Gender and Culture at the Limit of Rights

"Human rights frameworks, the anthology suggests, are most effective and least problematic when used to 'create space for alternative . . . discourses regarding gender identity,' and understood as discourses meant to foster different, original, and organic expression. In portraying this nuanced and cautiously optimistic vision of the role of human rights discourses in enabling gender justice, Gender and Culture at the Limit of Rights succeeds beautifully."—Harvard Journal of Law and Gender

"[This book] provides us fresh material with which to address the issues of culture, gender, and human rights from an anthropological viewpoint. It will prove a valuable resource that has previously been missing from the array of textbooks that could be used in our courses and a book that will be of general interest for those who work in the field. It moves away from the simple dichotomy of human rights versus culture to look at the interaction of localized legalities and cultural practices surrounding gender."—American Ethnologist

"A timely, well-balanced, and important collection with contributions by many well-known and distinguished scholars. The essays consistently focus on how rights, gender, and culture interact, come into conflict, and discursively construct each other."—Mary H. Moran, Colgate University

"Gender and Culture at the Limit of Rights asks readers to consider not only the potential but also the limits of human rights in a variety of historical and contemporary circumstances. This bold agenda is made even more challenging by the focus on gender, particularly on those many interventions that have depicted women as victims and vulnerable to male power. The book very successfully moves debates forward by exploring how rights-based interventions presume or transform gender relations."—Harri Englund, University of Cambridge