Discerning Violence: Social Relations and the making of U.S. Human Rights Policy, 1976-1992

• In Event: 252 - Regular Session. Violence and the State

Abstract

In the post-World War II era, Western states developed bilateral and multilateral policies aimed at preventing egregious acts of violence in the form of human rights violations in non-Western states. While others have studied this shift in international relations with a geopolitical lens, I argue that the literatures on violence and human rights cogently show that how we perceive and address violence, in this case in the form of human rights violations, reflects larger social relations. I ask how, in practice, have states defined what constitutes a human rights violation in a foreign society and used this to develop a policy response? To answer this question I examined the United States’ response to human rights violations during the Argentine Dirty War and the Salvadoran Civil War. A content analysis of over 160 Congressional hearings reveals that the supposed historical and cultural human rights practices of the nations in question served as the foundation for a policy to restore respect for human rights in Argentina and to establish respect for human rights in El Salvador. This work demonstrates that understandings of violence in another society shaped policy decisions. For scholars of international norms, this work shows that the decision to sanction or support a regime was intimately tied to how actors discerned violence in another society. Moreover, it moves studies of violence towards how violence is addressed through interstate relations.

Author

• Angela Elena Fillingim, University of California, Irvine