Book Review: Torture as State Crime: A Criminological Analysis of the Transnational Institutional Torturer
| Author | DAWN L. ROTHE |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639221101717 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
institutional arrangements or collective actions in such an age. In this sense, it is not only
the shift of perspective from right to obligation per se that is crucial to understanding
today’s legal and social practices but how to transform the power relations that we
have found ourselves deeply and constitutively involved in is the key to realizing
Veitch’s aspiration for the shift of the perspective.
JIA LIU
Institute of Public Policy, South China University of Technology, China
ORCID iD
Jia Liu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9209-1215
References
Han B-C (2015) The Burnout Society. Stanford, California: Stanford Briefs.
Schiller D (1999) Digital Capitalism: Network the Global Market System. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press.
Supiot A (2017) Governance by Numbers: The Making of a Legal Model of Allegiance. Oxford;
Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing.
MELANIE COLLARD, Torture as State Crime: A Criminological Analysis of the TransnationalInstitutional
Torturer. London/New York: Routledge, 2019, pp. 228, ISBN 978-1-138-21005-9, $160 USD
Hardcover, ISBN 978-0-367-48322-7, $49.95USD Paperback.
Collard provides an impressive analysis that demonstrates the systemic and institutiona-
lized use of torture by drawing on the Algerian War and France’sLa Doctrine de Guerre
Révolutionnaire—the doctrine of revolutionary war. Drawing from criminological and
Foucauldian historiography lenses, Collard skillfully demonstrates the collaboration
between France and Argentina and the institutionalization of torture. Collard argues
that the systematic use and spread of torture techniques were not the result of decisions
by a few officials but a transnational agreement between the two states.
In chapter one, Collard lays out the overall premise of the volume including a brief
overview of the history of the use of torture dating back thousands of years by various
regimes to the era of colonialism and its impact on modern democratic states’practice
of torture (6). As Collard states, “The endurance—not the resurgence—of torture in
the 20th century is directly related to the nature of the modern State”(7). The brutality
of the “Dirty War”was immense and over the course of seven years rough estimates
between 15,000 to 30,000 citizens were tortured, kidnaped, disappeared, or murdered,
using the same methods of torture the French army had used during the Algerian War
(1954–1962). Yet, such techniques of torture were used by France far earlier in time
including the invasion of Algeria in 1830, though it had not been institutionalized as
had happened after 1954. It was in this era that the Doctrine de Guerre
Révolutionnaire was developed—legitimating torture indirectly as means or tactic of
its revolutionary war doctrine as it was believed the doctrine could not be achieved
964 Social & Legal Studies 31(6)
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