Human Rights and Culture (LAWS70453)

This subject examines the human rights system from an anthropological perspective, as a social system. It studies the practices of international conventions and conferences as well as local communities and non-governmental organisations. This subject focuses on tensions and translations between human rights and culture, including opposition to human rights in the name of protecting cultural differences. To resolve the apparent opposition between culture and rights, it is important to understand how human rights are mobilised in specific contexts. Issues will be explored through case studies including the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, current cases before the International Criminal Court, the World Social Forum and Global Justice Movement, and the unfolding impact of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The lecturer is an anthropologist and former lawyer who has worked on human rights issues in Australia, the United States and Europe.

Principal topics include:

• The human rights system in practice: major conventions, procedures and organisations
• Historical genealogies of ‘culture’ and ‘human rights’
• The meanings of universalism and relativism
• Contestation, resistance and critique of human rights
• Culture and indigenous rights
• Human rights and social movements
• The translation of human rights into local contexts: the process of vernacularisation
• Rethinking the human rights system as a set of social practices as well as a system of law.