Dr Matthew Engelke, OLD 6.08

Optional for BA Anthropology and Law and BA/BSc Social Anthropology. Also available to General Course students and as an outside option.

Undergraduates taking this course should have completed an introductory course in anthropology unless granted exemption by the course teacher.

The tension between respect for 'local cultures' and 'universal rights' is a pressing concern within human rights activism. In the past decade, anthropologists have been increasingly involved in these discussions, working to situate their understandings of cultural relativism within a broader framework of social justice. This course explores the contributions of anthropology to the theoretical and practical concerns of human rights work. The term begins by reading a number of key human rights documents and theoretical texts. These readings are followed by selections in anthropology on the concepts of relativism and culture. Students will then be asked to relate their understandings of human rights to the historical and cultural dimensions of a particular case, addressing such questions as the nature of humanity, historical conceptions of the individual, colonialism and imperialism, the limits of relativism, and the relationship between human rights in theory and in practice. Case studies will include: gay rights in southern Africa; genocide in Rwanda; state violence in Guatemala.

Lectures weekly MT, classes weekly MT.

Students are expected to prepare discussion material for classes/seminars and are required to write an assessment essay.

Anthropology students taking this course will have an opportunity to submit a tutorial essay for this course to their personal tutors. For non-Anthropology students taking this course, a formative essay may be submitted to the course teacher.

E Messer, 'Anthropology and Human Rights' Annual Review of Anthropology 1993; J Cowan et al (Eds), Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives; R Wilson (Ed), Human Rights, Culture, and Context: Anthropological Perspectives; T Turner, 'Human Rights, Human Difference: Anthropology's Contribution to an Emancipatory Cultural Politics' Journal of Anthropological Research 1997; T Asad, Formations of the Secular; P Farmer, 'On Structural Violence', Current Anthropology 1999; M Mamdani, When victims become killers; C Taylor, Sacrifice as Terror; R Menchu, I Rigoberta Menchu. Detailed reading lists are provided at the beginning of the course.

A two-hour examination in the ST worth 80%. One assessed essay of 2,000-2,500 words (20%).