Papers by Alvina Hoffmann
Global Studies Quarterly, 2023
How do we study the UN Security Council, a bastion of sovereign nation-state politics, from the p... more How do we study the UN Security Council, a bastion of sovereign nation-state politics, from the perspective of 'outsiders' such as UN special rapporteurs? This article reimagines the relationship between security and human rights at the UN through a social space approach. By challenging institutional and geographical boundaries between the Security Council in New York and the Human Rights Council Geneva, I follow actors in a social space in which transversal lines connecting security and human rights become visible. I uncover a social space that is animated by actors, their relations and social positions relative to each other as well as connections between institutions, geographical locations, practical competencies and material infrastructures. On this basis, I theorise four distinct boundary-blurring practices of UN special rapporteurs: between the issue areas of human rights and security, between the geographical locations of New York and Geneva, between institutions such as the Security Council, Human Rights Council and the OHCHR, and between the domains of politics and law. While these practices help them enter into the social space of the Security Council in New York, special rapporteurs need to pay 'entry costs' by accepting the basic premises of the counter-terrorism architecture in return for recognition as valid actors in this architecture. Taking this viewpoint from the outside, I argue, illuminates the extension of the Security Council beyond its institutional confines and uncovers 'the human-rightization' of global security policy.
European Journal of International Relations, 2023
This article argues that spokespersons who claim to speak on behalf of a social group cannot esca... more This article argues that spokespersons who claim to speak on behalf of a social group cannot escape the structural problem of delegation whereby speaking in someone's name entails speaking instead of someone. This form of delegated and authorised silencing through the promise of empowerment imposes symbolic violence on a group which recognises the spokesperson as a valid representative, without recognising its own potential disenfranchisement. I build on Pierre Bourdieu's sociological writings on language and symbolic power to theorise the trajectories of authorisation of spokespersons. In doing so, I critically engage with theories in International Relations which rely on a separation between speaker and audience to analyse the legitimation of political speech. Instead, I reformulate the speaker/audience relation through the concept of symbolic power and introduce the category of the spoken-for. When spokespersons struggle over symbolic power, they seek to impose social classificatory categories on social groups and spaces. I illustrate these dynamics in the context of human rights politics in Crimea, showing how various spokespersons are engaged in a symbolic struggle over 'authenticity' of their speech and the 'universal' of human rights. I conclude by suggesting new lines of inquiry to analyse creative strategies to mitigate the spokesperson problem.
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2021
What can we learn about the 'international' through the 'transnational'? This article investigate... more What can we learn about the 'international' through the 'transnational'? This article investigates transnational spaces and practices in the context of international law and their transformative influence on our understanding of the international. I argue that the relationship between the transnational and the international is not dichotomous, but an expression of the shifting location of power and authority in social relations across scales. The article contributes to this special issue by tracing dynamics of actualisation and reification of the international in various literatures. Reviewing uses of the 'transnational' in law and International Relations, I first show how the concept was used to unsettle the reason of state that defines both disciplines. The second part explores the relationship of the transnational and international through Bourdieusian studies of international law, in which the transnational is used as a strategic space for action generative of new legal practices and a social space in which actors who hold various capitals participate in shaping international law. Finally, I analyse how international political sociology has unsettled both the transnational and the international through the image of transversal lines cutting across these spaces.
This paper provides an overview of the historical development, contemporary discourses, and chall... more This paper provides an overview of the historical development, contemporary discourses, and challenges of the urbanization of warfare for international humanitarian law (IHL). By drawing on critical urbanism studies, official military documents, and doctrines, this paper highlights the mutually constitutive relationship between warfare and militarization, with a particular focus on the American armed forces and argues that IHL in its current form is unable to guarantee a humanitarian conduct of war in compliance with its principles of proportionality and precaution. Using the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a case study, this paper will shed light on the decisive role of the occupying power and its deliberate transformation of the urban battlefield into a militarized zone by targeting dual-use infrastructure and employing discourse and techniques on the ground to securitize urban zones. Therefore, by arguing in favour of the application of customary IHL, which emerges from state practice rather than treaties or conventions, an attempt can be made to close these loopholes. As a more general conclusion, this paper suggests that the mutually constitutive relationship between urbanization and warfare has to become more explicit in military doctrines in order to highlight the responsibility of occupying forces.
Book Reviews by Alvina Hoffmann
Book review of Janina Dill (2015) Legitimate targets? Social construction, international law and ... more Book review of Janina Dill (2015) Legitimate targets? Social construction, international law and US bombing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 385pp. £49.95. isbn 978 1 10705 675 6. Available as e-book.
Published in International Affairs, Volume 92, Issue 5, 1 September 2016, pp. 1260-1
Articles by Alvina Hoffmann
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2021
The contributions to this Forum on Ritual and Authority in World Politics examine the role that r... more The contributions to this Forum on Ritual and Authority in World Politics examine the role that ritual performances play in the constitution of positions of authority and the maintenance of relations of authority in historical and contemporary international relations. The Forum takes as its point of departure three related observations: (i) that recent years have witnessed a remarkable upsurge of interest in ritual as a recurring feature of international practice, but (ii) that this recent interest in ritual has not extended, thus far, to the study of international authority, (iii) in spite of political anthropologists' long-standing claim that the performance of ritual is absolutely crucial to the production of authority. The performance of ritual grounds, makes tangible and enhances various forms of authority, including forms of international authority, historical and contemporary. The contributions to this Forum demonstrate the veracity of that claim in five different empirical contexts-Byzantine diplomacy, early modern cross-cultural encounters, British imperialism in India, military lawyering in America's armed forces, and the casting of ballots in Crimea and the US-and attempt also to explain precisely how it is that ritual served to undergird and stabilise authority in these various instances.
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Papers by Alvina Hoffmann
Book Reviews by Alvina Hoffmann
Published in International Affairs, Volume 92, Issue 5, 1 September 2016, pp. 1260-1
Articles by Alvina Hoffmann
Published in International Affairs, Volume 92, Issue 5, 1 September 2016, pp. 1260-1