All required readings and ‘optional’ background readings are included in a course reader which is available for purchase at the University’s book store.  Students are expected to have read all the required readings for each meeting of the class on which they are listed as being subject to discussion.  Persistent failure to demonstrate awareness of and familiarity with the topics in the reading is not acceptable, although the instructor does understand the exigencies of studying while working and family-related conflicts.  Please make every effort to do the reading for the seminar meeting in which it will be discussed as your ability to participate and the outcome of the unit depends upon active engagement.

Every effort has been made to acquire copies of material on the extended supplementary bibliography, but that has not always been possible due to the library’s purchasing policy and holdings.  If students are looking for additional readings and having any difficulties, please contact the convenor.  For the purposes of this unit, students are encouraged to make use of outside resources for their research projects, but please see the note below on research resources.

Additional resources will be made available on-line through the unit's iLearn website.  This will include primary documents (such as original human rights documents), links to organizations working specifically on the various topics, and other resources.

The course this year is making more use of online resources and will be co-convened by two instructors, in a change from previous years.

For those students particularly interested in this material, you are welcome to attend one of the co-convenor’s lectures in Anthropology 323, ‘Culture & Human Rights’.  The topics in that unit are not identical with ours (especially in the last four weeks).  Please talk with the convenors to get a lecture schedule or consult the online Units database at mq.edu.au.

The undergraduate lectures meet from 9-11 am Fridays, in room W5C 320.

1. Introduction and overview

In the introductory session, we will discuss the overall agenda for the unit.  In particular, we will introduce the problems anthropologists have had in the past dealing with human rights in spite of the fact that the field has long been dedicated to recognition of minority groups and the value of marginalized people, one of the principle agendas of the human rights movement.  In fact, one of the reasons for the changing relationship of human rights to anthropology is the relative youth of the human rights movement.  The first human rights documents of the modern era are less than sixty years old, and they are understood very differently now than they were when they were first written.  The introductory session will offer a brief background to the history and development of human rights and the notion of ‘economic development’ in the wake of colonialism, but we will also talk about the roots of human rights thinking in various world traditions. 

Optional background reading

• Lauren, Paul Gorden.  2003.  My Brother’s and Sister’s Keeper: Visions and the Birth of Human Rights.  In The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen.  Second Edition.  Pp. 4-36.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

2. Anthropology, relativism and intervention

Anthropologists have had a changing relationship with human rights, one that definitely got off on the wrong foot.  From the onset of the modern human rights movement, many anthropologists perceived a contradiction between their ‘cultural relativism’ and the universalist language in which human rights documents were drafted.  Anthropologists have struggled long and hard with the implications of human rights, and their discussions have had an effect both on the field of anthropology and the practice of human rights. 

During this week’s discussion, we will scratch the surface of a huge, contentious literature on the relationship between relativism and universalism in the anthropology of human rights.  We will begin the semester-long discussion of the pitfalls and practicalities of this intersection by discussing it in theoretical terms, turning to the history of both anthropology and human rights.  How do we understand ‘culture’ in respect to rights?  What role does respect for cultural diversity play in the campaign for increased respect for human rights?  Does the use of human rights as a tool by anthropologists rebound back upon the field and affect what anthropologists do?  Have the two streams of thought come to any sort of working agreement on how they might cooperate?

In fact, anthropologists have a long history of advocating for marginalized people, of drawing attention to structural violence, and of attempting to redress basic injustice, including racism and other forms of prejudice.  And yet many anthropologists are still uncomfortable with human rights, in spite of the fact that we are surrounded by the modern movement for these rights.

Readings 

• Engle, Karen.  2001.  From Skepticism to Embrace: Human Rights and the American Anthropological Association from 1947-1999.  Human Rights Quarterly 23:536-559. 
• Merry, Sally Engle.  2003.  Human Rights Law and the Demonization of Culture (and Anthropology Along the Way).  PoLAR Political and Legal Anthropology Review 26(1):55-76.
• _____.  2001.  Changing Rights, Changing Culture. In Culture and Rights.  J. Cowan, M. Dembour and R. Wilson, eds.  Pp. 31-56.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Optional background reading 

• Goodale, Mark.  2006.  Toward a Critical Anthropology of Human Rights.  Current Anthropology 47(3): 485-511.

