The Cultural Dimension of Human Rights

• Brings together leading scholars across a range of fields of international law whose work has informed contemporary debate on culture and human rights
• Provides detailed coverage of legal and theoretical debates with examples drawn from jurisdictions in every region
• A multi-disciplinary work enabling students and scholars, policy makers and human rights practitioners to compare and contrast diverse developments across multiple jurisdictions

The intersections between culture and human rights have engaged some of the most heated and controversial debates across international law and theory. As understandings of culture have evolved in recent decades to encompass culture as ways of life, there has been a shift in emphasis from national cultures to cultural diversity within and across states. This has entailed a push to more fully articulate cultural rights within human rights law.

This volume analyses a range of responses by international law, and particularly human rights law, to some of the thorniest, perennial, and sometimes violent confrontations fuelled by culture in relations between individuals, groups and the state in international society. Across the different issues tackled, the contributions are tied by one unifying thread - that culture is understood, protected and promoted not only for its physical manifestations. Rather, it is the relationship of culture to people, individually or in groups, and the diversity of these relationships which is being protected and promoted; hence, the fundamental overlap between culture and human rights.

Readership: This book would be appropriate for research and reference in the fields of International Law, human rights, political and social theory, cultural studies and anthropology. It would also benefit human rights practitioners and policy-makers.