Anthropology 140a – Spring 2015
Human Rights in Global Perspective
Monday &Wednesday 5-6:20 pm – Location TBD
Leigh Swigart, Ph.D.
Director of Programs in International Justice and Society
International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life
Abraham Shapiro Academic Complex 313
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2-4pm or by appointment
X 62694
Course Description
The concept of human rights constitutes one of the most pervasive and powerful organizing principles in contemporary society. Individuals and groups report mistreatment or make demands based on their human rights. Dominant states intervene in the affairs of other states, through humanitarian or military action, in response to alleged violations of human rights. Over the past six decades, a complex international legal regime has been developed, complete with monitoring bodies, with the aim of ensuring the worldwide respect of human rights.
This course will approach the multi-faceted field of human rights with the discipline of anthropology as a point of departure. This will mean weighing the respective arguments of the human rights movement, which seeks the recognition of universal norms that transcend political and cultural difference, with those of anthropology, which seeks to explore and analyze the great diversity of human cultural life. To what extent can these two goals – advocating for universal norms and respecting cultural variation – be reconciled? Students will learn to examine human rights, both in theory and practice, through the lens of a number of conceptual binaries: universal/relative; global/local; international guarantees/national implementation; state as protector of human rights/state as violator of human rights; and legal remedies for rights/social provision of rights. Students will read about, discuss, and analyze a wide range of human rights areas, legal mechanisms, and cases, including those pertaining to gender and women’s rights, indigenous peoples, the environment, business, international criminal justice, the “responsibility to protect,” and the war on terror.
Course goals
By the end of the course, students will have developed the intellectual tools to 1) understand the ways in which culture both informs and is shaped by contemporary human rights; 2) appreciate the complexity of the human rights regime and understand how it plays out at the national, regional, and international levels; 3) analyze competing claims about which practices conform to human rights norms and who gets to define these norms; and 4) appraise the constant stream of information about human rights –from the media, NGOs, government agencies, international organizations, and other sources – that we encounter in daily life.
This course demands careful reading, active class participation, oral presentation, and frequent and extensive writing.
Class materials for purchase
1) Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Harvard University Press 2013 (to purchase)
2) Jack Donnelly, International Human Rights in Theory and Practice, 3rd edition, Cornell University Press 2013 (to purchase)
Book chapters, scholarly articles, reports, judicial case summaries, films, website links and all other materials besides those to be purchased will be available on LATTE.
Assignments
Semester overview
Students will: submit entries to a “human rights journal” during the first weeks of class and submit it with source materials in February; write a 5-7 page midterm paper; write a film review; attend an on-campus conference and write a critical review of one of the panels; prepare a class presentation in collaboration with other students; comment on other students’ class presentations; and write a 10-12 page final paper based on an individualized aspect of the class presentation.
Weekly
Students will: submit questions and comments (QC’s) on readings 24 hours before each Monday class session; be prepared to share an entry from their human rights journal in class; be asked to engage in group work and discussion on a regular basis in order to explore fully various human rights issues and concepts.
See LATTE for a full description of Questions and Comments (QC’s) and the Human Rights Journal, along with guidelines for success.
Grading
Class participation: 20%
Weekly questions and comments (QC’s): 15%
Human Rights Journal 15%
Final paper: 15%
Midterm paper: 15%
Group presentation: 10%
Film review: 5%
Responsibility to Protect conference review: 5%
There are extra credit opportunities of up to 5% of your grade connected to 1) the ‘Deis Impact Festival of Social Justice and 2) use and analysis of resources produced by entities and activities of Brandeis University (e.g. reports, articles, videos, international justice libguide, etc.) in the assigned human rights journal, papers, reviews and presentations. These materials are identified on LATTE with an asterisk.
Accommodations
If you are a student who needs academic accommodations because of a documented
disability, you should contact the instructor and present your letter of accommodation as
soon as possible. If you have questions about documenting a disability or requesting
academic accommodations, you should contact Beth Rodgers-Kay in Undergraduate Academic Affairs at 6-3470 (). Letters of accommodation must be presented at the start of the semester to ensure provision of accommodations. Accommodations will not be granted retroactively.
Academic Integrity
You may only submit your own original work in this course. Please be careful to cite precisely and properly the sources of all authors and persons you have drawn upon in your written work. Please take special care to indicate the precise source of all materials found on the web, indicating the correct URL address of any material you have quoted or in any way drawn upon. Plagiarism (from published or internet sources, or from another student) is a serious violation of academic integrity. Remember, you must indicate through quotations and citation when quoting from any outside source (internet or print).
Electronic devices
Laptops are allowed solely for purposes of taking notes. Please disable Internet access during class or simply refrain from using the internet, unless access is specifically needed for a group activity. If the Internet is too tempting, please take notes by hand. Distraction by devices will lower your class participation grade.
Policy on Attendance
Attendance is mandatory and will be factored into your class participation grade. Each student is permitted no more than one excused absence; absences beyond that will require evidence from a doctor that there is an illness or emergency.
Meeting deadlines
It is expected that all assignments will be handed in on time. This applies to QC’s, journal entries, reviews, papers, and all other assignments. If an assignment is handed in late, it is up to the instructor’s discretion to determine the impact on the grade. Papers and the class presentation must meet the announced deadline or they will not be accepted at all.
