The Complexity of Human Rights
From Vernacularization to Quantification
Published on 8. February 2024
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-1-5099-7290-6 (ISBN)
Description
This book provides the first systematic assessment from a human rights law perspective of the landmark contributions of the renowned legal anthropologist, Sally Engle Merry.
What impact does over-simplification have on human rights debates? The understandable tendency to present them as a single, universal, and immutable concept ignores their complexity and by extension only serves to weaken them.
Merry and her colleagues transformed human rights thinking by highlighting the process of 'vernacularization', which sees rights discourse as being unavoidably dependent upon translation and interpretation. She also warned of the pitfalls of excessive reliance upon statistical and other indicators, through the process of quantification. Here the leading voices in the field assess the significance of these contributions.
What impact does over-simplification have on human rights debates? The understandable tendency to present them as a single, universal, and immutable concept ignores their complexity and by extension only serves to weaken them.
Merry and her colleagues transformed human rights thinking by highlighting the process of 'vernacularization', which sees rights discourse as being unavoidably dependent upon translation and interpretation. She also warned of the pitfalls of excessive reliance upon statistical and other indicators, through the process of quantification. Here the leading voices in the field assess the significance of these contributions.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
619 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5099-7290-6 (9781509972906)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Philip Alston is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, USA, and a former UN Special Rapporteur on both extreme poverty and human rights, and on extrajudicial executions.
Content
1. Introduction
Philip Alston
PART I: VERNACULARIZATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS
2. "A Very Murky Process:" Embracing the Indeterminacy of International Justice and Human Rights
Richard Ashby Wilson
3. Vernacularization as Anthropological Ethics
Mark Goodale
4. Vernacularizing Rights: Indispensable but Dangerous
Jack Snyder
5. Globalizing the Indigenous: The Making of International Human Rights from Below
Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito
6. Rites of Culture: Legal Frameworks, Indigenous Protocols, and the Circulation of Culture in Australia
Fred Myers
7. The Vernacularization of Transitional Justice: Is Transitional Justice Useful in Pre-conflict Settings?
Pablo de Greiff
8. Human Rights Don't Travel by Boat: Responding to Koskenniemi's Critique of Rights
Philip Alston
PART II: QUANTIFICATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS
9. Beyond the Vanishing Point: Quantification as Rhetoric in Today's Antislavery
Samuel Martinez
10. The Competitive Pressures of Rankings: Experimental Evidence of Rankings on Domestic Priorities
Rush Doshi, Judith Kelley and Beth A. Simmons
11. Visualizing the 'Women, Peace and Security Agenda'
Hilary Charlesworth
12. The Seductions of Quantification Rebuffed? The Curious Failure by the CESCR to Engage Water and Sanitation Data
Margaret Satterthwaite
13. Strategizing the world: Deciding who will be left behind in the Sustainable Development Goal on health
Sara L.M. Davis
14. Recommendations in Words and Numbers: Thinking with Sally Engle Merry at the Universal Periodic Review
Jane K. Cowan
15. Between Conduct and Counter-Conduct: Human Rights Translation at the Universal Periodic Review
Julie Billaud
Philip Alston
PART I: VERNACULARIZATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS
2. "A Very Murky Process:" Embracing the Indeterminacy of International Justice and Human Rights
Richard Ashby Wilson
3. Vernacularization as Anthropological Ethics
Mark Goodale
4. Vernacularizing Rights: Indispensable but Dangerous
Jack Snyder
5. Globalizing the Indigenous: The Making of International Human Rights from Below
Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito
6. Rites of Culture: Legal Frameworks, Indigenous Protocols, and the Circulation of Culture in Australia
Fred Myers
7. The Vernacularization of Transitional Justice: Is Transitional Justice Useful in Pre-conflict Settings?
Pablo de Greiff
8. Human Rights Don't Travel by Boat: Responding to Koskenniemi's Critique of Rights
Philip Alston
PART II: QUANTIFICATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS
9. Beyond the Vanishing Point: Quantification as Rhetoric in Today's Antislavery
Samuel Martinez
10. The Competitive Pressures of Rankings: Experimental Evidence of Rankings on Domestic Priorities
Rush Doshi, Judith Kelley and Beth A. Simmons
11. Visualizing the 'Women, Peace and Security Agenda'
Hilary Charlesworth
12. The Seductions of Quantification Rebuffed? The Curious Failure by the CESCR to Engage Water and Sanitation Data
Margaret Satterthwaite
13. Strategizing the world: Deciding who will be left behind in the Sustainable Development Goal on health
Sara L.M. Davis
14. Recommendations in Words and Numbers: Thinking with Sally Engle Merry at the Universal Periodic Review
Jane K. Cowan
15. Between Conduct and Counter-Conduct: Human Rights Translation at the Universal Periodic Review
Julie Billaud