"Provides an important introduction to core epistemological, moral, and methodological questions at stake. ... Recommended reading not just as background literature for students of the field, but for the wider anthropological community seeking to come to terms with rights." (Social Anthropology, January 2010)
"Goodale has an apt sense of what is important and what has yet to be done in the anthropological encounter with human rights ... .The book raises valuable questions not only about human rights but ultimately about cultural relativism, the concept of culture, and the practice and future of anthropology itself." (Academici, April 2009)
"The book draws on a range of intellectual and methodological approaches to explore both the ambiguities and potential of the postwar human rights project." (Law & Social Inquiry, Spring 2009)
"With this volume, Goodale defines the parameters of an exciting area of emergent inquiry and enables us to put the study of human rights at the centre of curricula in both anthropology and law and society. It is an inspiring primer for those new to the field."
–Rosemary Coombe, York University "Critical in its dialogue with neighbouring disciplines, empirically grounded and self-reflexive, imbued with a keen sense of history and an awareness of the dilemmas facing academics and activists alike in the field of human rights, this remarkable collection brings together some of the best recent scholarship in anthropology on the subject."
–Shalini Randeria, University of Zurich
"This excellent volume offers at once a wide-ranging and an acutely critical take on a topic of increasing global significance."
–John Comaroff, University of Chicago
"No praise is high enough for this astonishing anthology, which brings some rare gifts towards a renewed understanding of human rights from the platforms of critical anthropology."
–Upendra Baxi, University of Warwick
"This is a spectacularly valuable and enlightening anthology… The collection really is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in a deeper understanding of the challenges and pitfalls of promoting human rights."
–Philip Alston, New York University School of Law
From the Inside Flap
Human Rights: An Anthropological Reader is a groundbreaking collection that brings together key works that demonstrate the important and unique contributions that anthropologists have made to the understanding and practice of human rights over the last 60 years.
For decades, anthropologists have drawn on a range of intellectual and methodological approaches in order to reveal both the ambiguities and tremendous potential of the postwar human rights project. This volume synthesizes these different approaches and demonstrates how anthropologists have engaged with human rights as committed activists, empirical researchers, and cultural critics. By examining and drawing out the broader implications of this continuing legacy for the twenty-first century, this text serves as an essential resource for researchers, practitioners, and students of human rights.
From the Back Cover
Human Rights: An Anthropological Reader is a groundbreaking collection that brings together key works that demonstrate the important and unique contributions that anthropologists have made to the understanding and practice of human rights over the last 60 years.
For decades, anthropologists have drawn on a range of intellectual and methodological approaches in order to reveal both the ambiguities and tremendous potential of the postwar human rights project. This volume synthesizes these different approaches and demonstrates how anthropologists have engaged with human rights as committed activists, empirical researchers, and cultural critics. By examining and drawing out the broader implications of this continuing legacy for the twenty-first century, this text serves as an essential resource for researchers, practitioners, and students of human rights.
About the Author
Mark Goodale is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Lausanne and Series Editor of Stanford Studies in Human Rights. He is the author or editor of eleven books, including Anthropology and Law: A Critical Introduction (NYU Press, 2017), Human Rights Encounters Legal Pluralism (ed. with Eva Brems and Giselle Corradi, Hart, Oñati International Series in Law and Society, 2016), Neoliberalism, Interrupted: Social Change and Contested Governance in Contemporary Latin America (ed. with Nancy Postero, Stanford, 2013), Human Rights at the Crossroads (ed., Oxford, 2012), Mirrors of Justice: Law and Power in the Post-Cold War Era (ed. with Kamari Maxine Clarke, Cambridge, 2010), Surrendering to Utopia: An Anthropology of Human Rights (Stanford, 2009), Dilemmas of Modernity: Bolivian Encounters with Law and Liberalism (Stanford, 2008), and The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law Between the Global and the Local (ed. with Sally Engle Merry, Cambridge, 2007).
