The practice of human rights : tracking law between the global and the local / editors, Mark Goodale and Sally Engle Merry.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Goodale, Mark, editor.

Merry, Sally Engle, 1944-2020, editor.

Series:

Cambridge studies in law and society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human rights.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 384 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2007.

System Details:

text file

PDF

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Introduction. Locating rights, envisioning law between the global and the local / Mark Goodale

part I. States of violence

Introduction / Sally Engle Merry

Human rights as culprit, human rights as victim: rights and security in the states of exception / Daniel M. Goldstein

"Secularism is a human right!": double-binds of Buddhism, democracy, and identity in Nepal / Lauren Leve

part II. Registers of power

Introduction / Laura Nader

The power of right(s): tracking empires of law and new modes of social resistance in Bolivia (and elsewhere) / Mark Goodale

Exercising rights and reconfiguring resistance in the Zapatista Juntas de Buen Gobierno / Shannon Speed

part III. Conditions of vulnerability

Rights to indigenous culture in Colombia / Jean E. Jackson

The 2000 UN Human Trafficking Protocol: rights, enforcement, vulnerabilities / Kay Warren

part IV. Encountering ambivalence

Introduction / Balakrishnan Rajagopal

Transnational legal conflict between peasants and corporations in Burma: human rights and discursive ambivalence under the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act / John G. Dale

Being Swazi, being human: custom, constitutionalism and human rights in an African polity / Sari Wastell

Conclusion. Tyrannosaurus lex: the anthropology of human rights and transnational law / Richard Ashby Wilson.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9780511819193

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.