Abstract
This is a book about a form of activism that has gained significant traction in recent years, namely video activism by human rights organisations. Sandra Ristovska defines video activism as ‘a various set of practices that document and voice critique against global instantiations of civil, political, economic, cultural, environmental, and social injustice’ (p. 2). She even goes as far as calling this relatively new form of activism ‘a proxy profession’, which in her view does not qualify as a traditional profession but by virtue of the fact that it ‘places video in institutional and legal service’, ‘this proxy profession is legitimized within the existing structures of NGOs, enabling human rights collectives to claim visual expertise and facilitating their role as a broker between publics and various institutions serving public needs’ (p. 3). By focusing on video activism, Ristovska hopes to be able to tell a larger story about the intertwining of facts, politics and emotions and the affective turn in politics. The book is guided by the following questions: What are the circumstances that facilitate the emerging institutional and legal turn to human rights video? How and why are the journalistic, legal, and political institutions that help legitimize human rights claims incorporating video? How and to what end is this turn to video affecting the relationships among human rights activists and institutional authorities? How and under what circumstances does visual information shape institutional and legal decision making? Whose expertise matters in rendering human rights video meaningful and why? (p. 2).
Ristovska's work is based on seven years of qualitative research, incorporating 60 interviews, site visits, and textual analysis of videos, documents, training guides and court trial transcripts. The book is split into six chapters on institutions, agents and practices; the salience of video as a human rights tool; human rights video in journalism, court and political advocacy; and ‘the proxy profession and the power of human rights voices’ (p. 177). It will indeed be of interest to scholars of various disciplines as well as human rights activists and potentially even members of the general public.