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The Practice of Human Rights Tracking Law Between the Global and the Local
By
Mark Goodale, Sally Engle Merry
Description
Human rights are
now the dominant approach to social justice globally. But how do
human rights work? What do they do? Drawing on anthropological
studies of human rights work from around the world, this book
examines human rights in practice. It shows how groups and
organizations mobilize human rights language in a variety of local
settings, often differently from those imagined by human rights law
itself. The case studies reveal the contradictions and ambiguities of
human rights approaches to various forms of violence. They show that
this openness is not a failure of universal human rights as a
coherent legal or ethical framework but an essential element in the
development of living and organic ideas of human rights in context.
Studying human rights in practice means examining the channels of
communication and institutional structures that mediate between
global ideas and local situations. Suitable for use on
inter-disciplinary courses globally.
• Breaks new
ground by approaching the study of human rights through a series of
problems that require an interdisciplinary approach • The
volume’s four sections (violence, power, vulnerability, and
ambiguity) are divided thematically without regard to traditional
categories within human rights studies • Gives readers with
different disciplinary backgrounds and interests the ability to see
the issues under consideration from a range of angles
Contents
Introduction -
locating rights, envisioning law between the global and the local
Mark Goodale; Part I. States of Violence: 1. Introduction Sally Engle
Merry; 2. The violence of rights - human rights as culprit, human
rights as victim Daniel Goldstein; 3. Double-binds of self and
secularism in Nepal - religion, democracy, identity and rights Lauren
Leve; Part II. Registers of Power: 4. Introduction Laura Nader; 5.
The power of right(s) - tracking empires of law and new modes of
social resistance in Bolivia (and elsewhere) Mark Goodale; 6.
Exercising rights and reconfiguring resistance in the the Zapatista
Shannon Speed; Part III. Conditions of Vulnerability: 7. Introduction
Sally Engle Merry; 8. Rights to indigenous culture in Colombia Jean
Jackson; 9. The 2000 UN Human Trafficking Protocol - rights,
enforcement, vulnerabilities Kay Warren; Part IV. Encountering
Ambivalence: 10. Introduction Balakrishnan Rajagopal; 11.
Transnational legal conflict between peasants and corporations in
Burma - human rights and discursive ambivalence under the U.S. Alien
Tort Claims Act John Dale; 12. Being Swazi, Being Human - custom,
constitutionalism and human rights in an African monarchy Sari
Wastell; 13. Conclusion - Tyrannosaurus Lex - The Anthropology of
human rights and transnational law Richard Ashby Wilson.
Reviews
‘This
collection makes a compelling case for human rights as a new focus of
anthropological research, evidence of a discipline in lively
transition. Even more fundamentally, the range of projects and
commitments expressed in the essays point to key locations - at once
political, ethical, and experiential - in the new legal geography of
globalism, as the contributors map the uneven horizons and pathways
along which human rights are today asserted, defended, and
contested.’ Carol Greenhouse, Professor of Anthropology,
Princeton University
‘A
compelling book. The anthropologists here are also
interdisciplinarists. The reconfiguration of institutions, resistance
movements and everyday expectations brought about by the very idea of
human rights demands a reconfiguring of approaches from the social
observer. The authors shrink from neither the questions nor the
answers thrown up by human rights efforts in practice. By focusing on
issues of violence, power, vulnerability and people\\\\\\\'s ambivalence,
they offer insights that mould a new kind of realism.’ Marilyn
Strathern, William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology, University
of Cambridge
Human rights\\\\\\\' has
become one of the key ideas of contemporary world-making. This book
places it in an open intellectual landscape, where well-informed
scholars come together to engage in close scrutiny of its translation
into political and legal practice, in a wide range of settings from
the Chiapas of the Zapatistas to the Myanmar of the military junta.
Their global reach and theoretical sophistication contribute
impressively to the vitality of the idea itself, and to the growth of
understanding of its uses.’ Ulf Hannerz, Stockholm University
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