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T H E U N I V E R S A L
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U N I V E R S A L @ T H I N K R I G H T S . D K
T H I N K R I G H T S . D K
I S S N 2 4 4 5 - 9 4 5 3
E D I T O R - I N - C H I E F
A L E X A N D E R A N D E R S S O N
E D I T O R S
A N N E C A T H R I N E C A R L
E M I L K E L L E R K J E L D S E N - K R A G H
J O H A N J U U L J E N S E N
L I S A H A A G E N S E N
N I C H O L A S H A A G E N S E N
C O V E R A N D L A Y O U T
G E R T R U D H J E L M K O N G S H Ø J
S P O N S O R E D B Y
D A N I S H I N S T I T U T E F O R H U M A N R I G H T S
P R I N T E D B Y
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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
F O R E W O R D
I N T R O D U C T I O N T O
T H E F I R S T I S S U E O F T H E U N I V E R S A L
Marie Juul Petersen
P . 7
E D I T O R I A L
C A T E G O R I Z A T I O N A N D C O N T E X T :
T O W A R D S A N I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A R Y
A P P R O A C H T O H U M A N R I G H T S
Nicholas Haagensen, Lisa Haagensen
and Alexander Andersson
P . 1 7
I N T E R V I E W
N E W F R O N T I E R S
O F H U M A N R I G H T S S C H O L A R S H I P
W I T H A N T H O N Y C H A S E
by Lisa Haagensen
P . 2 7
T H E R E V I V A L O F T A R O K O
H E A D H U N T I N G R I T U A L S I N T A I W A N
Kristoffer Ravnbøl
P . 3 7
D E - C A S T I N G I N D I A
Festival Godwin Boateng, Swapanil Reesha Sharma,
Caroline Winkler & Erika Matadamas
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D E F I N I N G L O C A L P R O B L E M S
Kamilla Falsted Dihle
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T R A N S N A T I O N A L M I G R A T I O N I N A
C O S M O P O L I T A N W O R L D
Clara Iglesias Rodríguez
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W H O I S R E S P O N S I B L E F O R A S Y L U M
S E E K E R S I N O F F S H O R E D E T E N T I O N ?
Nikolas Feith Tan
P . 9 0
C A L L F O R P A P E R S F O R
T H E U N I V E R S A L
A N N U A L H U M A N R I G H T S R E V I E W
P . 1 0 7
T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

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F O R E W O R D
I N T R O D U C T I O N T O
T H E F I R S T I S S U E O F T H E U N I V E R S A L
Marie Juul Petersen
C O N T E M P O R A R Y H U M A N R I G H T S R E S E A R C H :
A M U L T I D I S C I P L I N A R Y F I E L D
The last 15 years have witnessed a veritable explosion in human rights research
from a wide range of different disciplines, firmly establishing the field of human rights
research as a multidisciplinary field.1 The contributions to the first issue of The Uni-
versal speak to this multidisciplinarity, including articles from students of anthropol-
ogy, sociology, social work, law, international relations, and sociology. This is a new
situation. Human rights research was for many years practically mono-disciplinary,
dominated by legal scholars, perspectives and analyses (Viljoen 2012, p. xiii).2 A 1989
study found that about 90 percent of academic journal articles on human rights were
published in law journals, and about 90 percent of university courses on human rights
were taught in law departments (Prichard 1989, p. 459). In terms of human rights
practice, legal scholars also dominated the field. As James Nickel notes, in its first
decades the international system of human rights was more than anything ‘an inter-
national political movement with aspirations to create international law’ (quoted in
Verdirame 2013, p. 32). Legal scholars contributed actively to the development of new
conventions and declarations, and some of the most prolific scholars became members
of international monitoring human rights bodies (Andreassen et al. forthcoming).
With the expansion of the human rights regime and the increasing importance
of the concept in national and international politics, interest in human rights within
other disciplines increased, and today, “the richness of research and publication […]
that integrate human rights perspectives is overwhelming” (Viljoen 2012, p. xvii).
1 That the field is multidisciplinary does not necessarily mean that it is also interdisciplinary – as
shall be discussed in the last section of the Introduction.
2 There are notable exceptions to this, including the 1979 establishment of the explicitly multidisci-
plinary journal Human Rights Quarterly, and the 1994 journal Health and Human Rights.

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A study of leading political science journals, for instance, found that the number of
articles on human rights has increased from only 34 articles on human rights before
1980, 36 in the 1980s, and 60 in the 1990s, to more than 450 in the 2000s (Freeman
2011, p. 99). While similar studies have not been conducted within other disciplines,
this pattern can be expected to be found elsewhere as well. Programmes and courses
on human rights are offered in the departments of philosophy, anthropology and his-
tory. Similarly, associations across a wide disciplinary range have established human
rights sections, including the American Political Science Association, the Internation-
al Studies Association, American Sociological Association, American Anthropological
Association and countless others (Ishay 2013, p. 66). This multidisciplinarity of the
field is also witnessed in the composition of human rights research institutions such
as the Danish Institute for Human Rights, where researchers come from a wide range
of disciplines, including lawyers, historians, sociologists, development scholars and
political scientists.
This increasing multidisciplinarity of the field has changed human rights research
in important ways. First, and most obviously, it has contributed to an understanding
of human rights as something more and other than law. Reflecting a legal positivist
understanding of human rights as law – nothing more, nothing less – legal scholarship
has historically focused on ensuring and improving the realisation of international
human rights law (Sheeran and Rodley 2013, p. 4), providing legal analyses of the
scope, hierarchies, interpretation and justiciability of human rights law. Naturally,
such analyses are key to furthering our understanding of human rights law; as Nik
Tan’s article on international refugee law in the present issue of The Universal de-
monstrates, there is – now perhaps more than ever – a desperate need for sound legal
analysis, clarifying the responsibilities of states under international human rights law.
However, a narrow, legalistic understanding of human rights – and consequently, of
human rights research as legal analysis – risks overlooking other, equally important as-
pects of human rights. First, human rights are not solely about law, they are also moral
claims based on extra-legal sources of authority, whether a shared sense of humanity,
religious doctrines or natural law (Viljoen 2012, p. xiv). Second, even as law, human
rights are not solely about legal texts, institutions and processes. While human rights
as law are in some way oriented toward changing or applying legal precedent, they are
not articulated only within legal texts, institutions or processes (Wilson 2006, p.79,
my emphasis), but exist outside the legal field as well – in social movements, literature,
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political strategies, education, development aid – shaping and being shaped by politi-
cal, social, cultural, economic and historical factors and processes. A legal approach
tells us little about these extra-legal meanings and functions of human rights. Here,
other disciplines have contributed with valuable insights.
