Danielle Celermajer, The Prevention of Torture: An Ecological Approach
| Author | Andrew M Jefferson,Ergun Cakal,Tomas Max Martin |
| Published date | 01 July 2021 |
| Date | 01 July 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1462474520941938 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Book reviews
Danielle Celermajer, The Prevention of Torture: An Ecological Approach,
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2018; 361 pp. ISBN
9781108470452, £85.00 (hbk)
The presence and persistence of violence in our societies and state institutions –
and what to do about it – are long-standing concerns of scholars of punishment
and society. Torture might sound like a singular type of such violence but the
torture with which this book is concerned is of the everyday, mundane variety, a
product of prevailing systems, structures and conditions existing in continuity with
other forms of violence. Torture is not an individual incident, but a social practice
embedded in a multifaceted system of relations. This important book convincingly
posits that efforts to prevent torture must understand the dynamics of this system –
this ‘ecology’ – and address causes and consequences of violence through an eco-
logical approach.
The cover of The Prevention of Torture tellingly features a compelling image of a
leafy tree in blossom. Beneath the tree in the shadow cast by an invisible light
source is a vast amount of blood spatter. The image alludes to the notion of ‘the
poisoned orchard’, this being a metaphor appealed to by situational theorists of
violence to resist the inherently dispositional ‘bad apples’ theory. Violence is not
the result of the dispositions of a few deviant apples acting out their own individual
pathologies; it is the product of the complex ecological situation of the whole
orchard, i.e. the interconnected practices that nourish, nurture and otherwise facil-
itate the likelihood of a toxic harvest – again and again, and with seasonal
variations.
At its most basic level this is a book about the driving and sustaining factors of
torture and the impediments to its prevention. Clearly argued and drawing in a
range of theoretical insights (from Arendt to Bourdieu to Latour), as well as an
equally broad range of empirical studies, it offers a radically situational account of
why torture persists and why it is so difficult to inhibit using the legal, universal
and punitive tools most commonly applied.
The book draws on lessons learned from and through a multi-faceted, experi-
mental torture prevention project involving the academy, local human rights
organisations, and security sector actors in Nepal and Sri Lanka. The project
made theoretically informed, contextual analyses of torture causalities. These
Punishment & Society
2021, Vol. 23(3) 436–451
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474520941938
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