Awards

• Winner of Honorable Mention, 2025 Best Female Scholar Book Award, Peace Studies Section, International Studies Association.

Overview

As of 2023, over nine million Colombians have secured official recognition as victims of an armed conflict that has lasted decades. The category of ""victim"" is not a mere description of having suffered harm, but a political status and a potential site of power.In Good Victims, Roxani Krystalli investigates the politics of victimhood as a feminist question. Based on in-depth engagement in Colombia over the course of a decade, Krystalli argues for the possibilities of politics through, rather than in opposition to, the status of ""victim."" Encompassing acts of care, agency, and haunting, the politics of victimhood entangle people who identify as victims, researchers, and transitional justice professionals. Krystalli shows how victimhood becomes a pillar of reimagining the state in the wake of war, and of bringing a vision of that state into being through bureaucratic encounters. Good Victims also sheds light on the ethical and methodological dilemmas that arise when contemplating the legacies of transitional justice mechanisms.

Full Product Details

9780197764534

Table of Contents

Reviews

Roxani Krystalli always makes me re-think. Here she innovatively uses ethnographic skills to deepen our understanding of who creates post-war hierarchies of victims--and how they go about doing it--and why. Krystalli shows us what feminist IR can reveal not only in Colombia, but in Rwanda, Bosnia and Ukraine. * Cynthia Enloe, author of Twelve Feminist Lessons of War * Roxani Krystalli's book is an effective tool to convey the complexities of victims' reparations in the interlocked and intertwined realm of transitional justice processes. Beautifully written and well-timed, this ambitious book presents and unboxes the comprehensive ecosystem of state institutions, victims, and other social actors composed of hierarchies of power, competition over resources, and claims to legitimacy. The book also lays bare the difficulties as well as the beauty of the craft of research on transitional justice issues. The book comes at a crucial time, when domestic and international policymakers, civil society leaders, and scholars are evaluating progress and implications for lasting peace after decades of work on transitional justice. * Angelika Rettberg, Professor of Political Science, University of the Andes * In Krystalli's thought-provoking and often moving book, she focuses on this 'institutionality' and how the bureaucrats that populate it-not just the wartime violence-make victims through 'bureaucratic affirmation' [...]. The book is an essential introduction to the Colombian state and its transitional justice institutions, increasingly popular subjects [...] It will also speak to those already intimately familiar with the country, through the way Krystalli reflects the hope, generosity, and joy of her interlocutors, alongside the grief and frustration. * Latin American Politics and Society *

Roxani Krystalli always makes me re-think. Here she innovatively uses ethnographic skills to deepen our understanding of who creates post-war hierarchies of victims * and how they go about doing itand why. Krystalli shows us what feminist IR can reveal not only in Colombia, but in Rwanda, Bosnia and Ukraine.Cynthia Enloe, author of Twelve Feminist Lessons of War * Roxani Krystalli's book is an effective tool to convey the complexities of victims' reparations in the interlocked and intertwined realm of transitional justice processes. Beautifully written and well-timed, this ambitious book presents and unboxes the comprehensive ecosystem of state institutions, victims, and other social actors composed of hierarchies of power, competition over resources, and claims to legitimacy. The book also lays bare the difficulties as well as the beauty of the craft of research on transitional justice issues. The book comes at a crucial time, when domestic and international policymakers, civil society leaders, and scholars are evaluating progress and implications for lasting peace after decades of work on transitional justice. * Angelika Rettberg, Professor of Political Science, University of the Andes *

Author Information

Roxani Krystalli is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the University of St Andrews. Her research and teaching focus on feminist peace and conflict studies, as well as on the politics of nature and place. Krystalli's work within and beyond the academy is aimed at understanding how people reimagine worlds in the wake of loss.

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