Challenging the explicit lack of theoretical foundations among the first generations
of legal scholarship on human rights, philosophers and political theorists were among
the first ‘outsiders’ to engage in human rights research, concerned with identifying the
theoretical foundation and justification of human rights (e.g. Gewirth 1982). Social
scientists soon followed, albeit taking a radically different approach. Rejecting both
the legal idealism and the philosophical foundationalism of earlier human rights re-
search, they were instead driven by a desire to explore and analyse the social realities of
human rights. Political scientists and International Relations scholars have provided
insights into the political context in which human rights are embedded, directing
attention to the mechanisms, processes and meanings at play at national and inter-
national levels (e.g. Simmons 2009). Anthropologists have contributed with studies
of ”the social life of human rights” (Wilson 2006), shedding light on the subjective
experiences of human rights and of human rights violations. Sociologists have directed
attention to the social practices that are affected by and affect human rights, asking
questions as to the societal effects of human rights (Morris 2006). Historians have
carved out the origins of human rights (Moyn 2010, Hunt 2007). Most recently, we
have witnessed an increasing interest in human rights in the arts. Scholars of literature,
for instance, engage in analysis of the ways in which literary texts represent and in turn
contribute to shaping philosophies, laws, and practices of human rights (Goldberg
and Moore 2012, p. 2).
Second, and closely related to the above, the multidisciplinarity of human rights
research has encouraged what we may call a practice turn in the study of human
rights. Historically, legal research tended to devote enormous resources to the analysis
and reform of human rights law, but rarely investigated systematically whether the
law would improve the enjoyment of human rights (Freeman 2012, p. 6). Similarly,
the later philosophical discussions of foundations and justifications of human rights
offered little in terms of empirical analyses of ‘human rights in practice’ (Goodale &
Merry 2007). With the increasing attention to human rights in the social sciences
came greater attention to empirical realities. Albeit expressed in different ways, focus-
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ing on different levels and applying different methods, the practice turn in human
rights research is characterised by empirical analysis of human rights in practice, ask-
ing how and why human rights law is made, by whom it is made, how it is imple-
mented and – just as importantly – why it is not implemented, what the consequences
are and how this shapes individual experiences and societal developments.
Some – especially political scientists and sociologists – have engaged in large-scale,
quantitative, comparative studies of impact and effect, seeking to identify variables to
account for variations in the protection of human rights (Simmons 2009, Freeman
2012, p. 11). Others – in particular within International Relations – explore processes
of norm construction and diffusion (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998), and the role of
transnational networks in promoting human rights norms (Keck and Sikkink 1998;
Risse, Ropp and Sikkink 1999). Yet others have focused on more micro-level, qualita-
tive studies of ‘the social life of human rights’ (Wilson 2006), applying anthropologi-
cal and micro-sociological fieldwork methods to explore the concrete ways in which
human rights are produced, contested, and defended by particular actors in particular
localities at particular times (Redhead and Turnbull 2011, p. 173; Nash 2012, p. 2).
Analysing the ways in which Dalit women conceive of and confront the challenges
they are met with when fighting for women’s rights, the article by Boateng et al in this
issue of The Universal is a good example of such an approach.
Third, researchers increasingly question the normative approach to human rights
that has dominated the field of human rights research. Whether motivated by philo-
sophic foundationalism, an emancipatory activist commitment, or legalistic, instru-
mental and technocratic inclinations, much human rights research has historically
been implicitly or explicitly supportive of human rights, and researchers have been
driven by a wish to strengthen and promote human rights, whether legally, theo-
retically or practically. Against this, we have seen the emergence of a more sceptical
literature, questioning the fundamental legitimacy and relevance of human rights.
Historically, much of this critical human rights research was framed as a criticism of
claims to universality. Against those that argued for the universality of human rights,
the classic cultural relativist claim was that there are no absolute or universal values
by which any culture or society can be judged, apart from those of the culture itself
(Goodhart 2003, p. 939; see e.g. Pollis and Schwalb 1979). Today, few subscribe to
such stark relativist arguments (Timmer 2013, p. 7), but other, related, kinds of criti-
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cism of the human rights project have emerged, often inspired by poststructuralist
theory. Motivated by a wish to critically examine “the underbelly of the human rights
movement” (Mutua 2002, p. ix), scholars criticise the human rights regime for uni-
versalizing Western power and values (e.g. Sajo 2004, Douzinas 2000, Asad 2000),
for serving as the new basis of power for an undemocratic elite (Scruton 2013), or
subordinating female subjectivities (Banda 2005, Knop 2004, Otto 2006), directing
attention to alternative remedies for injustice that “other kinds of political projects”
may offer (Brown 2004, p. 462).
In between the overly, and sometimes uncritically, normative support of human
rights and the deconstructivist scepticism and even rejection of human rights, we see
attempts at formulating a third position. New currents in human rights research en-
courage the development of theoretical and analytical frameworks that can apprehend
“the ways that human rights are simultaneously enabling and constraining” (Wilson
2006, p. 77). It is, Nash (2012, p. 2) argues, possible to be convinced of the general
validity and value of universal human rights and yet be sensitive to the effects of the
specificity of their historical and geographical origins and how they are mobilized
today. This position necessitates a certain analytical distance (Goodale 2007) or even
a Weberian methodological agnosticism. Researchers “can be more sensitive to the
vicissitudes of political contestation that take place in the language of rights if they do
not assume in advance that human rights are either a governmental ‘ethics of power’
or a grassroots emancipationist ‘weapon of the weak’” (Wilson 2006, p. 77). Such a
position does not necessarily leave the human rights researcher detached from the
realities of human rights policy and activism. In fact, the careful empirical analysis
of the content and consequences of human rights discourses and practices “allows us
to evaluate which human rights laws and discourses are more likely to realize certain
desired social and political goals, and which might have unintended consequences or
even negative outcomes” (Wilson 2006, p. 81). The article by Dihle on street children
in Tanzania in the present issue of The Universal is a good example of such contingent
commitment. Demonstrating the problematic aspects of the conceptions of street
children that underlie contemporary human rights frameworks and approaches, the
article argues not for a rejection of these, but lists concrete ideas as to how to improve
them. Similarly, Ravnbøl’s article on authenticity shows how the UN Declaration of
the Rights of Indigenous People is not unproblematic or straight-forward, but requires
a better understanding of “the different ways in which indigenous people around the
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world understand, practice, and experience their own identity, culture and traditions”
in order to ensure better protection of minorities.
