Human Rights Quarterly

Engle, Karen.
From Skepticism to Embrace: Human Rights and the American Anthropological Association from 1947-1999
Human Rights Quarterly - Volume 23, Number 3, August 2001, pp. 536-559

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Karen Engle - From Skepticism to Embrace: Human Rights and the American Anthropological Association from 1947-1999 - Human Rights Quarterly 23:3 Human Rights Quarterly 23.3 (2001) 536-559 From Skepticism to Embrace: Human Rights and the American Anthropological Association from 1947-1999 Karen Engle I. Introduction In 1947, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) submitted its Statement on Human Rights to the United Nations. Anthropologists have been embarrassed ever since. In the late 1940s, anthropologists were embarrassed because they saw the Statement as limiting tolerance. In recent years, embarrassment has derived from a sense that the document refused to place a limit on tolerance. This debate among anthropologists over the limits of tolerance has occurred in the context of the development of an international human rights regime. In the debate, culture and human rights have largely been seen as oppositional. To be for human rights would be to oppose the acceptance of cultural practices that might conflict with one's interpretations of human rights' norms. To support an acceptance of conflicting cultural practices would be to oppose human rights. The AAA's 1947 Statement has primarily been read as taking the latter position. It warned the United Nations against adopting a universal bill of rights that did not attend to cultural particularities. In June 1999, the membership of the AAA adopted, by official ballot, a...