3. Cross-cultural disagreement: the case of ‘cruelty’ 

In order to think more deeply about the problems confronting any attempt to define universal values, we will examine the ban on cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  This curb upon torture and inhumane treatment of an individual is probably the most basic human rights restraint upon the power of the state.  But what sorts of punishment does it actually ban?  Can there, in fact, be a clear standard of what would constitute an offense, or does the wording simply defer crucial questions?  Should there be a clear definition of what constitutes torture?  Should any ban be unconditional, or might there be situations in which a state might legitimately punish someone in a way that other societies might find cruel?  And why should this particular offense be singled out as demanding strong enforcement? 

This week considers the case of torture and punishment in light of some of the most difficult cases, such as the death penalty, treatment of children, torture of terrorism suspects, Shari’a-based arguments for corporal punishment, and blind spots in the human rights community’s attempts to address violations of this principle.  We will read one of the leading liberal Muslim scholars on his pragmatic approach to fighting cruel punishment and a prominent anthropological critic of the West and its universalizing assumptions about human nature.  These two readings are not merely contrasting perspectives; they are demonstrations of different ways to think about human rights-related theoretical problems. 

Readings

• An-Na`im, Abdullahi Ahmed.  1992.  Toward a Cross-Cultural Approach to Defining International Standards of Human Rights: The Meaning of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.  In Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Consensus.  Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im, ed.  Pp. 19-43.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 
• Asad, Talal. 1997.  On Torture, or Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment.  In Human Rights, Culture and Context.  Wilson, Richard, ed. Pp. 111-133.  London: Pluto Press.

Optional background reading 

• Hastrup, Kristen.  2003.  Violence, Suffering and Human Rights: Anthropological Reflections.  Anthropological Theory 3(3):309-323.

4. Cultures of injustice: the effects on society

One area for innovative research in anthropology, a field of study with broad implications, is the study of cultures of violence and the effects of human rights violations on society more broadly.  Although the cost of human rights violations in terms of direct human suffering is already massive and difficult to calculate, this anthropological research into the long-term effects of systematic violence on those who suffer it, those who commit it, or simply those who witness from the sidelines, helps us to better understand the sorts of social and cultural effects of violence that can lead to cycles of suffering.  This week we will consider human rights violations as social and cultural forces by looking at the effects of repressive regimes that committed massive human rights violations over long periods of time, specifically in Central and Latin America and Southeast Asia. 

Our goal is not to explain away or justify human rights violations but to understand the social, political, cultural and psychological dynamics that can lead to mounting violations.  In essence, we will be exploring the role of human rights violations in shaping culture and society, including long-term traumatic effects on victims, violators, and bystanders.  In particular, we will look at Argentina, Guatemala, and Cambodia.

Readings

• Hinton, Alexander Laban.  2004.  Why Did You Kill?: The Cambodian Genocide and the Dark Side of Face and Honor.  In Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology.  Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Phillipe Bourgois, eds. Pp. 157-168.  Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. 
• Green, Linda.  1994.  Fear as a Way of Life.  Cultural Anthropology 9 (2):227-256.
• Robben, Antonius.  2004.  The Fear of Indifference: Combatants’ Anxieties about the Political Identity of Civilians during Argentina’s Dirty War. In Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology.  Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Phillipe Bourgois, eds. Pp. 200-206.  Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.