F R O M M U L T I D I S C I P L I N A R I T Y
T O I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A R I T Y ?
What are the challenges for contemporary human rights research, characterised
by a plurality of positions and voices, a focus on practices and empirical realities,
and attempts at carving out a space for non-normative positions? Obviously, there
are many challenges, but there is one in particular where The Universal can play an
important role – the development of interdisciplinary approaches. Despite the bur-
geoning interest in human rights across a wide spectrum of disciplines, contemporary
human rights research is still remarkably compartmentalised. Human rights research,
in other words, may be multidisciplinary, but it is far from interdisciplinary. We need
philosophical reflections on foundations, legal analysis of laws, critical deconstruction
of power relations, social science accounts of the practices of human rights, and activ-
ist reminders of the end goal of it all. But in and of themselves, they are not enough.
Each misses important aspects of the highly complex phenomenon of human rights.
”Many human rights issues and situations are not singly legal, philosophical, politi-
cal or sociological but all of those things and more, simultaneously” (Fagan 2003, p.
98). As such, there is a need for interdisciplinary, holistic perspectives, capable of ap-
proaching human rights inquiries simultaneously on more than one level of analysis
(Ishay 2013, p. 76).
A truly interdisciplinary approach to human rights requires more than the existence
of different disciplinary approaches; it requires interaction, dialogue and cooperation
across disciplines; ”a more radical transgression of disciplinary lines” (Viljoen 2012,
p. xx). This is difficult; as academics we are socialised into particular disciplines, and
breaking out of these is easier said than done. The disciplinary structures of academia,
institutionalised in university departments and policies, professional associations, and
academic journals, tend to recognise, evaluate and reward disciplinary achievements
over interdisciplinary ones (Freeman 2014), at once encouraging the specialization
and compartmentalization of knowledge (Goldberg and Moore 2012, p. 3). Such
compartmentalization of knowledge, Goldberg and Moore (2012, p. 3) argue, must
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be disrupted if we are to tackle the complexly interwoven problems accelerating in our
new millennium. And human rights is one such complex problem. While disciplinary
depth is of course essential for investigating human rights, they also require interdis-
ciplinary translation, integration and synthesis in order to develop more complete
and nuanced pictures than would be possible from any one disciplinary perspective
(Golding 2009, p. 2).
The purpose of such interdisciplinary approaches is not to advance one common
’definition’ of human rights, one common approach or explanatory model. That
would be counterproductive to the understanding of human rights as complex, chang-
ing, and multifaceted, shaped by and shaping not only law, but culture, identities,
politics, history and economy. Instead, the purpose is to facilitate ongoing interdisci-
plinary conversations and engagement on the different meanings, practices and pos-
sibilities of human rights (Goodale 2007, p. 27), and in this process enhance, nuance
and adjust existing definitions, approaches and models. Quoting Boix Mansilla and
Duraising (2007, p. 219), we can define an interdisciplinary approach as the capacity
to integrate knowledge and modes of thinking in two or more disciplines or estab-
lished areas of expertise to produce analyses and explanations in ways that would have
been impossible or unlikely through single disciplinary means.3 New legal realism
is a good example of such successful interdisciplinary work. Emerging at the turn of
the millennium, this movement seeks to examine law in practice, viewing law as a set
of social processes, embedded in historical, political, and cultural contexts. Drawing
on insights from law, political science, sociology and anthropology, new legal realism
3 This also entails interdisciplinarity in terms of methods. When we study violations of
women’s rights, for instance, it is equally relevant to engage in ethnographic fieldwork to un-
derstand the subjective experiences of the victims as it is to get quantitative data on precisely
how widespread violations are (Fagan 2003:98). Historically, there has been a tendency to pit
quantitative and qualitative methods against each other. “Indeed, the gap between qualitative
and quantitative researchers is so wide that many liken it to a religious or cultural divide,” note
Hafner-Burton and Ron (2009:363). Instead, they argue, there is a need for multi-method
research: ”Qualitative scholars should devote more attention to statistical findings, situating
their case research within global and regional patterns and focusing more self-consciously on
problems of research design. Quantitative scholars, for their part, should spend more time in
the field or immersed in case study materials and must acknowledge more readily the problems
with their data” (Hafner-Burton and Ron 2009:393). For an example, see e.g. Cardenas (2007),
interweaving statistical analyses of the effects of human rights pressures on 172 countries
with in-depth case studies of Chile and Argentina and mini–case studies of countries in other
regions.
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explores what law does, “from the ground-level of daily life to the top-level of judges
and politicians”.4 Sally Engle Merry, for instance, explores the ways in which legal
norms and ideas travel and are adopted around the world, focusing on the interna-
tional movement against gender-based violence (Merry 2006a).5 Other, more modest
examples, are the analyses of national human rights violations produced by the Danish
Institute for Human Rights, combining qualitative analyses of violations with rigor-
ous legal analysis to produce nuanced and relevant policy advice.6
Established with the purpose to further “a comprehensive and holistic understand-
ing” of human rights, and inviting students to “an interdisciplinary debate on human
rights,” The Universal seeks to contribute precisely to the development of interdisci-
plinary approaches to the study of human rights. And you are well positioned to do
so. Through Think Rights: The Danish Forum for Human Rights, The Universal is
part of a larger and very active community of young scholars and practitioners from
a variety of different disciplines, universities and organizations. Use this platform.
Speak to each other, write responses to each other’s articles and engage in exchange
of opinions. Build on each other’s insights, write articles together, engage in common
research projects, develop new approaches and methods together. Organise plenary
discussions of particularly interesting articles, go to conferences together. And perhaps
most importantly – talk to people you disagree with.
A U T H O R ’ S P R O F I L E
Marie Juul Petersen holds a MA and PhD from Department Cross-cultural and Re-
gional Studies, University of Copenhagen. She is a Senior Researcher at Danish In-
stitute for Human Rights. Her research centers on the relationship between human
rights and religion.
R E F E R E N C E S
Asad, T 2000, ‘What Do Human Rights Do? An Anthropological Enquiry’, Theory and Event,
vol. 4, no. 4
4 New Legal Realism Conversations, https://newlegalrealism.wordpress.com/
5 For overview articles on new legal realism, see e.g. Merry 2006b, Erlanger et al. 2005, or Miles and
Sunstein 2008)
6 See e.g. the recent report, Brug af peberspray i danske fængsler og arresthuse, available at
http://www.menneskeret.dk/udgivelser/brug-peberspray-danske-faengsler-arresthuse.
