Lunchtime Seminar: Localizing Women's Human Rights in India, China, Peru, and the U.S.

March 13, 2008

Wellesley, MA– How do human rights travel from their centers of creation to local communities? Sally Engle Merry, senior scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW), will present a paper that explores the process of translating human rights into the vernacular, arguing that as rights ideas travel and land, they do not stand alone but form assemblages of various kinds with other social movements. This comparative study, conducted in conjunction with Peggy Levitt, Chair & Associate Professor, Wellesley College Department of Sociology and member of the WCW Board of Overseers, shows how women’s human rights join with existing social justice ideas in China, India, and the USA. It is based on an ethnography of two women’s NGOs in each country. In each situation, the turn to a human rights framework adds new dimensions to the practices and ideology of the organization and shifts its assemblage of ideas and techniques. However, each human rights assemblage differs from that of other countries depending on the historic role of rights and other social justice ideologies in each place. In all the locations we studied, there were ongoing political and ideological tension between human rights ideas, grounded in the universal and international, and national ideas of rights that shaped the nature of the assemblage.

Lunchtime Seminar Series programs are free and open to the public. Held Thursdays from 12:30 to 1:30 in the Cheever House Library, the seminars highlight the work of Wellesley Centers for Women researchers and program staff. For more information, call 781.283.2500 or visit www.wcwonline.org.  

For more than 30 years, the Wellesley Centers for Women has been a driving force—both behind the scenes and in the spotlight—promoting positive change for women and men, girls and boys. WCW brings together an interdisciplinary community of scholars engaged in research, training, analysis, and action. Our groundbreaking work is dedicated to looking at the world through the eyes of women with the goal of shaping a better world for all. 

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