Toward a Critical Anthropology of Human Rights

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. The University of Chicago Press and Wenner-Gren Foundation for AnthropologicalResearch are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology.

Why Do We Need Misanthropology in Anthropology? An Exploratory Essay in Deliberating the Research Subfield

“…Certain referent point is needed for sure not only when researcher's ethos is in some kind of conflict with the values of the remote communities, but 14 I am aware that relation of the anthropologist, and mostly in the United States, to the concept of human rights as defined by the United Nations has been uneasy and ethically questionable (Cf. Engle 2001, Goodale 2006, but nevertheless think that we have more than just local cultural stand on what is good/positive/desirable etc and what is not in humans and their institutions relating one to another in order to discuss issue presented here. 15 Lapot is a form of senicide.…”

Immigrants et réfugiés au prisme de la vie sociale des droits

“…Pour Wilson, l'intérêt de cette approche est de saisir le caractère performatif des droits humains, les dynamiques des mobilisations qui s'appuient sur ces mêmes droits et les discours prônés par les différents groupes sociaux, en ce qui a trait aux injustices et ce, tant à l'intérieur qu'à l'extérieur des cadres légaux. À l'instar de Goodale (2006aGoodale ( , 2006bGoodale ( , 2009, il souligne l'importance de distinguer entre une anthropologie « sympathique aux droits et ouvertement activiste », et celle plus « froide et analytique » intéressée par les processus qu'ils sous-tendent et par leur examen attentif. Cette distinction importante n'empêche pas pour autant qu'un dialogue soit possible entre ces deux postures comme c'est fréquemment le cas dans le cadre du travail des anthropologues en collaboration avec des groupes luttant pour le respect de leurs droits.…”

Anthropology and Human Rights: Theoretical Reconsiderations and Phenomenological Explorations

“…Although the book is occasionally in dialogue with the burgeoning body of ethnographic scholarship on human rights, the author acknowledges-rightly-that his treatment of that literature is "illustrative and instrumental" (12). Goodale argues here, and elsewhere, that any meaningful anthropology of human rights must train an ethnographic gaze on the "rough-and-tumble ethical theorizing" of the "millions of social actors" for whom human rights is a matter of everyday practice (Goodale 2006b: 508), yet Surrendering to Utopia is not in any traditional sense an ethnographic work.…”

“…Goodale 2006aGoodale , 2006c, hinges on a series of "pointed, bounded, and admittedly idiosyncratic interventions" that are designed "to rethink both the grounds and the potential of human rights through anthropology" at a moment in which, he contends, "human rights theory and practice remain static" (10). The text, which is written for a readership of anthropologists and nonanthropologists alike, moves simultaneously along two paths: One that refracts anthropological concerns through the lenses of philosophy and social theory, and another that aims to reassess anthropology's unique contributions to the human rights endeavor writ large.…”