5. Rebuilding after genocide: truth, reconciliation, justice and anthropology

After a society has passed through a conflict or oppressive regime, how does it go about recovering?  What models exist for seeking justice, vengeance, truth, or reconciliation after massive human rights violations?  There are many post-conflict strategies, including general amnesties, large-scale trials, local courts, truth and reconciliation commissions, investigations and public accountings for crimes, and other institutional models, as well as cases where societies have undergone no post-conflict processes of justice or reconciliation.  Anthropologists have become directly involved in some of these processes, including both justice-based and reconciliation formats for seeking restoration of society; for example, anthropologists have become directly involved in truth commissions in Argentina and Guatemala.  While many models of social healing and justice seeking may make sense in abstraction, what does the experience of using different approaches tell us about the challenges and obstacles of recovery for a society?  Ethnographic research provides an excellent tool for assessing the effects of these diverse processes, just as it sometimes becomes a tool for carrying them out.

This week, we will look closely at concrete experiences of societies responding in the wake of massive human rights violations, especially in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America.  We will discuss the various models of post-conflict accounting, their different strengths and weaknesses, as we seek to better understand the practical needs of social healing as well as the abstract demand for justice. 

Readings

• Borneman, John.  2002.  Reconciliation after Ethnic Cleansing: Listening, Retribution, Affiliation.  Public Culture 14 (2): 281-304.
• Kelsall, Tim.  2005.  Truth, Lies, Ritual: Preliminary Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone.  Human Rights Quarterly 27:361-391. 

Optional background reading

• Power, Samantha.  2001.  Bystanders to Genocide.  The Atlantic Monthly.  Accessed on-line at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200109/power-genocide.  Accessed on 15 January 2007. 

6. Economic and social justice: the ‘Asian Challenge’

Since the fall of the Soviet Bloc, the primary fault lines of disagreement over human rights have shifted.  Whereas Eastern and Western powers once argued over the preeminence of civil or socio-economic rights, liberal or socialist values, now some Asian commentators have argued that their situation demands a different approach to human rights.  Called the ‘Asian Challenge’ by human rights scholars, this movement has argued that social and economic rights must take precedence over narrow political or civil rights when a country is undergoing development; food is more important than freedom, to put it simply.  The Asian Challenge is one of the most important examples of an attempt to argue for a cultural exemption from human rights requirements.

This week we will talk about socio-economic rights, the so-called ‘second generation’ of human rights, and their evocation by some critics of human rights advocates in Asia.  We will read an interview with Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore, one of the leading advocates of an ‘Asian’ approach to human rights (along with Mohamad Mahathir of Malaysia) and critic of Western human rights discourse.  This discussion will be a way of thinking specifically about the ‘Asian challenge’ but also more broadly about the issue of socio-economic rights and the role of culture in discussions of human rights. 

Readings

• Zakaria, Fareed.  1994.  Culture Is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew.  Foreign Affairs 73(2):109-126.
• Bell, Daniel.  1996.  The East Asian Challenge to Human Rights: Reflections on an East West Dialogue.  Human Rights Quarterly 18(3):641-667.

7. Indigenous rights 1: movement & theory

Perhaps the area of human rights law that anthropologists have had the most to say about is the rights of Indigenous peoples (only women’s rights are a close contender).  Because of anthropologists special relationship with Indigenous peoples, they have been deeply involved in the rise of Indigenous rights as an international movement.  The fact that a very strong, vital, and innovative Indigenous rights movement has emerged, however, does not mean that the relationship between anthropologists and advocates is a simple one, as this week’s readings suggest.

Since the advent of the nation state, respect for minority groups within states has typically been conditioned upon those groups’ willingness to conform to majority standards and to cooperate in national goals. Indigenous peoples have borne the brunt of this ‘conditional’ approach to citizens’ rights and have suffered some of the most brutal, unrelenting campaigns of genocide, even though they have lived in some of the earliest ‘liberal’ democracies.  Although the earliest human rights documents enshrined the right to self-determination, a tradition of considering collective rights did not really develop until the ‘third generation’ of human rights reforms. 

