Beyond rights talk and culture talk : comparative essays on the politics of rights and culture / [edited by] Mahmood Mamdani.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Mamdani, Mahmood, 1946-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human rights.

Culture.

Physical Description:

v, 170 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Summary:

These essays bring together comparative material from experiences as diverse as Tanzania, Nigerian, India, South Africa, and the US. They have the merit of illuminating vital tensions in a period of transition and contention: on the one hand, between individual freedom and culture freedom, and on the other between freedom and justice. By placing each in this worldly context, they analyze the politics of culture talk and race talk.

Contents:

1. 'Culture' and human rights: orientalising, occidentalising and authenticity / Martin Chanock 15

2. Contradictory perspectives on rights and justice in the context of land tenure reform in Tanzania / Issa G Shivji 37

3. Were the critics right about rights? Reassessing the American debate about rights in the post-reform era / Kimberle Crenshaw 61

4. State, community and the debate on the uniform civil code in India / Nivedita Menon 75

5. Religious revivalism, human rights activism and the struggle for women's rights in Nigeria / Hussaina Abdullah 96

6. Tensions in legal and religious values in the 1996 South African Constitution / Ebrahim Moosa 121

7. The African customary law of marriage and the rights conundrum / Thandabantu Nhlapo 136.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 158-165) and index.

ISBN:

031223497X

0312234988

OCLC:

43567301