| This dissertation is a genealogy of the principle of discrimination; the injunction to distinguish between combatants and civilians at all times during war. It focuses specifically upon the emergence and development of the concept and category of the 'civilian' in international law and politics, tracing the influence of a series of discourses---gender, innocence, and civilization---on its articulation. The purpose of this dissertation is to respond to the crisis of international humanitarian law in securing, in its own words, the protection and respect of the 'civilian.' I argue that we can no longer ask what difference international humanitarian law makes, without also asking upon what differences is international humanitarian law made?; First, I set forth a genealogy of the 'civilian' as it developed in international law and politics and, in particular, to identify how this series of discourses produce the distinction. Second, I analyze how the formulation and definition of the civilian both reflects and informs configurations of domestic and international order. I begin a genealogy through a careful rereading and reassessment of the history of international humanitarian law as disseminated by legal scholars and practitioners, as well as theorists of just war traditions (Chapters 2 and 3). Subsequently, I investigate the formal treaties of international humanitarian law---the 1949 Geneva Protocols and the 1977 Protocols Additional (Chapters 5 and 6). I trace the meaning and use of the discourses of gender, innocence, and civilization during these two formative moments in the codification of the laws of war. I 'test' my argument that the conceptualization of the civilian affects the treatment of the civilian in comparative analyses of four conflicts. The first is the American Civil War and the U.S.-Indian Wars (Chapter 4) and the second is the civil wars of Guatemala and El Salvador (Chapter 7). And, finally, my concluding chapter takes up the contemporary debates on granting POW status to those captured in the ground war against 'terrorism.' In this chapter, I document the construction of the combatant and the civilian in the context of the United States' most contemporary war. |
