Table of Contents
Study Materials
Readings
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Readings are also listed by class session.
Required Books
Améry, Jean. At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities. Translated by Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld. London: Granta, 1998. ISBN: 9780253211736.
Arendt, Hannah. On Violence. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970. ISBN: 9780156695008.
Arditti, Rita. Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780520215702.
Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999. ISBN: 9780312243357.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1965. ISBN: 9780802150837.
Gobodo-Madikizela, Pumla. A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Woman Confronts the Legacy of Apartheid. Boston: Mariner Books, 2004. ISBN: 9780618446599.
Recommended Texts
An-Na'im, Abdullahi Ahmed, ed. Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Consensus. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University. Twenty-Five Human Rights Documents. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Hayner, Priscilla B. Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity. New York and London: Routledge, 2001.
Savic, Obrad, ed. The Politics of Human Rights. London and New York: Verso, 1999.
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Moser, Caroline O. N., and C. Clark Fiona, eds. Victims, Perpetrators or Actors?: Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence. London and New York: Zed Books, 2001.
Stiglmayer, Alexandra. Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.
Films
The Center for Defense Information. Human Rights: Universal and Supreme? 1999, 29 min.
Aghion, Anne. Gacaca - Living Together Again in Rwanda? 2002, 55 min.
Aghion, Anne. In Rwanda We Say… The Family That Does Not Speak Dies. 2004, 54 min.
Reid, Frances, and Deborah Hoffman. Long Night's Journey into Day: South Africa's Search for Truth and Reconciliation. 2000, 94 min.
Muñoz, Susanna, and Lourdes Portillo. Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza De Mayo. 1985, 64 min.
Hirshorn, Harriet, and Christine Cynn. Pote Mak Sonje: The Raboteau Trial. Work in progress, 56 min.
| LEC # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1: Theories of Violence and the Problem of Rationality | ||
| 1 | Section 1: Introduction to the Debate | |
| 2-3 | Section 2: Theoretical Foundations: Crowds, Ritual or Demonic Males? | Lecture 2 Tambiah, Stanley J. "Entering a Dark Continent: The Political Psychology of Crowds." Chapter 10 in Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Optional Readings Tambiah. "Reconfiguring Le Bon and Durkheim on Crowds as Collectives." Chapter 11 in Leveling Crowds. Lecture 3 Giddens, Anthony. "Political Theory and the Problem of Violence." In The Politics of Human Rights. Edited by Obrad Savic. London and New York: Verso, 1999, pp. 245-57. Girard, René. "Generative Scapegoating," and "Discussion." In Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation. Edited by Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly, with an introduction by Burton Mack and a commentary by Renato Rosaldo. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987, pp. 73-145. Manson, Joseph H., and Richard W. Wrangham. "Intergroup Aggression in Chimpanzees and Humans." Current Anthropology 32, no. 4 (Aug-Oct 1991): 369-90. |
| 4-5 | Section 3: Political Violence, the State, and Theoretical Controversies | Lecture 4 Fanon, Frantz. "Concerning Violence." In The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. Lecture 5 Arendt, Hannah. On Violence. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970. Read parts I, pp. 3-31, and III, pp. 59-87; skim part II. Background Web site for Fanon's discussion of the UN and the Cold War in the early 1960s. Communist Manifesto: Background reading on the relationship of revolution and social change, politics, and economics. |
| Part 2: Conceptions of Rights, Rationality and Relativism | ||
| 6-7 | Section 4: Rights Talk in Western Culture: Whose Rights, Whose Rationality? | Lecture 6 United Nations. "Universal Declaration of Human Rights." In Twenty-Five Human Rights Documents. Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 6-9. Patterson, Orlando. "Freedom, Slavery, and the Modern Construction of Rights." In Historical Change and Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1994. Edited by Olwen Hufton. New York: Basic Books, 1995, pp. 131-78. Lecture 7 Donnelly, Jack. "The Social Construction of International Human Rights." In Human Rights in Global Politics. Edited by Tim Dunne, and Nicholas J. Wheeler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 71-102. ———. "Human Rights and Western Liberalism." Chapter 5 in Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989. United Nations. "International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. 16 December 1966." In Twenty-Five Human Rights Documents. Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 10-16. ———. "International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 16 December 1966." In Twenty-Five Human Rights Documents. Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 17-29. |
| 8-9 | Section 5: Debating Universalism versus Cultural Relativism: How Is the Notion of Culture Discussed? | Lecture 8 An-Na'im, Abdullahi Ahmed. "Toward a Cross-Cultural Approach to Defining International Standards of Human Rights: The Meaning of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment." In Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Consensus. Edited by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992, pp. 19-43. Cassese, Antonio. "Are Human Rights Truly Universal?" In The Politics of Human Rights. Edited by Obrad Savic. London and New York: Verso, 1999, pp. 149-65. Wilson, Richard A., ed. "Introduction." In Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives. London and Sterling, Va.: Pluto Press, 1997. Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association. "Statement on Human Rights." American Anthropologist, New Series 49, no. 4, pt. 1 (Oct-Dec 1947): 539-43. Lecture 9 Edgerton, Robert B. "Traditional Beliefs and Practices-Are Some Better than Others?" In Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Practice. Edited by Lawrence E. Harrison, and Samuel P. Huntington. New York: Basic Books, 2000, pp. 126-40. Etounga-Manguelle, Daniel. "Does Aftrica Need a Cultural Adjustment Program?" In Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Practice. Edited by Lawrence E. Harrison, Samuel P. Huntington. New York: Basic Books, 2000, pp. 67-78. Washburn, Wilcomb E. "Cultural Relativism, Human Rights, and the AAA." American Anthropologist, New Series 89, no. 4 (Dec 1987): 939-43. Walley, Christine J. "Searching for 'Voices': Feminism, Anthropology, and the Global Debate over Female Genital Operations." Cultural Anthropology 12, no. 3, 405-38. |
