After International Law: Anthropology Beyond the “Age of Human Rights”

This essay examines the ways in which anthropologists have tracked rise and fall of international law after end Cold War. It argues that anthropological research has made important contributions to wider understanding as a mechanism for social political change, framework protecting vulnerable populations, language through collective identities can be expressed valorized. Yet, over time, lost many these expansive functions, shift also studied, although with greater reluctance difficulty. The explains particular categories law, such human rights criminal justice, grew dramatically importance power during 1990s early 2000s, whose complexities studied at local level. As explains, began detect weakening implementation respect legal norms, countervailing broader implications possibilities cooperation resolution conflicts, among others. At same retreat from its highpoint post-Cold War years given way reemergence non-legal strategies advancing change accounting past injustices, including based on confrontation, moral shaming, even violence.