Prof. Mark Goodale Lectures

Prof. Mark Goodale holds a chair in cultural and social anthropology at the University of Lausanne. The founding series editor of Stanford Studies in Human Rights, he is the author or editor of thirteen volumes, including UNESCO Surveys the World: A Prehistory of Human Rights (Stanford, 2018), Anthropology and Law: A Critical Introduction (NYU, 2017), Human Rights at the Crossroads (Oxford, 2013), and Surrendering to Utopia: An Anthropology of Human Rights (Stanford, 2009). He is currently writing a new book on justice, ideology, and practice in Bolivia based on nine years of ethnographic research.

Lecture – Wednesday, April 19:

‘Human Rights in an Anthropological Key: Exploring a Para-Normative Approach to the Practice of Human Rights’

Time/Location: 12:00-14:00 at SIM/Montaigne Centre (Achter Sint Pieter 200; free entrance)

This talk will introduce a new methodology for linking what anthropologists call the “practice of human rights” to human rights theory, implementation, and institutional development. Drawing on innovative moves within contemporary sociocultural anthropology, the talk will explore a “para-normative” approach to human rights that seeks to radically pluralize and horizontalize the production of knowledge about what human rights are and can be and the subsequent ethical commitments to the promotion of reconfigured human rights in a world marked by the rise of nationalism, cultural identitarianism, and the deepening of global inequality.

Lecture – Thursday, April 20:

Seminar for the Anthropology Group at Social Sciences

Time/Location:  16:00 – Sjoerd Groenmangebouw, room C028 (Padualaan 14; free entrance)

Masterclass – Friday, April 21 for CCHR PhD researchers:

‘Understanding the Rise and Fall of Human Rights (and where we go from here)

Time/Location: 10:00 -13:00 – Achter Sint Pieter 200, Faculty of Law, Toon Peterszaal room

To RSVP, please contact: J.A.Fraser@uu.nl