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University of California Press
Open Access

Representing Mass Violence

Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur

by Joachim J. Savelsberg (Author)
Price: $34.95 / £30.00
Publication Date: Sep 2015
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 360
ISBN: 9780520281509
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 1 color map, 15 color photos, 11 B&W line art

About the Book

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s new open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

How do interventions by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court influence representations of mass violence? What images arise instead from the humanitarianism and diplomacy fields? How are these competing perspectives communicated to the public via mass media? Zooming in on the case of Darfur, Joachim J. Savelsberg analyzes more than three thousand news reports and opinion pieces and interviews leading newspaper correspondents, NGO experts, and foreign ministry officials from eight countries to show the dramatic differences in the framing of mass violence around the world and across social fields. Representing Mass Violence contributes to our understanding of how the world acknowledges and responds to violence in the Global South.

About the Author

Sociology | Criminology

How do interventions by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court influence representations of mass violence? What images arise instead from the humanitarianism and diplomacy fields? How are these competing perspectives communicated to the public via mass media? Zooming in on the case of Darfur, Joachim J. Savelsberg analyzes more than three thousand news reports and opinion pieces and interviews leading newspaper correspondents, NGO experts, and foreign ministry officials from eight countries to show the dramatic differences in the framing of mass violence around the world and across social fields.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

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Reviews

"A well-written and thoroughly researched project . . . Savelsberg’s book makes a significant contribution to criminology, global sociology, and the study of collective memory. . . . compelling and interesting."
Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books
"A very thoughtfully conceptualised and written work… a high level of theoretical and empirical craft."
Corvinus Journal of Sociology and Social Policy
"Focusing on the case of Darfur, Savelsberg analyzes more than 3,000 news reports and opinion pieces and interviews leading newspaper correspondents, NGO experts, and foreign ministry officials from eight countries to show the dramatic differences in the framing of mass violence around the world and across social fields. He considers such questions as: How do interventions by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court influence representations of mass violence? What images arise instead from the humanitarianism and diplomacy fields? How are these competing perspectives communicated to the public via mass media?"
Law & Social Inquiry
"Overall, this solid research exhibits the systematic approach of a well-trained social scientist and will appeal not only to human rights scholars but also those considering the efficacy of international legal institutions as well as the role of the media, diplomacy and humanitarian organizations."
Law and Politics Book Review
"This book is an exemplary, nuanced demonstration of why representations of human rights violations are important and how mass atrocities are framed or “socially constructed”—indeed, the word “representations” does an enormous amount of work in this book... Overall, this is an important study that makes concrete complex con- structions and representations of mass violence."
American Journal of Sociology
“A meticulous, wide-ranging attempt to make sense of different ways of thinking about the violence that flares up in human communities in different times and places. ... A careful study.”
Contemporary Sociology
"Perhaps the most comprehensive and empirically detailed analysis of competing institutional and mainstream representations of mass violence and genocide in Darfur."
State Crime Journal
"This book is a pathbreaking examination of the multiple international narratives around Darfur by human rights advocates, humanitarians, journalists, and diplomats. It is thorough and rigorous—an essential contribution to the scholarship."—Alex de Waal, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School, Tufts University
 
"Darfur is the modern genocide that refuses to end, and this volume gives this mass atrocity the attention it deserves. It does so in highly original ways, including an unprecedented global analysis of media coverage, activism, and advocacy. The author’s familiarity with European and North American settings gives him a unique perspective from which to undertake this massive study."—John Hagan, John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Law at Northwestern University and Co-Director of the Center on Law and Globalization at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago
 
"Joachim Savelsberg’s use of secondary material and his engagement with the critics of the human rights regime in general and those who have studied Sudan in particular, coupled with his primary analysis of media representations and their national variations (and similarities), provides a perspective that is more encompassing than anything I am aware of."—Daniel Levy, Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University

"A comprehensive survey of the range of knowledge forms and institutionalized interests that have contributed to the construction of Darfur as a signification of humanitarian crisis, human rights violation, and contemporary genocide."—Dylan Rodríguez, Professor and Chair, Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California Riverside

Awards

  • 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award 2019, Crime and Juvenile Delinquency Section, SSSP
  • Harry J. Kalven, Jr. Award 2021 2021, Law and Society Association
  • 2019 Lee Founders Award 2019, Society for the Study of Social Problems
  • Outstanding Book Award, Division of International Criminology, American Society of Criminology
  • 2017 Albert J. Reiss Distinguished Scholarship Award 2018, American Sociological Association, Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance
  • 2017 William J. Chambliss Lifetime Achievement Award 2017, Society for the Study of Social Problems
  • 2016 Society for the Study of Social Problems Theory Division Outstanding Book Award 2016, Society for the Study of Social Problems