Book Review: Normative Transformation and the War on Terrorism: The Evolution of Targeted Killing, Torture, and Private Military Contracting
| Author | Veronica Kitchen |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00207020221143296 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
International Journal
2022, Vol. 77(3) 529–541
© The Author(s) 2022
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Book Reviews
Simon Frankel Pratt
Normative Transformation and the War on Terrorism: The Evolution of Targeted Killing, Torture, and
Private Military Contracting
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 215 pp. $126.95 (cloth)
ISBN: 978-1-316-51517-4
Reviewed by: Veronica Kitchen (vkitchen@uwaterloo.ca), University of Waterloo, Waterloo,
Ontario, Canada
DOI: 10.1177/00207020221143296
With the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks now in the rearview mirror,
scholars canbegin to explain the changes inpolicy and practice that followedthe attacks.
Eventually, historians will be in a position to draw on currently unavailable documents,
but already we haveinterviews with retired government officials,after-action reports and
government commissions of various kinds, and the declassified documents associated
with them. SimonFrankel Pratt, in his new book NormativeTransformation and the War
on Terrorism, usesthese sources and others to analyzea question based on three puzzling
post-9/11 case studies: what explains the rapid, complex changes in American policy
towardsthe previously prohibitedpractices of targetedkilling, torture, and privatemilitary
contracting?For a time, American policyseemingly contradictedthese strong prohibition
norms, although it is clear that despite this, they still exist (and existed) in the minds of
American policymakers. Pratt’s book setsout to explain these normative transformations.
To answer the empirical question, Pratt makes two analytical moves. First, he
broadens the concept of a norm from the familiar idea of a single “standard of ap-
propriate behaviour for actors with a given identity”(7)
1
to a normative configuration,
defined as “an arrangement of ongoing, interacting practices establishing action-
specific regulation, value-orientation, and avenues of contestation”(16). For Pratt, a
norm is a collection of actions that produce normativity, rather than an ontologically
cohesive thing. He begins each of the three case studies by “de-reifying”the norm:
discussing the various actors, practices, and moments in time that generate the stable
expectations of the prohibitions on assassination, torture, and use of mercenaries.
1. This definition is originally from MargaretE. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 891.
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