague and friend Russell Weigley as the “Age of Battles.” We commonly view warfare during this period as a remarkably restrain... by New Books in Law