Mediating Gender Violence: "Witnessing Publics," Activism, and the Ethics of Human Rights Claim Making

Based on fieldwork with human rights organizations in New York City and Belize, Central America, this dissertation explores--through the prism of ethics--how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) represent violence against indigenous women--in text, image, and action--as human rights "evidence." By ethics I mean the deliberate use of morals, stated or unstated, in the representation of human rights abuses. In New York, my research focuses on the production, launch, and circulation of a United Nations shadow report on violence against indigenous women. In Belize, I contextualize indigenous women's experiences of gender violence within an indigenous movement to obtain collective land rights, a national women's movement, and national rhetoric on culture and gender. In both locales, I consider and compare: 1) how the "ethical" stance of NGOs shapes human rights activism; 2) how NGOs create visual and discursive "evidence" to represent violence and indigenous women's experiences; and 3) very real neoliberal state repression that immobilizes social movements for human rights and social justice. My concern is with the ways social movement NGOs struggle to maintain their feminist and social justice objectives as they interface with the demands of a transnational human rights system, and the strategies they use as they suffer from vilification, marginalization or mainstreaming, and lack of resources. Far from protective, human rights claims, explored here as "evidence," often obscure both social inequalities and the response of state-level policies to these inequalities, especially for marginalized women.

Grantor dc:publisher

Temple University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Uzwiak, Beth Ann

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Goode, Judith, 1939-

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• White, Sydney Davant
• Stoller, Paul
• Hyatt, Susan Brin, 1953-

• Anthropology, Cultural
• Women's Studies
• Gender Studies
• Activism
• Ethics
• Feminism
• Gender Violence
• Human Rights
• Visual Representation

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Dc Identifier Other

864885092

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/3740