LOV OG RET I ANTROPOLOGISKE STUDIER AF MENNESKERETTIGHEDER

Resumé

This article seeks to complement the now well-established anthropological

emphasis on the discursive and social movements’ aspects of human rights by

focusing on their legal character, and examining how law shapes the ability of local

actors to pursue discursive and political strategies within a rights paradigm. The

article begins by examining historical debates over the model of legal pluralism

and argues that we might be better served by making a distinction between human

rights law and human rights talk and then focusing upon four specifi c legal and

social processes; the legalization of rights, rights and the verticalization of confl ict,

the vernacularization of rights and the construction of truth and knowledge

through the methods of legal investigation. The article concludes with a call for

anthropologists to venture into the sites of production of international human

rights law and norms and to gain access to international criminal tribunals and

examine their internal legal procedures and their practices to establish knowledge.

Researchers need to document and analyze how the verticalization of a national

confl ict occurs at the UN, and how legal and political experts who author rights

treaties respond to the hybridization and vernacularization of the terms they have

sought to define.