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Banda, F 2005 Women, Law and Human Rights: An African Perspective, Hart Publishing,
Oxford.
Boix Mansilla, V & Elizabeth D 2007, ‘Targeted Assessment of Students’ Interdisciplinary
Work: An Empirically Grounded Framework Proposed’, Journal of Higher Education, vol. 78,
no. 2, pp.215-237.
Brown, W 2004, ‘“The Most We Can Hope For. . . “: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatal-
ism’, South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 103, no. 2-3, pp.451-463.
Cardenas, S 2007, Conflict and Compliance: State Responses to International Human Rights
Pressure, University of Pennsylvania Press, Phillidalphia.
Douzinas, C 2000, The End of Human Rights, Hart Publishing, Oxford.
Erlanger, H, Bryant G, Larson J, Mertz E, Nourse, V & Wilson D 2005, ‘Is it Time for a New
Legal Realism?’ Wisconsin Law Review, vol. 2005, no. 2, pp.335-363.
Fagan, A 2003, ‘Practicing Universality: The Inter-Disciplinary Imperatives of Human Rights’,
Human Rights and Human Welfare, vol. 3, pp.95-102
Freeman, M 2011, Human Rights: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Polity.
Finnemore, M & Sikkink, K 1998, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’,
International Organization, vol. 52, no. 4, pp.887-917.
Gewirth, A 1982 Human Rights: essays on justification and applications, University of Chi-
cago Press, Chicago.
Goldberg, ES & Moore AS 2012, Theoretical Perspectives on Human Rights and Literature,
Routledge, Abingdon.
Golding A 2009, Integrating the Disciplines, Center for the Study of Higher Education.
Goodale M 2007, ‘Introduction: locating rights, envisioning law between the global and the
local’, in The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law between the Global and the Local, eds
M Goodale & S Engle Merry, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Goodale, M & Engle Merry S (eds.) 2007, The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law be-
tween the Global and the Local, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Goodhart, M 2003, ‘Origins and Universality in the Human Rights Debates:
Cultural Essentialism and the Challenge of Globalization’, Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 25,
no. 4, pp.935-964.
Hafner-Burton, E & Ron, J 2009, ‘Seeing Double: Human Rights Impact through Qualitative
and Quantitative Eyes’, World Politics, vol. 61, no. 2, pp.360-401.
Hunt L 2007 Inventing Human Rights: A History, W.W. Norton & Company.
Ishay, M 2013, ‘The role of interdisciplinary approaches to human rights’, in Handbook of
International Human Rights Law, eds N Rodley & S Scott, Francis Taylor, Abingdon.
Keck, M & Kathryn, S 1998, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International
Politics, Cornell University Press, New York.
Knop, K (ed.) 2004, Gender and Human Rights, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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Merry, SE 2006a, Human Rights and Gender Violence, Cambridge University Press, Cam-
bridge.
Merry, SE 2006b, ‘New Legal Realism and the Ethnography of Transnational Law’, in Law &
Social Inquiry, vol. 31, no. 4, pp.975-995.
Miles, TJ & CR, Sunstein 2008, ‘The New Legal Realism’, University of Chicago Law Review,
vol. 75, no. 831, pp.831-851.
Morris, L 2006, Human Rights and Social Theory, Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Moyn, S 2010, The Last Utopia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Mutua, M 2002, Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique, University of Pennsylvania
Press, Phillidalphia.
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Otto, D (ed.) 2006, Gender Issues and Human Rights, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham.
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terly, vol. 11, no. 3.
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Redhead, R & Turnbull N 2011, ‘Towards a Study of Human Rights Practitioners’, Human
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Domestic Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
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Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
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of law, FRAME report. Available from: <http://www.fp7-frame.eu/wp-content/materiale/
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C A T E G O R I Z A T I O N A N D C O N T E X T :
T O W A R D S A N I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A R Y
A P P R O A C H T O H U M A N R I G H T S
Nicholas Haagensen, Lisa Haagensen and Alexander Andersson
1 . I N T R O D U C T I O N
The 20th
century was characterized by widespread and horrific human rights viola-
tions that spanned the globe and affected millions. While knowledge of these events
and the attention they have received by international players has varied, one thing is
certain: 20th
century abuses have collectively driven human rights to the forefront of
current global dialogue (Ferllini 2003). Not only have they played a role in worldwide
political change but human rights rhetoric has also become a regular fixture in the
language used by activists, NGOs, politicians, diplomats and lawyers.
While the subject is generating interest across a variety of academic disciplines –
such as history, law, political philosophy, international relations and sociology – it
is also responsible for widespread challenges amongst students and researchers alike.
Fundamentally, a certain degree of academic cloistering abounds where human rights
are independently addressed from a number of different perspectives and with a num-
ber of distinct approaches (Cesarini & Hertel 2005; and see the foreword in this is-
sue). At its core, The Universal believes that a diversity of perspectives is valuable and
can be harnessed to further a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the subject.
In order to realize this potential, a more open minded, multidisciplinary and indeed
interdisciplinary debate on human rights is required. In light of this, The Universal
hopes to create a platform whereby high quality student research on human rights,
as well as research by recent graduates, can be publicized. Essentially, by inviting stu-
dents to an interdisciplinary inter-university debate, we hope to further the standing
of human rights within academic scholarship while deepening our insight into its
complexities.
This first issue of The Universal presents five articles that examine human rights
issues from various disciplines and that span different global contexts. As such, taken
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together, the articles illustrate the potentiality of both multi-disciplinarity and inter-
disciplinarity in human rights scholarship; a core concern of this journal. In their own
way, each of the five articles speaks to the chosen theme of this issue, namely attribu-
tion and categorization. The articles provide unique observations and examinations
of these different processes with each revealing the different ways such operations
affect the granting and/or denying of rights. In addition, the contributions present
comprehensive analyses of the intersection between global understandings and classi-
fications of rights with local dynamics and categories of people. Generally, to a greater
or lesser extent, each addresses the ways in which the attributions and identities of
certain groups render them categorized, the ways in which ascriptions and member-
ship within these categories have certain local and global human rights implications,
and the ways in which those implications impact the local strategies chosen to address
domestic contextual experiences. Whether categorization processes (and their subse-
quent ramifications) are examined with regard to the Dalit class in India or street chil-
dren in Tanzania, the contributions reveal how classification within distinct groups
has contextual dimensions. Such classification is shown to not only affect the strategies
selected by categorized groups to fight for their human rights, but to also have broader
implications when those contextually-grounded groups are confronted with global
understandings of their identities.
