Shannon Morreira

Rights After Wrongs

Local Knowledge and Human Rights in Zimbabwe

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Shannon Morreira is a social anthropologist and Lecturer in the Humanities Education Development Unit at the University of Cape Town.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 216
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. Mai 2016
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 155mm x 23mm
• Gewicht: 458g
• ISBN-13: 9780804798372
• ISBN-10: 0804798370
• Artikelnr.: 44383304

Autorenporträt

Shannon Morreira is a social anthropologist and Lecturer in the Humanities Education Development Unit at the University of Cape Town.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: The Rise of Rights Talk in Zimbabwe
chapter abstract
This chapter introduces the use of human rights discourse in Zimbabwe, and
the study of human rights in the anthropological literature. The chapter
traces the political and economic conditions in Zimbabwe from
pre-independence to the present, arguing that there is a varied history of
uses of rights in Zimbabwe that are tied to a different series of political
projects. The chapter argues that rights emerge as part of the project of
modernity and, as such, carry a particular epistemological history.
1'Panel-Beating the Law': Constitution Making in Zimbabwe
chapter abstract
This chapter examines the public dialogues and debates surrounding the
writing of a new Zimbabwean Constitution that occurred in Zimbabwe in 2010.
The example demonstrates how human and civil rights are open to (political
and politicized) interpretation and contestation, both during the processes
of fixing them via legal procedures and after they have been formally
encoded. The finished versions of legal documents such as Constitutions and
statutes emerge from and are enacted within fields of power. The Chapter
argues that the global legal language of rights discourse that presents
rights as inherent, universal, inalienable and indivisible is one that
obscures the very real effects of power and politics in rights praxis; and
that rights discourses are entangled within global political forms such as
democracy, which use tropes such as freedom and dignity that reflect
particular (historically constituted) ways of imagining politics and
persons.
2Justice in a Time of Impunity: Remaking Social Worlds after Political
Violence
chapter abstract
This chapter examines how ideas of justice and restoration, on national and
on more intimate scales, were envisioned in Harare. The chapter firstly
explores the surfacing of the model of transitional justice in governmental
and non-governmental interventions in Zimbabwe. It then considers two
alternative models of social restoration as encountered in Harare: the
justice of the ancestral spirit world; and a 'healing circle' model used by
a local civic organization. The chapter uses the theoretical lens of
entanglement to argue that although there is an insertion of global
discourses of human rights into local ideas of justice and restoration,
there is little movement of local ideas into global discourses. Knowledge
about justice is thus constituted within uneven fields of power.
3Producing Knowledge about Human Rights in Harare
chapter abstract
Despite globalization, with its increased mobility and flow of information
along varied circuits, the processes of interconnection are not necessarily
smooth. Human rights discourses follow (and constitute some of) these
global circuits, and could be said to form one of the key ideologies of our
time. This chapter examines the fractures of global circuits through an
ethnographic exploration of the construction of human rights reports in
Harare, and their mobilities as they leave Zimbabwe. Following a conceptual
introduction, the chapter traces two rights-based texts from their origins
in Zimbabwe through to their national and international dissemination.
4 Personhood and Rights among Zimbabwean Migrants in South Africa
chapter abstract
This chapter considers the use of law and ideas of human and civil rights
by Zimbabweans living in, yet still seeking secure legal residence, in
neighbouring South Africa. The chapter outlines South Africa's legal
migration framework, and highlights some of the contradictions at play
between human rights discourse and migration policy. The chapter shows that
while interlocutors translated experiences of "suffering" into a language
of human rights violations, the things that they considered a violation did
not map easily onto the South African state's definition of a violation of
human rights. Furthermore, it shows the disjuncture between Zimbabwean
ideas of personhood/what it means to be a person, and the ideas of
personhood that underlie human rights law.
Conclusion: The Situationality of Human Rights
chapter abstract
This chapter draws together the threads of the monograph to argue that
human rights are social constructions that are used in complexly social
environments. As such, they are always political. Pre-existing (and
shifting) social categories, modes of thought, and political and moral
systems are relevant to understanding the enactment of rights discourses.