Framing Atrocity: The Politics of Local Transitional Justice

There has been a noticeable turn toward the “local” in the practice and study of peacebuilding, international development and transitional justice (TJ). The proliferation of customary, locally rooted TJ processes in societies emerging from armed conflict is a part of this trend, one that is exemplified by a belief that local-level knowledge and practices are beneficial because they reflect the ideas held by victims of mass crimes about what justice should look like.

The book challenges this orthodoxy. While existing literature has cautioned against romanticizing the local—perhaps driven by sympathy—scholars and practitioners still tend to make facile claims about the purported benefits of local TJ and routinely overlook these measures’ shortcomings, especially the oft-hidden local-national power dynamics and domestic political interests that underlie and can distort these processes. My main argument is straightforward: I argue that well-intentioned local TJ efforts can paradoxically deflect justice in ways that enable ruling parties to avoid accountability and obscure the truth about wartime events. Drawing on the theory of Goffman and Benford and Snow, I further contend that the principal method by which justice is deflected is not through overt coercion and manipulation, but rather, through subtle and indirect “distortional framing” practices that ruling parties use to set discursive limits around discussions of the past and mask their own serious crimes. Based on eight months of in-depth field research in Cambodia and Mozambique that drew on rare access to over 90 decision-makers, archival research and participant observation at community-based events in both countries, the book reveals and traces the processes by which distortional framing has been used as a strategy to undermine, rather than deliver, justice at the local level.

In so doing, the book is the authoritative account of the “local turn” in TJ—it dissects several questionable assumptions underpinning both scholarship and practice in this area, brings novel conceptual and theoretical insights to discussions of the local and delivers rich empirical detail into how these processes have been distorted and subverted in two post-conflict states in two disparate regions. It will be of interest to scholars of international relations, TJ, peacebuilding, development, and memory studies.

Related Articles

• Kochanski, Adam. 2021. “Framing, truth-telling, and the limits of local transitional justice.” Review of International Studies 47 (4): 468–88.

• Kochanski, Adam. 2021. “State (ir)responsibility and the (un)making of transformative reparations at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.” Peacebuilding 9 (2): 129–44.

• Kochanski, Adam. 2020. “The Missing Picture: Accounting for Sexual and Gender-Based Violence during Cambodia’s ‘Other’ Conflict Periods.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 14 (3): 504–23.

• Kochanski, Adam. 2020. “The ‘Local Turn’ in Transitional Justice: Curb the Enthusiasm.” International Studies Review 22 (1): 26–50.