In the overview below, we begin by presenting the reader with a discussion and
analysis of the chosen theme: categorization and attribution. Herein we discuss the
dimensions of categories, identity and the inequalities that arise henceforth, discuss-
ing their relevance to the study of human rights. Following, and in keeping with our
proposed attribution and categorization framework, we present a thematic reading of
the articles in which five basic conjectures are drawn and the different analytical levels
they concern are discussed. Finally, the editorial concludes with a discussion on how
interdisciplinary research can be taken further.
2 . C A T E G O R I Z A T I O N A N D A T T R I B U T I O N
While the existence of collective identities is in no way a recent phenomenon, the
impetus to categorize those identities, especially with regards to public life, can be
closely linked to the development of the modern state (Kertzer & Arel 2001). As it
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evolved, the modern state, and elites within such developing structures, increasingly
required a means through which to navigate society and make it coherent. The catego-
rization of populations across pre-existing and fluctuating identities constituted this
mechanism: a mechanism through which people become comprehensible through the
categories in which they are confined (ibid.). However, the founding fathers of the
nation-state did more than simply observe their populations and create depictions and
maps based on such observations; they also sought to construct both the landscape
and the people within (Scott 1998, p. 82). As noted by Scott, the more static, stan-
dardized and uniform a population or social space is, the more legible it is, and as such
the more amenable to the techniques of state officials (ibid.). Importantly, systems of
categorization by official agents do not only resemble mechanisms through which to
facilitate the legibility of the environment; they are an authoritative order to which the
population must abide by.
Public diversity and the presence of cultural minorities represent a major obstacle
to the modern nation-state’s attempts to categorize their populations into static and
uniform masses (Appaduarai 2001). Specifically, following the end of WW2 and the
creation of the United Nations, laws and rights connected with organized cultural
and social minorities gained ground in national and international circles. As a result,
concern related to the rights of these minority groups triggered widespread conflict
in the areas of equality, political representation and participation, citizenship, and
justice (Appadurai 2006). During this period, minorities came to be seen as potential
petitioners for a variety of real rights relating to the institutional spaces and practices
controlled by the state (Appadurai 2006; Appadurai 2001). As a result, there was a
“transfer of normative value from procedural minorities and temporary minorities to
substantive minorities, which often became permanent social and cultural collectivi-
ties” (Appadurai 2006, p. 64).
In light of this process, and especially during the 1980s and 1990s, cultural mi-
norities embraced their identity classifications and used globalized human rights vo-
cabulary to pursue their own human rights claims. The problem here, and to which
Anthony Chase refers to in the proceeding interview, is that while efforts to classify
and grant legitimacy to the rights of people based on particular static categories is well
intentioned, it can hamper identity fluidity, reinforce separation and reinforce the
power dynamics between the state and the group as well as the global and the local. It
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is therefore important to include these operations of categorization and the dichoto-
mies they perpetuate in the scope of the research because of their ability to affect the
power relations between groups, individuals and states, and the degree to which hu-
man rights are granted or violated.
In light of these power dynamics inherent in operations of categorization, we turn
to the work of Charles Tilly, who, in his book Durable Inequality, argues that “[l]arge,
significant inequalities in advantages among human beings correspond mainly to cat-
egorical differences such as black/white, male/female, citizen/foreigner, or Muslim/
Jew, rather than to individual differences in attributes, propensities, or performances”
(Tilly 1998, p. 7). When it comes to more elaborate categorical systems of religion or
ethnic groups, there is a tendency toward “bounded pairs relating to just two catego-
ries at a time, as when the coexistence of Muslims, Jews, and Christians resolves into
the sets Muslim/Jew, Muslim/Christian, and Jew/Christian, with each pair having
its own distinct set of boundary relations” (ibid.). Such classifying operations resolve
organizational and institutional issues and become durable overtime, thereby repeat-
ing themselves in different organizational and institutional settings. These functional
operations constitute “systems of social closure, exclusion, and control” (ibid.). Sub-
sequently, different groups, some of whom are powerful and others less so, become
invested in the solutions (Tilly 1998). This can be seen in the institutions of the
sovereign state and the ways citizens of different categories obtain advantages or disad-
vantages. A notable example is apartheid South Africa, where categorization occurred
according to race. Based on such classifications, individuals were either segregated
and hugely disadvantaged, or – in the case of ‘white’ South Africans – benefited enor-
mously.
A significant category in a more transnational context is that of the ‘refugee’. Ac-
cording to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the term ‘refugee’
refers to a person who is compelled to “move if they are to save their lives or preserve
their freedom. They have no protection from their own state – indeed it is often their
own government that is threatening to persecute them” (UNHCR 2016). When ex-
amining the category of refugee, Peter Nyers (2006) has noted that the categorization
of a person as a refugee augments the sovereign state (Betts 2009). Drawing on Michel
Foucault (1978) and Giorgio Agamben (1998), Nyers (2006) asserts that refugees rep-
resent ‘bare life’ or that which is excluded from the sovereign state, and the citizen is
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thereby that which is included. In this nation-state sense they are essentially ‘category-
less’. Therefore, as a non-citizen, the refugee represents the foundation on which the
sovereign state and its citizens are constituted. This results in humanitarian solutions
being “implicated in the conditions that make the problem possible in the first place.”
(Nyers 2006: 22 quoted in Betts 2009: 74).
The contributions comprised in this issue present the reader with several different
categorical systems, classifications, and the local, national and global implications in-
volved. Each system reveals variations in durability: from the formal international law
governing refugee status and responsibility, to the caste system in India, to indigenous
groups in Taiwan, to street children in Dar es Salaam. These different contexts further
illustrate the “historically accumulated understandings, practices, and social relations
already attached to a given set of distinctions” (Tilly 1998: 12).
An implication of categories and categorizing is the notion of identity. In Iden-
tity and Control (1992 2008), Harrison White brings together language, temporal-
ity and social relations in his conception of how identity arises: “Identities trigger
out of events – that is to say, out of switches in surroundings – seeking control over
uncertainty and thus over fellow identities” (White 2008, p. 3). Identity is therefore
obtained through the constant shifting between contexts, back and forth. Narrative
is central here in giving coherence to identities vis-à-vis other identities and events.
