Binding: Hardcover
Description: A chilling global history of the human shield phenomenon. From Syrian civilians locked in iron cages to veterans joining peaceful indigenous water protectors at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation from Sri Lanka to Iraq and from Yemen to the United States human beings have been used as shields for protection coercion or deterrence. Over the past decade human shields have also appeared with increasing frequency in antinuclear struggles civil and environmental protests and even computer games. The phenomenon however is by no means a new one. Describing the use of human shields in key historical and contemporary moments across the globe Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini demonstrate how the increasing weaponization of human beings has made the position of civilians trapped in theaters of violence more precarious and their lives more expendable. They show how the law facilitates the use of lethal violence against vulnerable people while portraying it as humane but they also reveal how people can and do use their own vulnerability to resist violence and denounce forms of dehumanization. Ultimately Human Shields unsettles our common ethical assumptions about violence and the law and urges us to imagine entirely new forms of humane politics.
Title: Human Shields A History Of People In The Line Of Fire
Author(s): Perugini Nicola
Publisher: University Of California Press
Barcode: 9780520301849
Pages: 312 Pages, 36 B-W Illustrations
Publication Date: 8/25/2020
Category: General & World History