Table Of Contenthuman rights at the crossroads
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Human Rights at the Crossroads
Edited by Mark Goodale
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1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Human rights at the crossroads / edited by Mark Goodale.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-537184-0 ((hardback) : alk. paper)
1. Human rights. 2. Human rights—Political aspects. 3. Genocide. I. Goodale, Mark.
K3240.H8585 2012
323—dc23
2012009026
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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Contents
Acknowledgment vii
Notes on Editor and Contributors ix
1. Human Rights Aft er the Post-Cold War 1
Mark Goodale
part i | regrounding the idea of human rights
2. Human Rights and the Politics of Contestation 31
Michael Goodhart
3. Why Act Towards One Another “In a Spirit of Brotherhood”?:
Th e Grounds of Human Rights 45
Michael J. Perry
4. An Overlapping Consensus on Human Rights and Human Dignity 61
Ari Kohen
5. Th e “Right to Have Rights” to the Rescue: From Human Rights to
Global Democracy 72
Eva Erman
part ii | human rights and the problem of the state
6. Prosecuting Human Rights Violations: Universal Jurisdiction and
the Crime of Torture 87
Tobias Kelly
7. Solidarity and Accountability: Rethinking Citizenship and Human Rights 98
Karen Ann Faulk
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vi Contents
part iii | politics and the practice of human rights
8. Whose Vernacular? Translating Human Rights in Local Contexts 111
Daniel M. Goldstein
9. Sacred Graves and Human Rights 122
Adam Rosenblatt
10. Human Rights Monitoring and the Question of Indicators 140
Sally Engle Merry
part iv | confronting pathologies of power
11. Th e Paradox of Perpetration: A View from the Cambodian Genocide 153
Alexander Laban Hinton
12. “Why We Care”: Constructing Solidarity 163
Alison Brysk
13. Historical Amnesia, Genocide, and the Rejection of Universal Human Rights 172
Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann
part v | reproduction in the age of human rights
14. Th e Law’s Legal Anthropology 185
Ronald Niezen
15. Cutting Human Rights Down to Size 198
Harri Englund
16. Acceptable Uses of People 210
Pheng Cheah
index 227
Acknowledgment
this volume is the product of an intellectual and professional experiment. Collections
of academic essays come about in diff erent ways: some are the result of conference ses-
sions taken to the next level; others are attempts to bring new analytical frameworks or
disciplinary alignments into being; and still others refl ect . . . well, it is sometimes diffi cult
to know precisely what they are meant to contribute. Although it is a truism to say that
the best edited volumes make a collective argument in terms of the oft en diverse sets of
essays, this is usually much more diffi cult to achieve despite the best of intentions.
Th is book began with a hunch. It was supposed that something extraordinary would
happen if a particularly creative interdisciplinary group of scholars were given the chal-
lenge to move debates over the contemporary life of human rights beyond existing para-
digms, which, like all paradigms, tend to become static, insular, and oft en unhelpfully
self-referential. And, with human rights, this can never be simply an academic problem,
since the stakes are so high. Contributors were encouraged to pursue puzzles and bedev-
iling dilemmas in some area of human rights theory or practice with a bit less than the
typical regard to the conventional academic expectations around intellectual genealogies,
due deference to tradition, and the delicacies of professional networks.
What they produced, individually and collectively, is a testament to their willingness
to take a chance. Th eir essays trace the contours of the crossroads that confront the pro-
ject of human rights—a supremely important project and perhaps the best we have—as
the twenty-fi rst century matures, and the transitional ambiguity of the post-Cold War
fades from view. So it is to the authors themselves of Human Rights at the Crossroads that
I off er my deepest gratitude. Th ey did it.
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viii Acknowledgment
I was fortunate to be able to deepen the idea for the project and the concept of human
rights aft er the post-Cold War in the course of presentations and discussions with gen-
erous colleagues in diff erent places. I want to acknowledge, in particular, visits to the
following: Stanford University (Archaeology Center; Department of Anthropology;
Program on Human Rights; and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the
Rule of Law of Stanford Law School); George Washington University (Elliott School
of International Aff airs, Culture in Global Aff airs Program); Max Planck Institute
for Social Anthropology; Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (Institute
for Ethnology); University of Groningen; University of Wisconsin School of Law;
University of Macerata (Giacomo Leopardi School for Advanced Studies); Catholic
University Leuven; University of Cambridge (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social
Sciences and Humanities); and the University of Oregon School of Law.
Finally, as always, I must acknowledge the support and inspiration I receive from my
muses: Isaiah, Dara, and Romana.
Notes on Editor and Contributors
Mark Goodale is Associate Professor of Confl ict Analysis and Anthropology at George
Mason University and Series Editor of Stanford Studies in Human Rights. He is the
author of Surrendering to Utopia: An Anthropology of Human Rights (Stanford, 2009)
and Dilemmas of Modernity: Bolivian Encounters with Law and Liberalism (Stanford,
2008). He is the editor or coeditor of fi ve other books, including, most recently (with
Nancy Postero) Neoliberalism, Interrupted: Social Change and Contested Governance in
Contemporary Latin America (Stanford, 2013), (with Kamari Maxine Clarke) Mirrors of
Justice: Law and Power in the Post-Cold War Era (Cambridge, 2010), Human Rights: An
Anthropological Reader (Blackwell, 2009), and (with Sally Engle Merry) Th e Practice of
Human Rights: Tracking Law Between the Global and the Local (Cambridge, 2007). He is
currently at work on two new books: the fi rst is a study of constitutional revolution and
radical social change based on research in Bolivia since 2005; the second is a set of essays
that explores the role of moral creativity within the practice of human rights.
Alison Brysk is Mellichamp Professor of Global Governance at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Th e Politics of Human Rights in Argentina
(Stanford, 1994), From Tribal Village to Global Village (Stanford, 2000), Human Rights
and Private Wrongs (Routledge, 2005), and Global Good Samaritans: Human Rights as
Foreign Policy (Oxford, 2009). Her latest edited volume, From Human Traffi cking to
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