ANTH380: Anthropology & Human Rights; What I've learned.

I've just finished uni for the semester. in the end, I feel that you only retain so much from each $900-1000 subject.

So what did I actually learn from ANTH380? (aside from the fact that a lecturer is a hottie?)

1) Human rights & Anthropology are actually opposing forces.
Anthropology (when you really get right down to it) is simply the observing of other cultures, comparing it to our own and going 'well hey now. how about THAT. that's pretty interesting.' and walking away. it kinda talks about how in the past, particular cultures that have tried to change other cultures because they didn't like the way they were, or simply didn't view them correctly have ended in disaster, or at least had very long reaching effects (e.g. Orientalism, trying to change FGC without studying why it was in place originally, even the Jewish Holocaust). Hence, ANTH is all about a live and let live and observe approach.

THUS:
When we as the West see human rights violations occurring, we tend to march in either with our own government or with some kind of international crime court and demand that things be set right. But this is hardly an anthropological approach. demanding that 'wrongs' be 'righted' may be a kind of cultural relativism from the West's point of view. That is, Westerners are unable to see or perceive things from another culture's POV and thus cannot stand by while what they see as 'terrible things' to occur, even though they may not be considered 'terrible things' in the actual culture. A good example of this is FGC (female genital cutting). Who are we as any kind of culture to be able to tell what another culture should do? Are we somehow infringing inequality and dis-empowerment to another culture by insisting that they have failed and that a more "Western" approach is necessary? Surely that cannot be right. Since we as humans, are guaranteed to intrinsically fail things a great deal in our lives, it also seems incredibly hypocritical for us to point out the failings of others. Not just as individuals, but as a whole country. Take America for instance. Guantanamo Bay + pushing human rights on other countries = EPIC FAIL.




I really think that children and adults today should be more educated about exactly what is in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. People today really aren't aware about the kinds of rights they have and I think that's wrong. If I have kids, I'm definitely going to be pounding the UDHR into them.


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