Book Review: Pills for the Poorest
| Author | Mark Flear |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663914546586c |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Families of the Missing is a richly detailed, theoretically textured work that draws
resources from varied disciplines (including psychology, development studies, and
anthropology) to make an original contribution to transitional justice scholarship that
advances important critiques of transitional justice orthodoxy and the internationaliza-
tion of liberalism, while also productively driving at solutions. Robins’ analysis also pro-
vides a subtle account of differences among victims, such as the differential experience
of victims whose loved ones were disappeared by the resistance rather than the state.
Similarly, inequalities among victims form a thread running through this analysis, in par-
ticular along the axes of gender and rural/urban geography. As such, more examination
of the implications of heterogeneity within victim populations would have further
strengthened this analysis. Specifically, notwithstanding Robins’ assertion that the local
and traditional should not be romanticized, how can a victim-centered approach to tran-
sitional justice resist implication in local power relations that limit the quotidian possi-
bilities of women or the young? Moreover, in many transitional settings victims and
perpetrators are not distinct categories. How would victim-centered transitional justice
account for victims who also were complicit in violations? Given that perpetrators are
often community members or conationals living with inequality and marginalization,
how does victim-centered transitional justice address perpetrators as complex actors?
Finally, can local, traditional practices extend demands for social justice beyond the
local to the global? A comprehensive challenge to the current transitional justice para-
digm and a complex account of the experience of victims, Families of the Missing is
a powerful and necessary book that merits the attention of transitional justice scholars
and practitioners.
AUGUSTINE SJ PARK
Carleton University, Canada
EMILIE CLOATRE, Pills for the Poorest. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 224, ISBN 9780230282841,
£65 (hbk).
The proliferation of international legal agreements on and between a whole gamut of
areas, ranging from the environment, to trade and public health, attests to the continued
transnationalization of policy domains. One central issue is whether and if so how the
arrangements produce, reflect, reinforce, and solidify the (re)distribution of power and
resources at the global level, especially as regards the global North vis-a`-vis the global
South, and how this might be challenged by the governed. Cloatre’s Pills for the Poorest
provides a rich examination of the relationship between intellectual property (IP), partic-
ularly patents, and access to medicines for the poorest. The book is located within, and
adds to, the broader legal, sociological and anthropological literature. As such the text
deservedly appears within the prestigious Palgrave Macmillan Socio-Legal Studies
series, which addresses a wide international audience. Although the book is slim, its con-
tribution is weighty, timely, and convincing. Indeed, in this text Cloatre provides a fresh
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