Torture

About: Torture is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8173 publications have been published within this topic receiving 109895 citations.

Hobbling and torture as performative violence

Abstract: Violent interactions have three distinct actors: aggressors, victims and witnesses. Social identities of individuals within these groups are created and enforced through performative violence such as hobbling or torture. The Sacred Ridge site is a Pueblo I (AD 700–900) habitation site in Southwestern Colorado; during excavation, an assemblage consisting of 14,882 bone fragments representing at least 33 individuals was discovered. Perimortem trauma and tool marks indicate heavy processing of all individuals; the remains were deposited completely commingled within a pit structure. Foot and ankle bones from the Sacred Ridge processed assemblage have damage suggesting hobbling by blows to the sides of the ankle and torture by beating the soles and tops of the feet. These performative acts form the basis for social control of victims and witnesses by aggressors. Taphonomic analysis of human remains can be used to examine behaviors of each group creating the assemblage.

Reconceptualizing Domestic Violence in International Law

Abstract: INTRODUCTION And yet I fear you, for you're fatal then When your eyes roll so. Why I should fear I know not, Since guiltiness I know not, but yet I feel I fear. (1) This is the fact. Every day, throughout the world, women are subjected to extreme acts of physical violence, which take place within the beguiling safety of domesticity. The violence is severe, painful, humiliating, and debilitating. And it is common. It is a phenomenon that stretches across borders, nationalities, cultures, and race. A binding characteristic of communities throughout the world, almost without exception, is the battering of women by men. (2) In this article I review the problem of domestic violence and propose a new approach, through international law, towards finding a solution. An emerging principle in international human rights law is that violence against women is a human rights violation. In the wake of this fledgling jurisprudence, it is possible to identify two specific manifestations of criminalized gender-based harm: namely, mass rape as a war crime or crime against humanity and female genital mutilation as a human rights violation. (3) These crimes jettisoned violence against women into the international legal discourse, paving the way for the criminalization of other forms of harm. (4) I propose that there is a third category of violence against women that should also receive international attention simply because it is one of the most basic and fundamental rights of women that is being violated. This is the right to be safe from extreme forms of domestic violence, or what I call private torture. Most States recognize the phenomenon of domestic violence. Many countries have taken social and structural steps to alleviate the distress experienced by women. However, legally, progress has been limited. While legislation may be enacted in a variety of countries to address domestic violence, the implementation of such legislation is peculiarly ineffective and the predominant mode of redress continues to emanate from sociologists, psychologists, and activists. (5) A real solution continues to elude the law, lawmakers, and legal practitioners. One of the main causes of the rift between the law against domestic violence and the implementation of such law, is the intimacy of the relationship between the aggressor and the abused. (6) However, an additional explanation for this schism is that the law cannot address something that has been inaccurately conceptualized. 'Domestic violence' is a term that applies to a miscellany of harm but by using a single, undifferentiated term of 'domestic violence,' current legislation fails to grasp the melange of harm produced by battering. (7) If domestic violence is properly defined to reflect the divergence of harm committed against women, it may become easier to identify effective, appropriate, and direct tools to minimize this phenomenon. Currently, falling within the one composite term of 'domestic violence' are acts as diverse as shoving, pushing, or verbal denigration ("category one") on the one hand, and battering, breaking bones, burning, raping, and torturing ("category two") on the other. While all these forms of harm do constitute intimate violence, there is an apparent distinction between them: intuitively we need to separate shoving-slapping-shouting from the more physically extreme battering-breaking-raping. This separation is not to attribute a lesser status to category one, but rather to carve out a more extreme physical form of violence so that each category has the appropriate mechanism to combat its occurrence. It is category two, extreme acts of domestic violence, which I seek to address as 'private torture.' It is this category of violence that, notwithstanding its extremity and widespread occurrence, continues rampant, literally throughout the world. And it is this category that I propose be addressed by international law as an international human rights violation. …

Torture as normal work: The Bush Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency and ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’:

Abstract: During the War on Terror, the Bush Administration authorized the US Central Intelligence Agency to employ ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ to extract intelligence from alleged terrorists. Many organizations contended that ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ were torture. Given that torture is morally reprehensible, the policy was constantly contested. This article argues that the Bush Administration attempted to legitimate the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ by making torture normal work. The Bush Administration did so by designating torture as legal, thus using a formal system of power that is publicly respected to validate and normalize their actions. Furthermore, by embedding torture in mundane organizational practices and rationalities, ‘enhanced interrogation’ was made to appear to be as ordinary as any other federal program. Hence, the article demonstrates how the legal system, as well as commonplace aspects of organizations can be employed by political elites to attempt to manage controversy around extreme policies by making them appear normal. However, a discourse of normality did not necessarily remove the taint from torture or create the results the political elites desired.

Contesting the International Illegitimacy of Torture: The Bush Administration's Failure to Legitimate its Preferences within International Society

Abstract: Research Highlights and AbstractThis article,is a contribution to the theoretical debate over whether the Bush administration's defection from international torture norms led to a norm cascade favo...

Corruption and Torture: Violent Exchange and the policing of the urban poor

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