In the contributions, events such as refugee migration, running away from home,
and revitalizing indigenous cultural practices give rise to diverse identities, which are
embedded in narratives that detail these events. Such a pluralist conception of identity
correlates with our expert interview in which Chase describes the tensions and dynam-
ics related to identity in the context of human rights. For example, one can talk about
the tensions that arise between conceptions of fixed identities on the one hand, and
identity fluidity, identity multiplicity, and intersectionality on the other. More impor-
tantly, however, Chase emphasizes that human rights scholarship, and human rights
more broadly, must take these multiple conceptions of identity, and indeed multiple
identities, into account.
In summary, a focus on local contexts and their embedded social relations allows
for the delineation of processes of attribution and categorization. With regard to hu-
man rights scholarship more broadly, by examining categorization and attribution
from a contextual perspective one is not only able to unpack the complex sets of local
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and global relations that engender situations where human rights are at issue. One is
also able to gain more robust and holistic understandings of the ways in which human
rights are championed both internally and externally. The articles presented here pro-
vide the reader with a multidisciplinary transnational portrait of such categorization
and attribution mechanisms, thereby taking a step in furthering our understanding
of and appreciation for the complexities that abound in the local and global field of
human rights.
3 . C A T E G O R I Z A T I O N A N D H U M A N R I G H T S
By situating the contributions into the above discussion, we have been able to posit
some basic conjectures that are illustrative of this approach:
3 . 1 P R O C E S S E S O F A T T R I B U T I O N A N D C A T E G O R I Z A T I O N
A R E I N F O R M E D B Y N U M E R O U S L O C A L
A N D G L O B A L C O N T E X T U A L E L E M E N T S .
Given the diverse content of cultures and countries globally, there are a myriad of
ways in which attribution and categorization may occur. In this issue, Kristian Ravn-
bøl looks at the ways in which the revitalisation of indigenous cultural rituals by the
elites of the Taroko tribe in Taiwan raise questions regarding what can be deemed cul-
turally “authentic”. For example, local people of the Taroko tribe attributed the term
‘inauthentic’ to revitalised practices such as the performance of a headhunting ritual.
In ‘De-casteing India’, Boateng et al. examine the ways in which Dalit women’s rights
groups employ various strategies to tackle different levels of caste-based discrimina-
tion in India. As expanded upon in the article, these challenges are related to religion,
family, community and institutions/the state.
3 . 2 C A T E G O R I Z A T I O N A N D A T T R I B U T I O N L E A D S
T O T H E R E C O G N I T I O N O R D E N Y I N G O F R I G H T S .
In the case of Dalits, the subjects are categorized on the basis of the caste system
and attributed with ‘untouchability’, which leads to systemic discrimination as well as
other human rights violations. In contrast, Ravnbøl’s article shows the ways in which
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the recognition of being part of an indigenous group can grant certain rights such
as government subsidies. The articles by Nik Tan and Clara Iglesias Rodriguez both
touch upon how the categorization of people crossing international borders – either
as migrants, asylum seekers or refugees – do not only determine which rights they are
entitled to but also which state is responsible for protecting their rights and account-
able for the violation of their rights.
3 . 3 C A T E G O R I E S A N D A T T R I B U T I O N S P L A Y D I F F E R E N T
R O L E S I N T H E S T R A T E G I E S E M P L O Y E D
B Y T H E C A T E G O R I Z E D S U B J E C T S T H E M S E L V E S .
The strategies used by the Dalits to counter caste-based discrimination is charac-
terised by attempts to transform the perception of Dalits, which in turn transforms
the attribution connected to the Dalit category itself. The challenges they face are ad-
dressed by adopting different strategies, for example, a human rights approach is em-
ployed to tackle the religious context so as to avoid being accused of blasphemy, while
as to ease the pressure on men as sole breadwinners, the women are offered credit and
banking facilities at low interest within the family context; and joining forces with
international organizations is sought on the institutional level so as to increase pres-
sure on the state to protect Dalits’ human rights. In Ravnbøl’s article, the identity
attributed to the Taroko is celebrated as a means through which to achieve certain
rights. Consequently, for some Taroko the strategy employed seeks inclusion into the
category of the indigenous group through revitalization of rituals.
3 . 4 L O C A L , S U B J E C T I V E I D E N T I T I E S A N D G L O B A L ,
O B J E C T I V E C A T E G O R I E S D O N O T A L W A Y S C O R R E S P O N D .
Kamilla Falsted Dihle’s article illustrates the tensions that arise when Tanzanian
street boys’ self perception of themselves and personal experiences as independent
and self-supporting members of their own community come into contact, and indeed
conflict, with global understandings – as outlined in the Convention of the Rights
of the Child – of children as vulnerable and in need of protection. So where global
objective categorizations, and the identities they furnish, are rejected by the Tanzanian
street children and experienced as unhelpful, the Dalit women’s groups embrace inter-
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national comprehensions of human rights and as such seek the help of Civil Society
Organisations in advocating those rights.
3 . 5 C A T E G O R I E S O C C U R
A T D I F F E R E N T L E V E L S O F A N A L Y S I S .
Where the articles by Boateng et al., Dihle, and Ravnbøl examine the contextual
dilemmas of categorization and attribution at local levels, Tan and Rodriguez pres-
ent examinations that extend to global level ramifications of belonging to defined
categories. In ‘Who is Responsible for Asylum Seekers in Offshore Detention?’, Tan
provides the reader with a thorough account of the death of asylum seeker Reza Barati
and the international legal mechanisms governing offshore detention centres at the
transnational level. In his legal analysis, Tan illustrates how belonging to the category
of ‘asylum seeker’ has implications that are not merely critical and influential at a local
level but also extend transnationally to envelope and affect players on an array of levels
and in a multitude of contexts.
In keeping with this focus on international-level dimensions, Rodriguez’s case
study, ‘Transnational Migration in a Cosmopolitan World’ assesses the Melilla and
Ceuta border fences between Morocco and Spain, built by the Spanish to discourage
immigration into the European Union. The article illustrates the ramifications that
arise when categories themselves are rendered irrelevant. In prohibiting the refugee,
the migrant, the asylum seeker from physically accessing borders, the Spanish and
Moroccan authorities create a contextual situation whereby the individual or group is
left ‘category-less’. Rodriquez’s response to this is one that materializes on a global-lev-
el by advocating for immigration to be regulated by inclusive common international
legislation as opposed to that of the nation-state being entered.
4 . W H E R E T O G O F R O M H E R E ?
