Book Review: Law, Anthropology, and the Constitution of the Social: Making Persons and Things
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663906069557 |
| Author | Valerie Kerruish |
| Date | 01 December 2006 |
| Published date | 01 December 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
ideology of ‘self-defense’ (cf. Forges, 1999). I am not suggesting that this approach
directly legitimates the discourse of these génocidaires – as in verifying the legitimacy
of racist doctrines or other specific supremacist world-views. What I am suggesting
is that what this approach does is to restate at the level of theory an instrumental
recourse to conditions of conflict that has too often informed the discourse of the
génocidaires. If lives are to be saved ‘by military action against the perpetrators of
genocide’ (p. 242), as Shaw suggests, then it might be expedient to define genocide
within a different framework than conflict.
Despite this concern, the central narrative of this work holds much promise. I
would like to end, however, by pointing to a certain absence. Despite Shaw’s claim
that his intention is to ‘challenge dominant understandings’ (p. 4) of the literature on
genocide, the dominant representatives of this literature are surprisingly absent. Shaw
never addresses, for example, the empirical findings of R. J. Rummel (1995) who
claimed that genocides are planned separately from wars and revolutions. Likewise,
while Shaw’s analysis of the overlapping conditions of genocide and warfare shares
much with the work of Leo Kuper and Robert Melson, there is no attempt to probe
the greater depths in which these authors explore this relationship. There is also no
examination of any other authors in the tradition of genocide-cum-warfare that Shaw
follows (Helen Fein to name one), the majority of who, nonetheless, hold often
starkly different views from him. Such authors at best appear under ‘further reading’
at the end of Chapter 2. While this work is significant in its novel view of genocide
as a form of war, and while it also has the potential to inspire debate, Shaw neglects
the opportunity to establish his view of genocide at the juncture where competing
insights would have demanded credible opposition.
REFERENCES
Forges, D. (1999) ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’, Human Rights Watch: 78.
Gourevitch, P. (1998) We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with
Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. London: Picador.
Rummel, R. J. (1995) ‘Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder’, Journal of
Conflict Resolution 39(1): 3–26.
CARLO G. PINNETTI
University of Edinburgh, UK
ALAIN POTTAGE AND MARTHA MUNDY (EDS), Law, Anthropology, and the Consti-
tution of the Social: Making Persons and Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004, 310 pp., £19.99 (pbk).
DOI: 10.1177/0964663906069557
Law, Anthropology, and the Constitution of the Social is a carefully selected collec-
tion of interdisciplinary essays on or concerning law’s modalities of intervention in
social life. The categories of persons and things and techniques of personification
and reification, disembedded from orthodox frames of modern law and considered
in differing and specific contexts, provide the thematic tie. With issues of inheri-
tance, ownership and exchange the subject matter of most of the essays, the volume
represents a current interest in ensuring law’s continued success in responding to
proprietary claims raised by new technologies and a globalizing environment.
BOOK REVIEWS 611
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