Remote freedoms : politics, personhood, and human rights in Aboriginal central Australia / Sarah E. Holcombe.

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2018]

xiii, 364 pages ; 23 cm.

Remote Freedoms explores the contradictions and tensions of localized human rights work in far-flung Indigenous communities. Based on field research with Anangu in Central Australia, this book investigates how universal human rights are understood, practiced, negotiated, and challenged in concert and in conflict with Indigenous rights. Moving between communities, government, regional NGOs, and international UN forums, Sarah E. Holcombe addresses how the notion of rights plays out within the distinctive and ambivalent sociopolitical context of Australia, with a focus on Indigenous women and their experiences of violence. Can the secular modern rights-bearer accommodate the ideals of the relational, spiritual Anangu person? Holcombe offers new insights into our understanding of how the global rights discourse is circulated and understood within Indigenous cultures. She reveals how, in the postcolonial Australian context, human rights are double-edged: they enforce assimilation to a neoliberal social order at the same time that they empower and enfranchise the Indigenous citizen as a political actor. Remote Freedoms writes Australia's Indigenous peoples into the international debate on localizing rights in multicultural terms--back cover.

English

October 22, 2018

Stanford studies in human rights.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [301]-343) and index.