Goodale (2006) - Toward a Critical Anthropology of Human Rights Flashcards
Intentions of UDHR?
1)International community does not tolerate genocide (post-holocaust)
2) International ratification of liberalist values (individual sovereignty, property, choice)
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Drafted in 1948 in light of atrocities inWW2.
Set of inalienable rights granted to people by the virtue of being humans - regardless of ethnicity, sexuality, gender etc
American Anthropological Assosication (AAA)response to UDHR draft
Rejected
Claimed there is an “imperialistic irony” in the UDHR –>”imposition of hegemonic moral values on less powerful groups whose behaviour was misunderstood by Western elites” preaaach
+
protecting the “powerless” from racism and totalitarianism = unintended consequence of compelling individuals and cultures outside Western liberalism INTO line with legal right backed by international law.
1980s onwards - AAAinvolved again
Began advocating for indigenous rights (victims of state/multinational corporate abuse)
Aim of article
Ways the conceptual framework of human rights can be expanded to rely on anthropological blend of “cultural critique”, ethnography, hybrid methodologies and intersubjectivity.
Goodale - two defintions of HR
1) “Human beings are naturally endowed with certain rights and these are universal, coextensive with humanness irrespective of the subjectivities embedded in history and culture”
2) “constellation of philosophical, practical and phenomenal dimensaions through which universal rights, believed to be entailed by human nature, are enacted, debated, violated, envisioned and experienced”
Critical anthropology of Human rights
Uncovers latent potential underlying human rights core principles, which has been repressed as HRs discourse has been REIFIED to an impenetrable granite surface that blocks mediated conceptual moments that actually constitute human rights.
Three ways Critical Anthro to HRis progressive
1) There is a set of “emancipatory” principles underlying HR discourse, that has …
2) become co-opted by institutional structures of power so that HR tend towards “Moral imperialism” and that
3) formal reflection of co-optation and regression is required before the potentials of HR theory and practice can be realized
eg -LGBTQ+discourses in Arab world, treatment of asylum seekers ?… but also development narratives, transnational companies coming to help developing but actually takes advantage of cheap labor or maybe more clear, US security narrative whereas right to security is the moral imperative but control over things
these also explain why HRs have failed to fulfill its promise
Normative humanism
Alternative to human rights lens.
- a way of describing cross-cultural collective ordering, claiming that
“People will organise themselves to establish meaningful interactions, incorporating a basic set of human-centered values balancing local cultural and social possibilities with physical and emotional imperatives”
- legitimacy would not stem from universality planned in advance, but from local conditions
- can ONLY be fully realised when socially constituted orderings (constraints) are capable of change - current hegemonic rights is not working
- no moral imperialism
Political economy of human rights
if the emergence of the liberal citizen is a necessary precondition for the rise, expansion, and eventual
consolidation of a transnational capitalist mode of production, then an area of inquiry is how human (and other) rights discourses produce
the thing they assume—a citizen endowed with irrevocable
rights that are entailed by a universal humanness
(interesting!!) the creation of a neoliberal citizen
Critique of normative humanism
1) Utopian, non-realistic
2) Centers humans again, who often places moral authority outside themselves
3) Makes anthropologists talk to anthropologists again.
Positive aspects of normative humanism
1)Proposes an alternative to how human rights have transformed into a reification in service of global neoliberalism
2) Takes a “bottom-up” approach to human rights.
