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| 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. | |
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