Human Rights in Global Perspective: Anthropological Studies of Rights, Claims and Entitlements

4e de couv.: The liberal modern West often pays lip-service to universal notions of human rights without considering how these work in local contexts and across moral, ethical and legal codes. Do human rights agendas helpfully address the problems people face, or are they better understood as a regimental imposition of Western values onto largelynon-western communities? The aim of this volume is to understand, from an anthropological perspective, the consequences of the rise of rights discussions and institutions in both local and global politics. Its chapters develop what could be termed a social critique of rights agendas and the legal process, examining how these construct certain types of subjects, such as victims and perpetrators, and certain types of act, such as common crimes versus crimes against humanity. This framing of the social worldoften unjutly neglect s the complex range of perspectives involved in rights processes, and elides the inherent ambiguity of social life. Bringing together ethnographic perspectives from Europe, North America, India and South Africa, this volume restores the social dimension to rights processes, and suggests some ethical alternatives to current practice.