Human Rights on the Ground: Ethnographic Perspectives

The aim of this course is to investigate the ways in which ethnographers have dealt with questions of human rights and humanitarianism. While ethnography is the hallmark of anthropology, it has gained popularity in recent years in other fields of social science, from sociology to political science. Over the course of the quarter, we will discuss what makes a human rights ethnography and what we can learn about human rights from the perspective of ethnography. Rather than reading chapters and articles, we will focus on excerpts of full ethnographies. The purpose of this is to delve into the nitty-gritty details of living with (or without) human rights. Students will not only learn about human rights from an ethnographic perspective, but they will also gain familiarity with ethnography as a genre.