Recognizing collective rights to self-determination by indigenous peoples seems to pose intractable problems for modern states: How might they atone for treaty violations, massive human rights violations, or even genocide during colonization or in generations past?  What happens when the good of the minority seems to stand in the way of other goals, such as economic development?  Does the right to self-determination trump other legal guarantees, including individuals’ rights, if an indigenous group wants to preserve a ‘tradition’?  Must respect for cultural difference extend to respect for traditional forms of discrimination or domination? 

Readings

• Bowen, John. 2000. Should We Have a Universal Concept of Indigenous Peoples' Rights? Anthropology Today 16(4):12-16.
• McIntosh, Ian.  2002.  Defining Oneself, and Being Defined as, Indigenous.  Anthropology Today 18(3): 23-25, with responses.
• Kenrick, Justin, and Jerome Lewis.  2004.  Indigenous People’s Rights and the Politics of the Term ‘Indigenous’.  Anthropology Today 20(2):4-9.
• Brysk, Alison.  1996.  Turning Weakness into Strength: The Internalization of Indian Rights.  Latin American Perspectives 23: 38-57. 

Optional background reading

• Maybury-Lewis, David.  2003.  From Elimination to an Uncertain Future: Changing Policies toward Indigenous Peoples.  In At the Risk of Being Heard: Identity, Indigenous Rights, and Postcolonial States.  Edited by Bartholomew Dean and Jerome M. Levi.  Pp. 324-334.  

Midsemester Recess 

8. Indigenous rights 2: land & rights

Throughout the world, struggles for indigenous rights have frequently centered around control over land.  In many nations, including Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and Latin American countries, a long history of negotiating with indigenous peoples (including treaty violations) established legal precedents for rights to land.  In Australia, however, colonial opportunism created no such precedent, officially insisting that Australia was terra nullius, empty land for the taking when it was settled by Europeans.  In the Mabo v Queensland (No 2) decision of 1992, a new precedent was set for Aboriginal territorial rights in Australia, one that is still being widely debated in both court and public opinion.  The justices found that Aboriginal land rights were not automatically extinguished by colonists’ assertions that the indigenous Australians had no rights; instead, the courts found clear precedents in Common Law for Aboriginal land rights.  The resulting land rights claims have led to the creation of new institutions, including the Australian Native Title Tribune, and has even led Australian Federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, to declare a ‘shortage of anthropologists’, perhaps the first time in history that this phrase has been uttered.

This week we will discuss the reasoning behind both assertions of land rights and their denial, the current situation of Aboriginal land rights, and the effect on the community, both Aboriginal and Australian more broadly, of the recognition for land rights.  Land rights are a classic example of collective, or ‘third generation’, rights, linked to a community rather than to specific individuals; we will ask whether community rights make for healthy communities in part by comparing the Australian experience to others around the world.  In addition, we will try to consider some of the practical problems faced by anthropologists who get involved in land rights cases in Australia. 

Readings

• Reynolds, Henry.  1999.   New Frontiers: Australia. In Indigenous Peoples’ Rights: In Australia, Canada, & New Zealand. Havemann, Paul, ed.  Pp. 129-140. Auckland: Oxford University Press. 
• Hill, Ronald Paul.  1995.  Blackfellas and Whitefellas: Aboriginal Land Rights, the Mabo Decision, and the Meaning of Land.  Human Rights Quarterly 17(2): 303-322. 

9. Women’s rights and cultural exemptions

Women’s rights are an area where the regime of individual protection attempts to extend its influence into some of the most intimate areas of social life.  If the ‘first generation’ of rights dealt primarily with the state’s treatment of individuals, this ‘fourth generation’ asks questions about justice that extend into the household, personal relationships, treatment of children, and culture itself.  Perhaps not surprisingly, women’s rights have been one area where a range of political actors have expressed reservations about human rights documents; one need only review the extremely long list of Declarations and Reservations attached to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to see the controversial nature of some basic assertions of women’s equality. 

