This book provides academics and lay persons with Kafkaesque readings of our memories of the 2007 Nisour Square shootings in Iraq. The author uses critical analyses of the rise of Blackwater, support for private security firms and private contracting, prosecutorial and defense preparations and the 2014 jury trial to argue that most observers have drastically underestimated the groundswell of support that existed for Erik Prince and many other defenders of military or security outsourcing. This book puts on display the cultural, legal, and political difficulties that confronted those who wanted to try former Blackwater security guards in the name of belated social justice.

Providing a comparative study on celebrity advocacy - from the work of Bono, George Clooney, Madonna, Greg Mortenson, and Kim Kardashian West - this book provides scholars and readers with a better understanding of some of the short-term and long-term impacts of various forms of celebrity activism. Each chapter illustrates how the impoverished rhetoric of celebrities often privileges the voices of those in the Global North over the efforts of local NGOs who have been working for years at addressing the same humanitarian crises. Whether we are talking about the building of schools for young women in Afghanistan or the satellite surveillance of potential genocidal acts carried out in the Sudan, various forms of celebrity advocacy resonate with scholars and members of the public who want to be seen "doing something." The author argues that more often than not, celebrity advocacy enhances a celebrity's reputation - but hinders the efforts of those who ask us to pay attention to the historical, structural, and material causes of these humanitarian crises.

Providing a comparative study on celebrity advocacy - from the work of Bono, George Clooney, Madonna, Greg Mortenson, and Kim Kardashian West - this book provides scholars and readers with a better understanding of some of the short-term and long-term impacts of various forms of celebrity activism. Each chapter illustrates how the impoverished rhetoric of celebrities often privileges the voices of those in the Global North over the efforts of local NGOs who have been working for years at addressing the same humanitarian crises. Whether we are talking about the building of schools for young women in Afghanistan or the satellite surveillance of potential genocidal acts carried out in the Sudan, various forms of celebrity advocacy resonate with scholars and members of the public who want to be seen "doing something." The author argues that more often than not, celebrity advocacy enhances a celebrity's reputation - but hinders the efforts of those who ask us to pay attention to the historical, structural, and material causes of these humanitarian crises.

The stories that are told about the death of Osama bin Laden are interculturally significant as a reminder of the many culturally contested junctures, fissures, and ruptures that circulate in the "true" stories that are told about Operation Neptune's Spear. This book's critical intercultural approach investigates what U.S. and international audiences were saying about other cultures while they wrote and talked about the bin Laden raid. The book explains why so many elite and public cultural communities have a vested interest in telling the story of "what happened" during the famous raid. The authors argue that these mediated debates have become inextricably entangled in political, military, cultural, and legal rhetorics of "American exceptionalism", where various U.S. and international audiences defend or attack particular interpretations of the raid and comment on the unique values and characteristics of America's Way of War. This important book gives readers a sense of what these exceptionalist rhetorics look like when they circulate in different cultural and military contexts.

This book provides readers with a critical analysis of the restorative justice efforts of the Ovaherero and Nama communities in Namibia, who contend that they should receive reparations for what happened to their ancestors during, and after the 1904–1908 German-Ovaherero/Nama war. Arguing that indigenous communities who once lived in a German colony called “German South West Africa” suffered from a genocide that could be compared to the World War II Holocaust Namibian activists sued Germany and German corporations in U.S. federal courts for reparations. The author of this book uses a critical genealogical approach to all of this “lawfare” (the politicizing of the law) in order to illustrate some of the historical origins of this quest for social justice. Portions of the book also explain some of the historical and contemporary realpolitik barriers that stood in the way of Ovaherero and Nama activists who were asking for acknowledgments of the “Namibian genocide,” apologies from German officials, repatriation of human remains from colonial times as well as restitution that might help with land redistribution in today’s Namibia. This book shows many of the difficulties that confront those indigenous communities who ask twenty-first century audiences to pay restitution for large-scale colonial massacres or imperial genocides that might have taken place more than a hundred years ago.

Representing Ebola provides readers with a critical legal analysis of the recent West African Ebola Outbreak. The author argues that a review of the scientific, military, legal, economic, political, and mediated coverage of this latest outbreak highlights the ways that organizations like the World Health Organization or Doctors Without Borders want to conceptualize the importance of rapid emergence from the West during African Ebola epidemics. The author concludes that while the U.S. military and other organizations prided themselves on their belated responses to this outbreak oftentimes journalists, scientists, and others overlooked the contributions that were made by contract tracers and indigenous public health workers. Sadly, the 2013-2015 West African outbreak took the lives of thousands of individuals, and the author contends that this contributed to sensationalist ways of representing local burial and food habits. The book concludes by noting that while many West African leaders appreciated the billions of dollars of promised aid that would flow toward this region in the wake of the Ebola outbreak real "health security" measures have to involve longer term infrastructural changes. Talk of how Westerners rescued the West Africans need to be augmented with more nuanced ways of thinking about how many of those who actually battled Ebola need to become part of future conversations regarding everything from theories of "aerial" transmission to the steps that need to be taken during the first few weeks of recorded outbreaks.