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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Human Rights against the Maelstroms -- 2 Human Rights, Capitalism, and the Ends of Economic Life -- 3 Remaking Sovereignty in the Image of Human Rights -- 4 Human Rights beyond the Rule of Law -- 5 Decolonizing Human Rights -- 6 Human Rights Otherwise -- 7 The Subjects of Human Rights -- 8 Human Rights in a G20 World -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Tables and Figures -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Modern Dilemmas -- 2. Paris in the Andes -- 3. The Making of a Legal Universe -- 4. Courts of Desire -- 5. Human Rights and the Moral Imagination -- 6. Modern Dreams An -- Conclusion. New Revolutionary Moves -- Notes -- Bibliography -- INDEX

'Human Rights at the Crossroads' brings together preeminent and emerging voices within human rights studies to think creatively about problems beyond their own disciplines, and to critically respond to what appear to be intractable problems within human rights theory and practice. It provides an integrative and interdisciplinary answer to the existing academic status quo, with broad implications for future theory and practice in all fields dealing with the problems of human rights theory and practice.

Surrendering to Utopia is a critical and wide-ranging study of anthropology's contributions to human rights. Providing a unique window into the underlying political and intellectual currents that have shaped human rights in the postwar period, this ambitious work opens up new opportunities for research, analysis, and political action. At the book's core, the author describes a "well-tempered human rights"--An orientation to human rights in the twenty-first century that is shaped by a sense of humility, an appreciation for the disorienting fact of multiplicity, and a willingness to make the mundaneness of social practice a source of ethical inspiration. In examining the curious history of anthropology's engagement with human rights, this book moves from more traditional anthropological topics within the broader human rights community - for example, relativism and the problem of culture - to consider a wider range of theoretical and empirical topics. Among others, it examines the link between anthropology and the emergence of "neoliberal" human rights, explores the claim that anthropology has played an important role in legitimizing these rights, and gauges whether or not this is evidence of anthropology's potential to transform human rights theory and practice more generally

Introduction: human rights and anthropology / Mark Goodale -- Conceptual and historical foundations -- Statement on human rights (1947) and commentaries / American Anthropological Association, Julian Steward, H. G. Barnett -- The decline of the nation-state and the end of the rights of man / Hannah Arendt -- The good, the bad, and the intolerable: minority group rights / Will Kymlicka -- Toward a cross-cultural approach to defining international standards of human rights / Abudullahi Ahmed An Naim -- Human rights and capabilities / Amartya Sen -- Anthropology and human rights activism -- Declaration on anthropology and human rights (1999) / American Anthropological Association -- Anthropology, human rights, and social transformation / Ellen Messer -- Excavations of the heart: healing fragmented communities / Victoria Sanford -- Rethinking health and human rights: time for a paradigm shift / Paul Farmer and Nicole Gastineau -- Rotten trade: millennial capitalism, human values, and global justice in organs trafficking / Nancy Scheper-Hughes -- Do anthropologists have an ethical obligation to promote human rights? / Terence Turner, Laura Graham, Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Jane Cowan -- The ethnography of human rights practices -- Representing human rights violations: social contexts and subjectivities / Richard. A. Wilson -- Gendered intersections: collective and individual rights in indigenous women's experience / Shannon Speed -- Human rights and moral panics: listening to popular grievances / Harri Englund -- Legal transplants and cultural translation: making human rights in the vernacular / Sally Engle Merry -- Critical anthropologies of human rights -- Culture and rights after culture and rights / Jane Cowan -- Human rights as cultural practice: an anthropological critique / Ann-Belinda Preis -- Between universalism and relativism: a critique of the UNESCO concept of culture / Thomas Hylland Eriksen -- Toward a critical anthropology of human rights / Mark Goodale -- Appendix: websites on human rights -- Index

Abstract: In considering the ways anthropological approaches to the future can help make sense of current debates around energy transition, it is important to understand that "the future" is not a singular temporal placeholder, a category that allows us to talk meaningfully about moments, or events, or epochs, or sequences of days, months, and years that might—or might not—be awaiting us. Even so, if the central paradox of the High Anthropocene is that we are fated to imagine alternative (energy) futures that are at the same time impossible, then the task of anthropology should be to help understand the consequences of this paradox for social life, its nuances, its forms of violence, and its "uncanny" affordances.

