Palaces of Hope: The Anthropology of Global Organizations (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society)

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 11/23/2017
EAN 9781107566361, ISBN10: 1107566363

Paperback, 350 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

This volume assembles in one place the work of scholars who are making key contributions to a new approach to the United Nations, and to global organizations and international law more generally. Anthropology has in recent years taken on global organizations as a legitimate source of its subject matter. The research that is being done in this field gives a human face to these world-reforming institutions. Palaces of Hope demonstrates that these institutions are not monolithic or uniform, even though loosely connected by a common organizational network. They vary above all in their powers and forms of public engagement. Yet there are common threads that run through the studies included here: the actions of global institutions in practice, everyday forms of hope and their frustration, and the will to improve confronted with the realities of nationalism, neoliberalism, and the structures of international power.

1. Introduction Ronald Niezen and Maria Sapignoli
2. Heart of darkness
an exploration of the WTO Marc Abélès
3. Horseshoe and catwalk
power, complexity and consensus-making in the United Nations Security Council Niels Nagelhus Schia
4. A kaleidoscopic institutional form
expertise and transformation in the permanent forum on indigenous issues Maria Sapignoli
5. The 'public' character of the Universal Periodic Review
contested concept and methodological challenge Jane K. Cowan and Julie Billaud
6. Meeting 'the world' at the Palais Wilson
embodied universalism at the UN Human Rights Committee Miia Halme-Tuomisaari
7. Expertise and quantification in global institutions Sally Engle Merry
8. From boardrooms to field programs
humanitarianism and international development in Southern Africa Robert K. Hitchcock
9. Global village courts
international organizations and the bureaucratization of rural justice systems in the Global South Tobias Berger
10. Contrasting values of forests and ice in the making of a global climate agreement Noor Johnson and David Rojas
11. The best of the best
positing, measuring and sensing value in the UNESCO World Heritage Arena Christoph Brumann
12. Propaganda on trial
structural fragility and the epistemology of international legal institutions Richard Ashby Wilson
13. The anthropology by organizations
legal knowledge and the UN's ethnological imagination Ronald Niezen
Index.