Re(writing) the rule of law : text and expertise in humanitarian intervention
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Sociology, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Bruch, Elizabeth Marie
issued: 2012-04-05T19:19:53Z
issued: 2012
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This dissertation examines humanitarian intervention through the texts and experts of human rights field work in inter-governmental organization (IGO) missions in conflict and post-conflict situations. Humanitarian intervention, understood as coercive collective intervention by the ‘international community’ against a state to protect the population(s) within that state, is one of the most challenging and controversial issues in international law and policy today. Humanitarian intervention involves the exercise of geo-political and institutional power, and it requires the massive mobilization of personnel and resources from around the world in complex and on-going projects of peacekeeping and nation building. Although humanitarian intervention is largely justified in the name of human rights and the rule of law, there has been little empirical study of the institutions and individuals conducting the work of human rights and the rule of law in contexts of intervention. Human rights field officers are primary actors as translators, instructors, advocates and practitioners of the rule of law in the field of humanitarian intervention. This research uses an approach of Institutional Ethnography, informed by Actor-Network Theory, to understand the dynamics of human rights field work in IGO field missions. Its approach is to trace relations of power in humanitarian intervention through an empirical investigation into how law is constituted, deployed, adapted, and redefined in human rights field work. This project relies upon in-depth interviews with human rights field officers and analysis of three central categories of texts – international treaties, UN Security Council resolutions, and human rights field reports. This research examines law in the everyday context, but in humanitarian intervention that context is an exceptional one, and both law and expertise take on particular significance in the field. The texts of law cross temporal and spatial scales to establish norma…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/41929
note: (RE)WRITING THE RULE OF LAW: TEXT AND EXPERTISE IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION by Elizabeth Marie Bruch B.A., Valparaiso University, 1986 J.D., The University of Wisconsin, 1989 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Sociology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2012 © Elizabeth Marie Bruch, 2012 ii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines humanitarian intervention through the texts and experts of human rights field work in inter-governmental organization (IGO) missions in conflict and post- conflict situations. Humanitarian intervention, understood as coercive collective intervention by the ‘international community’ against a state to protect the population(s) within that state, is one of the most challenging and controversial issues in international law and policy today. Humanitarian intervention involves the exercise of geo-political and institutional power, and it requires the massive mobilization of personnel and resources from around the world in complex and on-going projects of peacekeeping and nation building. Although humanitarian intervention is largely justified in the name of human rights and the rule of law, there has been little empirical study of the institutions and individuals conducting the work of human rights and the rule of law in contexts of intervention. Human rights field officers are primary actors as translators, instructors, advocates and practitioners of the rule of law in the field of humanitarian intervention. This research uses an approach of Institutional Ethnography, informed by Actor- Network Theory, to understand the dynamics of human rights field work in IGO field missions. Its approach is to trace relations of power in humanitarian intervention through an empirical investigation into how law is constituted, deployed, adapted, and redefined in human rights field work. This project relies upon in-depth interviews with human …
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2012-05
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0072666
language: eng
degree discipline: Sociology
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/41929