Ethical Theory as Social Practice

Abstract

This article represents a search for a different analytical language through which anthropology can engage with human rights. This effort is intended to contribute to what is an expanding range of ways in which anthropologists conceptualize, advocate for, and critique contemporary human rights. Its central argument is that current ethnographic studies of human rights practices can be used as the basis for making innovative claims within human rights debates that take place outside of anthropology itself. To do this, ethnographic description that captures the contradictions and contingencies at the heart of human rights practices is not enough. What is needed is a different understanding of how the idea of human rights comes to be formed in context. In this article, I suggest several possible ways that an anthropological philosophy of human rights can accomplish this. I conclude by locating this approach in relation to a longer history of anthropological skepticism toward universalist discourses.

Anthropological Research, Ethics of

“…A brief recapitulation of this argument, as rehearsed by Mark Goodale (2006), goes like this: since U.S. anthropology came to be synonymous with so-called cultural relativism, and since cultural relativism was typically equated with the categorical rejection of all universalizing normative frameworks (e.g., 'universal human rights'), ethics never evolved into a specific topic of consideration. A brief recapitulation of this argument, as rehearsed by Mark Goodale (2006), goes like this: since U.S. anthropology came to be synonymous with so-called cultural relativism, and since cultural relativism was typically equated with the categorical rejection of all universalizing normative frameworks (e.g., 'universal human rights'), ethics never evolved into a specific topic of consideration.…”

The Adaptation of Human Rights Norms in Local Settings: Intersections of Local and Bureaucratic Knowledge in an Israeli NGO

“…Until now, no widespread usage has been made of this anthropological research within the framework of lively debates on human rights taking place outside of this discipline (Goodale 2006b). …”

Do “Illegal” Im/migrants Have a Right to Health? Engaging Ethical Theory as Social Practice at a Tel Aviv Open Clinic

“…Or is it simply a catchy slogan or bumper sticker? From a medical anthropological perspective, how might we make sense of these “different registers” (Goodale 2006) of right to health discourse and the divergent ways in which this right becomes “transformed, deformed, appropriated, and resisted” (Wilson 2001)?…”