As Richard Wilson and others have pointed out, feminists themselves (including feminist anthropologists) are divided on the issue of human rights.  Many activists see the assertion of universal women’s rights as fundamental in the struggle against sexism, prejudice, inequality, and domestic violence globally.  For these feminists, cultural practices that they find prejudicial to women, such as the veil, female circumcision, dowries, early marriage, or prohibitions on birth control, must necessarily be opposed.  Other feminist anthropologists, more suspicious of claims by one group to know what another really needs for its liberation, are more ambivalent about these sorts of interventions from abroad.

This week, we will take as our case study the practice of female genital surgery in Africa (and, to a lesser degree, in Asia), one of the examples where respect for cultural diversity seems to be most severely tested.  We will try to tackle some of the complex issues relating to the debate about universal feminist rights, to the complexity of changing such intimate cultural practices, and to the views of women living within societies where the practice is widespread.

Readings

• Packer, Corinne.  2003.  African Women, Traditions, and Human Rights: A Critical Analysis of Contemporary “Universal” Discourses and Approaches.  In Human Rights and Diversity: Area Studies Revisited.  David P. Forsythe and Patrice C. McMahon, eds.  Pp. 159-181.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
• Walley, Christine J. 1997.  Searching for ‘Voices’: Feminism, Anthropology, and the Global Debate over Female Genital Operations. Cultural Anthropology 12(3):405-438.
• Leonard, Lori.  2000.  ‘We Did It for Pleasure Only’: Hearing Alternative Tales of Female Circumcision.  Qualitative Inquiry 6(2): 212-228.
• Nussbaum, Martha C.  1999.  Judging Other Cultures: The Case of Genital Mutilation.  In Sex & Social Justice.  Pp. 118-129.  New York: Oxford University Press.

10. What is the agenda?  What is success?  What is cost?

Although it would seem to be straightforward, what exactly should be done in situations of severe poverty or social problems is not always immediately clear.  In more typical development situations, where no crisis is pressing, the agenda for aid may be even less clear.  Anthropologists who study international aid have found that donors often have extremely incomplete understandings of how their projects are actually affecting people on the ground in various sites.  How one would judge ‘success’ given this opacity, and the diverse ways in which people use, avoid, intercept, or even hijack humanitarian aid, is a lot more difficult than some observers initially assume.

During this week, we will look seriously at two case studies of the effect of aid on local communities, and one critic of the human rights movement who argues that the effect of this movement is often contrary to human welfare.  We will take seriously pragmatic questions about translating intentions into institutions, of the often complicated relationship between causes and consequences in human social life.  In particular, we will focus on how organizations think about their goals and accomplishments, and how this vision of the way that the world can be improved affects their actual performance.

Readings 

• Crewe, Emma, and Elizebeth Harrison.  1998.  Development Aid: Successes and Failures.  In Whose Development?: An Ethnography of Aid.  Pp. 1-24.  London: Zed Books. 
• Elyachar, Julia.  2002.  Empowerment Money: The World Bank, Non-Governmental Organizations, and the Value of Culture in Egypt.  Public Culture 14(3):493-513.
• Kennedy, David.  2002.  The International Human Rights Movement: Part of the Problem?  Harvard Human Rights Journal 15: 101-125. 

11. Intervention

After the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed, especially as the Cold War took hold of the Western imagination, few people might have imagined that the world would intervene to stop human rights violations without the pretense being a thin veil for other, more selfish motives.  In the wake of interventions in Kosovo, and the global outcry after the West’s failure to intervene in Rwanda (and in Darfur, at the moment), some theorists are actually beginning to consider what intervention on behalf of human rights might look like and whether or not it might be reasonable to use force to protect rights.

In this week, we will consider both the theory of humanitarian intervention and several cases of intervention—specifically in Afghanistan and in Thailand—to ask how that intervention might look and what would be required for it to function in the interests of those whose rights are being disrespected.  One thing that becomes clear in this study is that intervention says as much about the cultural values and social forces of those intervening as it does about the severity or conditions of those who are being ‘rescued’.  We will try to consider both the sources of skepticism and the possibility of successful intervention.

