Round Table (Part 3) Book Review: From Discrimination to Death: Genocide Process Through a Human Rights Lens
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: When sociologists and legal scholars come together in meetings under the banner of "Law and Society," snarkier sociologists (not me, I swear) might respond to presentations by the other half with, "too much law, not enough society."And I am sure legal scholars say the same, but in reverse.Thankfully, Melanie O'Brien's From Discrimination to Death generates no such complaint.Her book expertly uses human rights and humanitarian law to demonstrate how human rights violations are composite parts of the process of genocide.This is not a rote application of law to the social practices that culminate in group destruction.O'Brien avoids the individualizing tendencies of some legal and human rights approaches that emphasize the impact of harms on the single human rather than the human as a relational actor.Instead, O'Brien advances a socio-legal understanding of genocide that holds great potential for expanding its application in courts and enhancing genocide prevention.What I appreciate most about the book is how each human right, ranging literally from freedom from discrimination to the right to life, is succinctly and accessibly articulated based on the treaties and conventions that define it, but then explored in terms of what the law means in practice.In this manner, a sociological sensitivity is brought to how each violation is enacted and experienced.This is achieved through three primary case studies-the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, and Cambodian Genocide-as well, in the final chapter, the Rohingya.O'Brien's research draws on a multitude of resources, including archives, fieldwork, and interviews.There is depth to the case studies, demonstrating a sophisticated interrogation of each, and, importantly, illustration of how violation of a specific right, whether individual, social, or economic, has consequences for the collective, making it more difficult to sustain the life of the group targeted for destruction.Even rights that seem on the surface very individual, such as freedom of expression and opinion, are shown to be instrumental to developing, preserving, and engaging with one's culture.O'Brien concludes the chapter on this topic with the note, "The human is at the centre of life, community, nation, and cannot be so without freedom of expression." 1 This centering of the human, however, is at the heart of the questions I will raise for the author.But before I arrive at this point, an epistemological detour is needed.Taking human rights and humanitarian law as a starting point is an epistemological choice.The rights mechanisms drawn upon present a specific way of knowing and seeing human wrongs.In Pierre Bourdieu's term, this field of activity reflects a "system of vision and division." 2
Source: Genocide Studies and Prevention
Author: Andrew Woolford
Institution: University of Manitoba
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4411557125