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.
Brief description: Assistant Professor of Conflict Analysis and Anthropology at George Mason University.
Review Quotes: "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