Public Justice and the Anthropology of Law

Description

In this powerful, timely study Ronald Niezen examines the processes by which cultural concepts are conceived and collective rights are defended in international law. Niezen argues that cultivating support on behalf of those experiencing human rights violations often calls for strategic representations of injustice and suffering to distant audiences. The positive impulse behind public responses to political abuse can be found in the satisfaction of justice done. But the fact that oppressed peoples and their supporters from around the world are competing for public attention is actually a profound source of global difference, stemming from differential capacities to appeal to a remote, unknown public. Niezen's discussion of the impact of public opinion on law provides fresh insights into the importance of legally-constructed identity and the changing pathways through which it is being shaped – crucial issues for all those with an interest in anthropology, politics and human rights law. Cover Half-title Series-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Preface One: The imagined order The ethnography of the unknowable Flux and boundary Soft power and publics Conceptual diplomacy The personification of the state Two: The power of persons unknown The golden record Tarde’s sociology of imitation The persona of mass publics Witnessing and new media Invisibility Three: Cultural lobbying Cultural justice Northern exposure Southern exposure African appeal Four: The invention of indigenous peoples Introduction Self-determination and self-definition The invention of indigenism The cultural contradictions of indigenism Five: Civilizing a divided world Civilization in review Culture according to UNESCO The UN’s civilizing mission Reconceiving civilization Civilizational utopianism Ethnographic enchantment Contradictions of conceptual diplomacy Six: Reconciliation The human rights confessional The violence of assimilation A change of spirit Modes of repentance and of suffering Revolt of the accused The social construction of penitence Seven: Juridification Legal intensification and substitution The virtues of the oppressed Institutional essentialism Juridification from below Re-enchantment References Legal references International instruments National statutes and agreements Canada Spain Index