To conclude, this inaugural issue of The Universal not only presents five different
cases of human rights issues illustrating diverse contextual and epistemological render-
ings; it also suggests the potential for multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research
in human rights. To substantiate this claim, we draw on a diverse range of literature
to illustrate how they are relevant for human rights and how these literatures relate
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to the contributions. We proceeded by presenting a basic interdisciplinary analytical
framework based upon the contextual dimensions involved in the mechanisms of cat-
egorisation and shifting identities. Here we theorised five conjectures that specifically
relate to the contributions in this volume. These conjectures demonstrate a number of
ways in which human rights scholarship spanning disciplines such as law, anthropol-
ogy and philosophy can be directly related through an extended focus on categoriza-
tion, attribution, identity and context.
It is our hope that our attempt to create a multidisciplinary platform for inter-dis-
ciplinary discussions and perspectives on human rights will inspire further scholarship
in this direction. In light of these aspirations, possible future avenues towards multi-
disciplinary and interdisciplinary human rights research need to start in the classroom.
For interdisciplinary work to become more than just a catch phrase, we need to see
more interdisciplinary-designed human rights courses in universities that approach
and teach human rights from a multitude of disciplinary theoretical understandings
and methodological approaches. This educational pillar should in turn be supported
by the publication of more interdisciplinary human rights work by those leading and
defining the field. In addition, greater engagement in interdisciplinary debates on cur-
rent human rights issues needs to be prioritised by scholars, practitioners and public
officials alike. In sum, by working towards creating an accessible space from which to
participate in interdisciplinarity, The Universal hopes to make a start in achieving these
objectives and, as such, in facilitating more holistic conceptions of how human rights
manifest across all levels.
Nicholas Haagensen holds a BSc in Business Administration and Sociology from Co-
penhagen Business School (CBS) and is a master student at International Business
and Politics at CBS. He is working as a student research assistant at Department of
Business and Politics at CBS and is an editor at The Universal.
Lisa Haagensen holds an MSc in Political Science from University of Amsterdam and
is master student in Development and International Relations/ Global Refugee Stud-
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ies at Aalborg University. She is a research and development student assistant at the
International Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Victims, a board member at Think
Rights and an editor at The Universal.
Alexander Andersson holds a BSc in International Development Studies and Social
Science and an MSc in Public Administration from Roskilde University. He is the
chairman of Think Rights and editor-in-chief at The Universal and is working as an
evaluation consultant at The Capital Region of Denmark.
R E F E R E N C E S
Agamben, G (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. California: Stanford Uni-
versity Press.
Appadurai,A2001,CulturalRightsasanEnablingEnvironmentforCulturalDiversity,,Echoing
Voices, UNESCO, pp.1-40. Available from: <http://www.unesco.org/culture/aic/echoingvoic-
es/index.php>. [1 February 2016]
Appadurai, A 2006, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Numbers, Duke
University Press, Durham
Betts, A 2009, Forced Migration and Global Politics, John Wiley & Sons.
Cesarini, P & Hertel, S 2005, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Human Rights Scholarship in
Latin America, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 37, no. 4, pp.793-809
Ferllini, R 2003, ‘The Development of Human Rights Investigations since 1945’, Science &
Justice, vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 219-224
Foucault, M 1978 The History of Sexuality, vol. one. Pantheon Books, New York. (trans.
Robert Hurley).
Kertzel, D & Arel D 2001, Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Census,
Cambridge University Press, Berkeley
Nyers, P 2006, Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency, Routledge, New York.
Scott, JC 1998 Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition
Have Failed, Yale University Press, New Haven:
Tilly, C 1998, Durable Inequality, University of California Press, Berkeley
White, H. C 1992, 2008, Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action. Princ-
eton: Princeton University Press.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 2016, Flowing Across Borders.
Available from: < http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c125.html> [12 February 2016]
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N E W F R O N T I E R S
O F H U M A N R I G H T S S C H O L A R S H I P
I N T E R V I E W W I T H A N T H O N Y C H A S E ,
P R O F E S S O R , D I P L O M A C Y A N D W O R L D A F F A I R S ,
O C C I D E N T A L C O L L E G E
by Lisa Haagensen
L I S A H A A G E N S E N :
What is the most important new development in human rights scholarship?
A N T H O N Y C H A S E :
First, that such a scholarship exists: there’s a tradition of human rights as being
separate from scholarship, something to be commented upon, but not that there be a
human rights scholarship in and of itself. I think that’s developed in the last few years.
Previously, that really only existed within law and within international relations, but
I think increasingly there’s scholarship in any number of disciplines. Second, not just
that a human rights scholarship exists, but that it exists in any number of disciplines.
If you look at the literature that’s out there in history, in sociology, in anthropology
even, a decade ago there wasn’t substantial work being done on human rights in those
various disciplines. A third new development is not just multidisciplinarity but the in-
creasing interdisciplinarity of human rights scholarship. This is the new frontier and,
to me, is probably the most exciting place where human rights scholarship is going.
Not just that human rights has integrated itself into any number of disciplines but that
there is an increasing amount of conversation among and between those disciplines.
Perhaps more specifically, the most interesting thing that’s coming out of human
rights in academia is an increasing focus on human rights at the local level – i.e., how
they come to be used as a tangible tool in the struggles of different groups in different
parts of the world. This seems to be coming out of a spread of human rights into dif-
ferent disciplines and that many of those disciplines focus on how human rights have
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been translated into the vernacular of local languages, as opposed to a singular global
language.
Why are academic disciplines moving towards a greater focus on human rights?
Academia prides itself as being on the cutting edge, but in this case was behind the
realities of local politics around the world. It became very difficult, however, to justify
ignoring the ways in which human rights are being invoked at the United Nations,
transnationally, within states, and in local struggles. There was a sort of cognitive dis-
sonance between the academic assumption of the irrelevancy of human rights, and the
reality where many peoples were speaking the language of human rights.
Why is it that interdisciplinary research is so important with regards to human
rights?
I’m from the discipline of international relations, but how my work has been
impacted by work going on in history on human rights is an example of why Inter-
disciplinarity can be productive. Samuel Moyn, Jean Quataert, Steven Jensen at the
Danish Institute of Human Rights are some of the historians who have talked about
how human rights has developed in ways that run counter to the common assumed
historical chronology. I think we’re all familiar with the common assumption that
human rights come out of the Enlightenment or that they were a reaction to the Ho-
locaust at the end of World War Two. Both of these examples have elements of truth.
However, Samuel Moyn, in particular, has been very persuasive in arguing that these
supposed “foundations” were nothing of the sort; that, to the contrary, through the
1940s, 1950s, and even in the 1960s human rights did not have a tangible place in
global politics. There were a few irrelevant human rights declarations and attempts to
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develop some instruments that didn’t have much impact. From my international rela-
tions perspective, this has had a very powerful impact on my own work. We should
not assume – as is often done within IR -- that human rights have always existed
as were institutionalized as we have come to know them immediately after WWII.
