Human Rights: An Anthropological Reader is a groundbreaking collection that brings together key works that demonstrate the important and unique contributions that anthropologists have made to the understanding and practice of human rights over the last 60 years.

For decades, anthropologists have drawn on a range of intellectual and methodological approaches in order to reveal both the ambiguities and tremendous potential of the postwar human rights project. This volume synthesizes these different approaches and demonstrates how anthropologists have engaged with human rights as committed activists, empirical researchers, and cultural critics. By examining and drawing out the broader implications of this continuing legacy for the twenty-first century, this text serves as an essential resource for researchers, practitioners, and students of human rights.