I recently experienced one of those unsettling, context-imposing moments that cause the ground underfoot to feel suddenly loose, threatening to dissolve into quicksand – until, that is, the moment passes, as it inevitably seems to do. It happened during a university-wide lecture by Mark Williams, a professor of palaeontology at the University of Leicester and the Palaeontological Association's 'exceptional lecturer' for the academic year 2022–2023. This means he was chosen to go on a global tour of universities to give a talk for wider audiences that was intended to show the relevance and importance of palaeontology for questions of global significance. The title of Williams's lecture was 'The Anthropocene: Planetary Scale Change to the Biosphere and the Future Well-Being of Planet Earth'.

AbstractThis article uses reflections on chronopolitical praxis during the period 2006‐19 in Bolivia in order to make a more general contribution to the anthropology of time and temporalities. The article proposes the theoretical concept of 'timerendering' in order to examine the ways in which time emerged as a pervasive register that mediated and also deepened political, social, and ethnic conflict in Bolivia. After illustrating the mechanisms through which timerendering in Bolivia gave way to forms of allochronic denial that are described as 'hypertemporal exclusion', the article explains how and why the MAS government's timerendering strategies unravelled, which left it susceptible to the right‐wing coup of October/November 2019. The article concludes by narrating the endtimes of the Morales government in Bolivia, before considering what this moment and its afterlives have to say more generally about the anthropology of time as a disciplinary orientation.

The article uses ethnographic research on rightwing anti-government movements in Bolivia conducted at the height of social conflict and cultural violence in 2008 and 2009 to reflect on the relationship between anthropological research, ethical commitment, and the politics of knowledge. The article first describes the epistemological and political contexts in which engaged anthropology emerged. It then considers how and why the author's research diverged from the expectations of engaged anthropology. After reflecting on the implications of this shift, it concludes by arguing for a methodological recalibration that will allow anthropologists to take the ideologies and cultural logics of contemporary rightwing mobilization seriously. ; El artículo utiliza una investigación etnográfica sobre movimientos antigubernamentales de derecha en Bolivia, realizada en el punto álgido del conflicto de 2008 y 2009, para reflexionar sobre la relación entre investigación antropológica, compromiso ético y política del conocimiento. Describe los contextos epistemológicos y políticos en los que surgió la antropología comprometida. Examina cómo y por qué la presente investigación se apartó de las expectativas de esa antropología. Reflexiona sobre las implicancias de este cambio y concluye defendiendo una recalibración metodológica que permita tomarse en serio las ideologías y lógicas culturales de la derecha contemporánea. ; The article uses ethnographic research on rightwing anti-government movements in Bolivia conducted at the height of social conflict and cultural violence in 2008 and 2009 to reflect on the relationship between anthropological research, ethical commitment, and the politics of knowledge. The article first describes the epistemological and political contexts in which engaged anthropology emerged. It then considers how and why the author's research diverged from the expectations of engaged anthropology. After reflecting on the implications of this shift, it concludes by arguing for a methodological recalibration that will allow anthropologists to take the ideologies and cultural logics of contemporary rightwing mobilization seriously.

AbstractThe article uses ethnographic research on right‐wing anti‐government movements in Bolivia conducted at the height of social conflict and cultural violence in 2008 and 2009 to reflect more generally on the relationship between anthropological research, ethical commitment, and the politics of knowledge. The article first describes the relevant epistemological and political contexts in which engaged anthropology emerged as an important disciplinary current. It then goes on to consider how and why the author's research on right‐wing political practice in Bolivia diverged from the disciplinary expectations of engaged anthropology. After reflecting on the implications of this shift, the article concludes by arguing for a methodological recalibration that allows anthropologists to take seriously the ideologies and cultural logics of contemporary right‐wing mobilization, particularly social and political movements that are animated by what Edmund Burke described as 'just prejudice'.