Readings

• Sandholtz, Wayne.  2002.  Humanitarian Intervention: Global Enforcement of Human Rights?  In Globalization and Human Rights.  Alison Brysk, ed.  Pp. 201-225.  Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Abu-Lughod, Lila.  2002.  Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?:  Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.  American Anthropologist 104(3): 783-790.
• Montgomery, Heather.  2001.  Imposing Rights?  A Case Study of Child Prostitution in Thailand.  In Culture and Rights.  Jane Cowan, Marie-Benedicte Dembour, and Richard Wilson, eds.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12. Aid as a social process

International aid does not flow without friction into the targeted areas; it has unintended effects as it cascades through channels, some new and some quite old, toward its intended targets.  The same economic forces that created the poverty or social problem that aid seeks to redress also affects the tools at one’s disposal to work for change.

This week we will look at several different case studies of aid to think about the unintended social effects of humanitarian assistance, especially the creation of a local ‘aid industry.’  We will examine the unforeseen challenges to the increased spending on health provoked by the AIDS epidemic and the effects on social structure and culture brought about by the involvement of the U.S. in El Salvador.  One article looks more at unintended effects to the health industries of spending, including the targeting of aid to particular diseases; the other article focuses more on the cultural and psychological effects of aid on local elites who are central to the aid industry.  What we will find is that aid itself becomes a social force, changing the conditions that it seeks to address not simply by ‘improving’ the condition of those in need.  Can these social effects be anticipated or are they always and innately unforeseen?

We will explore a method to model social processes on different levels of causation in the work of Peter Taylor, an ecological mathematician who has been involved in attempts to model complex systems, such as environmental degradation and long-term mental health.  Through ‘Taylor Diagramming’, we will attempt to anticipate indirect consequences of aid in ecological, economic, social, and other spheres of human activity.

Class readings 

• Garrett, Laurie.  2007.  The Challenge of Global Health.  Foreign Affairs 86(1):14-38.
• Quan, Adán.  2005.  Through the Looking Glass: U.S. Aid to El Salvador and the Politics of National Identity.  American Ethnologist 32 (2):276-293.
• Taylor, Peter.  2001.  Distributed Agency within Intersecting Ecological, Social, and Scientific Processes.  In Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution.  Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths, and Russell D. Gray, eds.  Pp. 315-332.  Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

13. Ethnography of and asaid

During this week’s seminar, we will discuss the roles that ethnography might serve in the process of humanitarian aid.  Jean-Klein and Riles argue that anthropology has tended to be engaged with aid in one of two roles: either in ‘co-construction’ alongside the ‘victims’ of social processes or in ‘denunciation’ of oppressive regimes.  In fact, ethnography enters into human rights practice in a number of ways, and at different moments: in the process of defining human rights, recognizing infringements, recording violations, assembling cases against offenders, and seeking redress. 

Anthropologists may take different roles in the process of enforcing human rights; we will consider three moments in greater detail: publicizing of violations, the implementation of policy, and the creation of greater self-awareness within human rights institutions.  In fact, there are other ways that ethnography might serve to improve human rights-related practices, institutions, and legislations, but focusing on these three helps us to understand better the constructive role ethnography might play. 

In addition, we will ask how the engagement with human rights has affected anthropological theory and work.  Typically, we think of justifying anthropology on the basis of its contribution to human rights, but how might discussions of human rights contribute to the intellectual goals of anthropologists?

Class readings

• McLagan, Margaret.  2005.  Circuits of Suffering.  PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 28(2):223-239.
• Mosse, David.  2004.  Is Good Policy Unimplementable?: Reflections on the Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice..  Development and Change 35(4): 639-671.
• Cunningham, Hilary.  1999.  The Ethnography of Transnational Social Activism: Understanding the Global as Local Practice. American Ethnologist 26(3):583–604.

Optional background reading

• Jean-Klein, Iris, and Annelise Riles.  2005.  Anthropology and Human Rights Administrations: Expert Observation and Representation After the Fact.  PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 28 (2):173-202.