Anthropology of human rights

The unit introduces you to cross-cultural notions of human rights. Anthropology places human rights in broader analyses of power, politics and social inequality. Political leaders in various countries dismiss human rights as a Western concept that cannot be universalised. At the same time, tensions exist between anthropological notions of cultural plurality and relativism and the universalism inherent in dominant human rights discourse. Yet critical representatives of the discipline argue that anthropologists are ethically bound to defend human rights. This unit will explore the debates within anthropology over human rights. It will explore related notions of conflict, structural violence, peace, law and human rights activism with ethnographic examples from a range of geographic and sociocultural settings. In doing so, this unit will introduce you to key concepts and debates in the anthropology of human rights and provide fresh, rich understandings of local-global frictions and the operation of power.