Book Review: John Sifton, Violence All Around
| Author | Peter Admirand |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929917716090 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsInternational Relations |
619
Gary Browning in effect demonstrates how
the last word – unless we cease to be political
such a claim was deeply provincial. The book
and meaning-seeking animals! Indeed, even
seeks to be an interpretation of some of the
such an anthropological thought suggests that
interpretive strategies deployed in analysing
there may always be a form of essentialist
the canonical texts and thinkers in the history
grounding, however unstable it is.
of modern European political thought.
The first section outlines various interpretive
Jules Townshend
‘tool-kits’: Hegel/Marx’s dialectics, Oakeshott/
(Manchester Metropolitan University)
Collingwood’s historical idealism, the Cambridge
© The Author(s) 2017
School’s contextualism, Derrida’s deconstruc-
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
tionism, Foucault’s discourse analysis, and finally
DOI: 10.1177/1478929917718157
Gadamer’s hermeneutics.
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
What I would like to have seen here is a little
more space devoted to the actual political, intel-
lectual and cultural contexts which gave rise to
International Relations
these interpretive strategies, especially as
Browning provides this in the second section of
Violence All Around by John Sifton.
the book. In the latter section, he puts these inter-
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.
pretive schemas through their paces, using the
336pp., £20.95 (h/b), ISBN 9780674057692
available literature and applying it to some of
the ‘greats’ of modern European political
Probing, meditative, and erudite, human rights
thought – which, interestingly, includes Simone
lawyer John Sifton is well-positioned and
de Beauvoir (no reason why not, but why no
experienced to reflect on violence. Working at
Edmund Burke?). Perhaps, too, more could
Human Rights Watch since 2001, Sifton incor-
have been made of socio-economic contextual
porates his extensive on-the-ground experience
analyses,...
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