Dr M Engelke, A609

For MSc Social Anthropology, MSc Anthropology and Development, MSc China in Comparative Perspective, MSc Human Rights, MSc Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies. and other degree programmes as permitted by the regulations.

The tension between respect for “local cultures” and “universal rights” is a pressing concern within human rights activism. In the past decade, anthropologists have been increasingly involved in these discussions, working to situate their understandings of cultural relativism within a broader framework of social justice. This course explores the contributions of anthropology to the theoretical and practical concerns of human rights work. The term begins by reading a number of key human rights documents and theoretical texts. These readings are followed by selections in anthropology on the concepts of relativism and culture. Students will then be asked to relate their understandings of human rights to the historical and cultural dimensions of a particular case, addressing such questions as the nature of humanity, historical conceptions of the individual, colonialism and imperialism, the limits of relativism, and the relationship between human rights in theory and in practice. Case studies will include: gay rights in southern Africa; genocide in Rwanda; the plight of the Yanomami in South America; state violence in Guatemala; and Aboriginal land tenure in Australia.

Lectures weekly LT, seminars weekly LT.

Students are expected to prepare discussion material for classes/seminars and are required to write Assessment essays.

M Ishay (Ed), The Human Rights Reader: Major Political Essays, Speeches, and Documents from the Bible to the Present; P G Lauren The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen; E Messer, “Anthropology and Human Rights” Annual Review of Anthropology 1993; J Cowan et al (Eds), Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives; R Wilson (Ed), Human Rights, Culture, and Context: Anthropological Perspectives; R Rorty, “Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality” in S Shute & S Hurley (Eds), On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures; F Boas, “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology” in Bohannon & Glazer (Eds), High Points in Anthropology; F Boas, “On Alternating Sounds” in G W Stocking (Ed), The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911: A Franz Boas Reader; C Geertz, “The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man” in The Interpretation of Cultures; T Turner, “Human Rights, Human Difference: Anthropology’s Contribution to an Emancipatory Cultural Politics” Journal of Anthropological Research 1997. Detailed reading lists are provided at the beginning of the course.

There is a two-hour examination in the ST.