Week 1: What Exactly Are Human Rights?
Jan 12 & 14
An introduction to the course and expectations; preliminary exploration of human rights and institutions.
Week 2: The Development of the Concept of Human Rights
Jan 21 (no class on Jan 19 – MLK Day)
How and why did the notion of human rights develop? How old is it? Is it strictly Western? What is the relation of human dignity to human rights? What goes into reporting about human rights issues?
Week 3: Human rights and the Question of Universality: the Anthropological Dilemma
Jan 26 & 28
What is the relationship of the discipline of anthropology to the field of human rights? What are the tensions that exist between the two? Can they be resolved? What do anthropologists, legal experts, philosophers, human rights activists, and other scholars and practitioners think about the relation of culture and cultural variation to universal human rights?
Human rights journal entry # 1 due on Jan 28.
Extra credit opportunity: attend and write-up rights-related events at ‘Deis Impact Festival of Social Justice, Jan 30 to Feb 9.
Week 4: Human Rights and the Impetus for Change
Feb 2 & 4
How do practices that the human rights regime finds objectionable really become abolished? How do influences from inside the society interact with those from without? How does the concept of culture play into this? What other factors are in the equation? How should anthropologists position themselves vis-à-vis change in societies they study?
Human rights journal entry # 2 due on Feb 4.
Week 5: The Human Rights Regime
Feb 9 & 11
An introduction to United Nations declarations, covenants, conventions and treaties; monitoring through Universal Periodic Review and treaty bodies; regional human rights commissions and courts; national bodies charged with ensuring human rights. How does this complex regime work in practice? Can efforts at different levels be coordinated?
Human rights journal entry # 3 due on Feb 11.
Film review option #1, “Coming Home: the Dry Storm”: due before class on Feb 11
Midterm paper assignment will be handed out and discussed. Due date for paper: March 11.
Midterm recess: Feb 16-20
Week 6: Women’s Rights as Human Rights
Feb 23 & 25
Are women’s rights different than other human rights? Are they more subject to cultural variation? What legal instruments and bodies work to protect the rights of women? Who should define what women want and need? Our discussion will focus on the situation of Muslim women and the complex narratives we hear about their rights.
Complete human rights journal, including entry # 4, due in class on Feb 25.
Week 7: The Interface of Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law
March 2 & 4
What is the “humanization of international law”? What are the differences between human rights law and international humanitarian law? What is the place of human rights in international criminal justice institutions like the International Tribunal for Rwanda, Special Court for Sierra Leone, International Criminal Court, and where do victims of crimes fit in? What about human rights in interstate dispute resolution bodies like the International Court of Justice and World Trade Organization?
Film review option # 2, “War Don Don”: due on March 4 before class.
Week 8: The Responsibility to Protect
March 11 (no class on March 9)
In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly recognized that states have a “responsibility to protect” (R2P) the basic human and humanitarian rights of individuals around the world. This paradigm holds that each state has an obligation to protect the rights of its citizens and the global community has the responsibility to assist each state in its mission. How does R2P play out in practice? What are the challenges to its implementation?
Students will attend the R2P conference at Brandeis, on March 8-9, 2015, and write an analysis of at least one panel, to be submitted by March 18.
Midterm paper due at the beginning of class, March 11.
Week 9: The Rights of Indigenous Peoples
March 16 &18
An introduction to the emerging field of indigenous rights; study of significant cases surrounding these rights in Africa and the Americas. How do collective rights differ from individual rights? Are there problems in reconciling the two? What is so special about indigenous peoples that they need their own declaration of rights?
Film review option #3, “Granito: How to Nail a Dictator”: due on March 18.
Week 10: Human Rights, Business and the Environment
March 23 & 25
Is access to clean drinking water, clean air, and a healthy environment a human right? Do corporations and other business entities have responsibilities to protect the environment and the communities who depend on it for their sustenance? To protect the human rights of their workers and others affected by their activities? We will explore these and other questions through situations and legal cases from various parts of the globe.
Students put into thematic groups for class presentations in Weeks 12, 13 & 14.
Week: 11 Human Rights and the War on Terror
March 30 & April 1
Do certain situations call for the curtailing of human rights guarantees? If so, how is this to be decided? We will explore these questions through looking at the US after 9-11, Israel, and emerging threats in the Middle East, among other situations.
Passover and Spring recess: April 3-10
Weeks 12, 13, and 14: Class presentations and preparation of final paper
April 13, 15, 20, 22 &27
Possible issues/topics for presentations/papers
· Human Rights and Islamic dress
· Death penalty around the world
· Same sex marriage and gay rights
· Use of drones and other new forms of military technology
· Variable limits on the freedom of expression
· R2P: Syria, Palestine, Central African Republic, other
· Rights of refugees: Malta and Italy in Mediterranean, southern US, unaccompanied migrant children, other situations
· Rights of the disabled
· Rights of children
· Due process rights for those accused of sexual violence on US campuses
· Rights of the Roma in Europe
· Rights of a particular indigenous people: experience, activism and jurisprudence
· Development of a particular right through jurisprudence at a court/commission
· Any other topic that is vetted by instructor
Final paper due during exam period.
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