| 10-11 | Section 6: The Spectacle of Torture: Violence, State Security, and the Perpetrator | Lecture 10 Foucault, Michel. "The Body of the Condemned." Chapter 1 in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Asad, Talal. "On Torture, or Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment." In Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives. Edited by Richard A. Wilson. London and Sterling, Va.: Pluto Press, 1997, pp. 111-33. Lecture 11 Scarry, Elaine. "The Structure of Torture: The Conversion of Real Pain in the Fiction of Power." Chapter 1 in The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Crelinsten, Ronald D. "In Their Own Words: The World of the Torturer." In The Politics of Pain: Torturers and Their Masters. Edited by Ronald D. Crelinsten, and Alex P. Schmid. Boulder, San Francisco, and Oxford: Westview Press, 1995, pp. 35-64. United Nations. "Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment. 10 December 1984." In Twenty-Five Human Rights Documents. Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 71-79. Supplement Reading Miner, Horace. "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema." American Anthropologist 58, no. 3 (June 1956). |
| Part 3: Dilemmas of Postmodern Violence: State-Sponsored, Collective, or Interpersonal? | ||
| 12-13 | Section 7: Genocide-The Inconceivable? | Lecture 12 Améry, Jean. At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities. Translated by Sidney Rosenfeld, and Stella P. Rosenfeld. London: Granta, 1999, pp. 1-40 and pp. 62-101. Lecture 13 Fein, Helen. "Genocide: A Sociological Perspective." In Genocide: An Anthropological Reader. Edited by Alexander Laban Hinton. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2002, pp. 74-90. Arendt, Hannah. "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil." In Genocide: An Anthropological Reader. Edited by Alexander Laban Hinton. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2002, pp. 91-109. United Nations. "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. 12 January 1951." In Twenty-Five Human Rights Documents. Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 36-38. Holocaust Encyclopedia: Background information and photos on the Holocaust. |
| 14-15 | Section 8: The Problem of Sex and Gender Violence in Political Crises: "Ethnic Cleansing" or Interpersonal Crime? | Lecture 14 Seifert, Ruth. "War and Rape: A Preliminary Analysis." In Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Edited by Alexandra Stiglmayer. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1994, pp. 54-72. MacKinnon, Catherine A. "Rape, Genocide, and Women's Humans Rights." In Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Edited by Alexandra Stiglmayer. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1994, pp. 183-96. Copelon, Rhonda. "Surfacing Gender: Reconceptualizing Crimes Against Women." In Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Edited by Alexandra Stiglmayer. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1994, pp. 197-218. United Nations. "Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. 3 September 1981." In Twenty-Five Human Rights Documents. Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 48-56. Lecture 15 James, Erica. "'Political Cleansing' in Haiti-1991-1994: Gender, Sexuality, Political Violence and "Truth.'" Chapter 4 in The Violence of Misery: 'Insecurity' in Haiti in the 'Democratic' Era. Ph.D. diss, Harvard University, 2003. Turshen, Meredith. "The Political Economy of Rape: An Analysis of Systematic Rape and Sexual Abuse of Women During Armed Conflict in Africa." In Victims, Perpetrators or Actors?: Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence. Edited by Caroline O. N. Moser, and Fiona C. Clark. London and New York: Zed Books, 2001, pp. 55-68. Zarkov, Dubravka. "The Body of the Other Man: Sexual Violence and the Construction of Masculinity, Sexuality and Ethnicity in Croatian Media." In Victims, Perpetrators or Actors?: Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence. Edited by Caroline O. N. Moser, and Fiona C. Clark. London and New York: Zed Books, 2001, pp. 69-82. |
| Part 4: From Violence and Trauma to Justice | ||
| 16-17 | Section 9: Argentina's Dirty War | Lecture 16 and 17 Arditti, Rita. Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Chapters 1-5, 8. Nunca Más: The final report of CONADEP published in 1984 to document the horrors of Argentina's Dirty War. |
| 18-20 | Section 10: Rwanda: Genocide Revisited | Lecture 18 and 19 Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999, selected chapters. |
| Part 5: The Politics of Memory, Victimization, and Reparations in "Transitional" Societies | ||
| 21-24 | Section 11: South Africa: Truth Commissions, Trials, Trauma, and Transitions to Democracy | Lecture 21 Hayner, Priscilla B. Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity. New York and London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 1-49. Lecture 22 and 23 Gobodo-Madikizela, Pumla. A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Woman Confronts the Legacy of Apartheid. Boston: Mariner Books, 2004, pp. 1-139. Wilson, Richard A. "Technologies of Truth: The TRC's Truth-Making Machine." Chapter 2 in The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. |
| 25 | Section 12: Haiti: Human Rights, Justice, and Humanitarian Assistance | Lecture 25 James, Erica Caple. "The Political Economy of 'Trauma' in Haiti in the Democratic Era of Insecurity." Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 28, 2004, pp. 127-49. |
| Conclusions and Concerns | ||
| 26 | Lecture 26 Mutua, Makau. "Savages, Victims, and Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights." Harvard International Law Journal 42 (2001): 201-45. Rorty, Richard. "Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality." In The Politics of Human Rights . Edited by Obrad Savic. London and New York: Verso, 1999. pp. 67-84. | |