Torture: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Drawing on insights from political science, criminology, and sociology, Torture: An Interdisciplinary Approach investigates the nature and evolution of torture. By surveying the use of torture across time and space, this book considers the development of an international human rights discourse challenging the legitimacy of torture as an instrument of interrogation.

Kathleen Barrett, George Klay Kieh, Jr., Gavin M. Lee, and Neema Noori critically assess the effectiveness of legal regimes, both national and international, that arose as a result of this discourse and the emergent global movement to ban the use of torture. In addition to grappling with colonial legacies of torture and the particular ways that great powers, whether liberal or illiberal, deploy these coercive practices, this book argues that torture continues to serve as a repressive practice that mediates the relationship between the state and its citizens in many countries within the global south. The authors demonstrate that as governments move away from one set of perceived atrocities, they develop new methods of torture and establish novel strategies for justifying these coercive practices.