The Humanity of Universal Crime Inclusion, Inequality, and Intervention in International Political Thought

by Graf, Sinja

• ISBN13: 9780197535707
• ISBN10: 0197535704
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2021-03-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The international crime of "crimes against humanity" has become integral to contemporary political and legal discourse. However, the conceptual core of the term--an act against all of mankind--has a longer and deeper history in international political thought. In an original excavation of this history, The Humanity of Universal Crime examines theoretical mobilizations of the idea of universal crime in colonial and post-colonial contexts. Sinja Graf demonstrates the overlooked centrality of humanity and criminality to political liberalism's historical engagement with world politics, thereby breaking with the exhaustively studied status of individual rights in liberal thought. Graf argues that invocations of universal crime project humanity as a normatively integrated, yet minimally inclusive and hierarchically structured subject. Such visions of humanity have in turn underwritten justifications of foreign rule and outsider intervention based on claims to an injury universally suffered by all mankind.

Foregrounding the "political productivity" of universal crime, the book traces the intellectual history of the rise, fall, and reappearance of notions of universal crime in political theory over time. It looks particularly at the way European theorists have deployed the concept in assessing the legitimacy of colonial rule and foreign intervention in non-European societies. The book argues that an "inclusionary Eurocentrism" subtends the authorizing and coercive dimensions of universal crime. Unlike much-studied "exclusionary Eurocentrist" thinking, "inclusionary Eurocentrist" arguments have historically extended an unequal, repressive "recognition via liability" to non-European peoples. Overall the book offers a novel view of how claims to act in the name of humanity are deeply steeped in practices that reproduce structures of inequality at a global level, particularly across political empires.

Author Biography

Sinja Graf is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. Her work examines the relationship between international norms and political violence at the intersection of political theory, history of political thought, and international law. Her research has been published in disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: "To Regain Some Kind of Human Equality": Theorizing the Political Productivity of "Crimes against Humanity"
Chapter 2: From Humanity to Sovereignty: Universal Crime and Sovereign Foundings in John Locke's Second Treatise of Government
Chapter 3: "The Conscience of the Civilized World": Nineteenth Century International Law and the Decline of Notions of Universal Crime
Chapter 4: Cosmopolitanism and Crimes against Humanity: "Global Policing" and the Legitimacy of Political Violence in the Late Twentieth Century
Conclusion