Justicecraft: Imagining Justice in Times of Conflict

This book is about the making of justice. Despite the growing scholarship on transitional and transformative justice, contested struggles for justice in times of political change fail to get the nuanced attention we think they deserve. It seeks to understand how the making of justice is a craft and how this process of craft making is itself a source of political change. The authors introduce a new and novel conceptual framework of justicecraft which sheds light upon political change by unpacking five key elements—the skills, knowledge, labor, affect, and materiality—involved in contested struggles for justice. Justicecraft illuminates the stories and struggles for justice, enabling a greater understanding of accompanying social, political, and cultural shifts in society which unfold during times of conflict. By framing justice as craft, the authors offer a more fluid understanding of how people are producing justice on the ground—and identify the means, the instruments, the language, and claims involved in the process. Each chapter applies the framework of justicecraft to diverse global case illustrations of struggles against past, present, and future injustices and wrongdoings and draws out the key elements embedded in these processes. Lauren Balasco is Associate Professor of Political Science at Stockton University in Galloway, New Jersey. Eliza Garnsey is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in International Relations at the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, London. Arnaud Kurze is Associate Professor of Justice Studies at Montclair State University. Christopher Lamont is Professor of International Relations at Tokyo International University and Visiting Senior Researcher at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at the University of Tokyo.