In this analytical essay, we situate truth commissions as relevant sites for International Relations (IR) research, in particular on professional communities and knowledge hierarchies. With an empirical focus on report-making, we argue that there is a need to rethink and revise established professional community concepts. While these concepts stress professional communities’ detachment from mundane pressures, we suggest a “pressure lens” to better grasp the key dynamics of expert knowledge production. Based on in-depth interpretive research on three truth commissions—in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and Tunisia—we set out to identify key dynamics in the report-making of truth commissions that contribute to the gap between high expectations and sobering realities regarding truth commissions as “victim-centred” policy instruments. Understanding the dynamics at play requires us to pay attention to unequal pressures—such as time and funding pressures, powerholder interference, and demands voiced by victims and survivors—that bear on the work of experts and professionals who produce truth commission reports. We argue that these pressures and, crucially, the ways in which they tend to play out under conditions of coloniality, are expressions of global hierarchies that shape professional report-making work.

中文翻译：

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全球等级制度和真相委员会报告中的不平等压力


在这篇分析文章中，我们将真相委员会视为国际关系（IR）研究的相关场所，特别是在专业社区和知识层次结构方面。通过对报告制作的实证关注，我们认为有必要重新思考和修改既定的专业社区概念。虽然这些概念强调专业社区摆脱世俗压力，但我们建议使用“压力透镜”来更好地掌握专家知识生产的关键动态。基于对塞拉利昂、肯尼亚和突尼斯三个真相委员会的深入解释性研究，我们着手确定真相委员会报告制作中的关键动态，这些动态导致了真相委员会的高期望与清醒的现实之间的差距作为“以受害者为中心”的政策工具。了解其中的动态需要我们关注不平等的压力，例如时间和资金压力、当权者的干预以及受害者和幸存者提出的要求，这些压力对制作真相委员会报告的专家和专业人士的工作产生影响。我们认为，这些压力，以及最重要的是，它们在殖民条件下的表现方式，是塑造专业报告制作工作的全球等级制度的表现。