Rather, we should question and break down how it is that they have developed in the
context of events in the 1960s and 1970s and subsequently. My point, in terms of an
answer to your question, is that research in a discipline such as my own has been very
much enriched and deepened by virtue of borrowing from historians such as Moyn or
Quataert or Jensen.
Importantly, I would also flip the critique. Yes I have been influenced by Samuel
Moyn and his metaphor of a chemical reaction model of human rights – i.e., that
they have exploded onto the scene later than usually recognized out of a number of
unforeseen and unpredictable elements. However, I also think that, in his book The
Last Utopia, there is a way in which Moyn ignores the political-legal elements of hu-
man rights and only focuses on the normative. Consequently, while he is very strong
in terms of the normative development of human rights, I think his failure to take
into account its political-legal foundations distorts human rights, as when he sees
them as a utopian successor to failed ideologies such as nationalism or communism. It
strikes me that when he poses human rights as the new utopia -- the ‘last utopia’ -- he
is missing the ways in which human rights are not so much an ideology but, rather,
an anti-ideology; less singularly revolutionary than attempting to give reformist tools
relevant to the struggles of peoples in different contexts. Human rights work through
states in ways that are often problematic. Human rights work through international
organizations, again in ways that are often problematic and deeply compromised. In
essence, Moyn misses how it is that human rights are deeply embedded in systems of
power rather than a utopian ideal. My point, therefore, is that he could also benefit
from borrowing from other disciplines -- legal disciplines, IR (international relations),
etc. -- which research more deeply the political-legal realities of human rights, how
they inform struggles, how they are compromised, how they politically and legally
evolve and that sort of thing. So, in short, the ways in which a historian like Moyn and
some of his compatriots have impacted other disciplines is an example of the positive
impact of interdisiplinarity; on the flip side, I’d suggest that Moyn could also benefit
from borrowing from other disciplines -- a second example of the positive impact of
interdisciplinarity.
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In terms of your own work, which addresses an anti-foundation of human rights,
how does that lend itself to interdisciplinary possibilities? What interdisciplinary focus
helped that conceptualization of the anti-foundation of human rights?
In terms of my own notion of anti-foundationalism, in a certain sense it starts
with a kind of commonsensical idea that we need to move beyond the stale universal-
ism versus cultural relativist debate in order to explore a more essential question: why
do people adopt the language of human rights, which is not natural to any political
grouping in any part of the world? To pursue this, I began to borrow from people from
different disciplines – the philosopher Richard Rorty, for example, already has a no-
tion of anti-foundationalism in his work. Rorty means something different by it than
I do, but my work is informed in some sense by Rorty’s idea of sentimentalism as key
to how peoples become embedded in a narrative of human rights.
What I would also point to in terms of interdisciplinary impact is queer theory,
and the idea of identity fluidity that questions the certainties of the fixed identity.
Momin Rahman is someone I have been reading recently from a queer theory perspec-
tive. He emphasizes the intersectionality of identity in a way that plays into the notion
anti-foundationalism. If human rights are to be relevant to peoples in different posi-
tionalities around the world they [human rights] need to recognize and be informed
by that multiplicity of identity.
Given this multi-foundational, multiplicity of identity, is there any way in which
human rights can be applicable to all – if we are coming from a completely varied and
dynamic grounding?
Yes and no. No in the sense that I don’t think any inherent universality of human
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rights exists. It isn’t that there’s one tradition that is relevant to all peoples. So in that
sense I would try to move beyond universality in a moral or cultural sense. In a po-
litical sense, however, one can broadly say that human rights are relevant to virtually
all peoples in virtually all societies around the world. 99.9 percent of peoples in this
world live under a state authority for better or for worse, and human rights are about
a limit on the power of the state over both individuals as well as social groups. So as
long as one is embedded in some sort of relationship with the state, there is an inevi-
table relevance of human rights. Therefore, while I would shy away from the language
of universality as such, which implies a kind of moral connection; I do think our
political situations place virtually all of us in a position where human rights in some
sense have relevance. Then it’s a matter of how relevant are they? Are they a powerful
tool or are they an irrelevant tool? Again, I don’t think there’s any inherent answer
telling us that human rights will necessarily be a tool that makes sense to the struggles
of African-Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples in Peru, or name any
other particular intersection of societal groupings and state power. But certainly hu-
man rights seem to be seen as increasingly relevant by such societal groupings subject
to state authority. As an American I can point to recent events in this country com-
ing out of Ferguson, where human rights are increasingly invoked despite our rather
insular traditions in which human rights have been somewhat distant from domestic
social movements. Another example of human rights expansion is indigenous peoples
in Latin America. Such indigenous groups have traditionally been excluded from a
human rights purview, yet increasingly we can ask what is the relationship between
indigenous groups and the state. It has often been relatively contentious, thus it’s not
surprising that many indigenous groups have been speaking the language of human
rights, adopting human rights as a tool to empower themselves in their relationship to
the state. So, while I would shy away from a notion of universality, I do think there is
a reason why [human rights] are globally relevant.
The theme uniting the articles within this issue is the operation of categorization
and attribution: specifically the ways in which different modes of attribution lead to
the categorization of subjects and the mechanisms that address social and organiza-
tional political issues. When addressing the umbrella of human rights, categories and
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32 | T H E U N I V E R S A L 2 0 1 6
categorization is often used as an institutional instrument – a tool of suppression
when classifying various groups to be discriminated against, or a technique to simplify
and manage populations, or an instrument to protect minorities. We attribute and
categorize populations. How can we reconcile this double-sided operationalization?
Where, on the one hand, it facilitates discrimination and on the other it assists the
process of minority protection. Is there a balance, and how do we navigate it with
regards to human rights?
That is a tough question, a really interesting question. First of all, to reiterate, I
do think that there has been a real issue within human rights discourse, precisely in
the ways that you just described. There’s been an attempt to identify and empower
people according to certain fixed categories of identity in human rights. However
well intentioned, the danger is this can also fix and reify identities in ways that could
be problematic. Thinking in terms of the Muslim world, Shia and Sunni identities
used to be much more fluid but now, partly because of a state-based project to iden-
tify people according to certain ascriptive categories or identities, we see reinforced a
separation and hierarchy of identity in ways that breakdown the abilities of groups to
live with each other. Human rights, as elaborated primarily by states (even as they are
meant to be a limit on states), have often adopted those same categories in ways that
are problematic.
Second, this intersects with a semantic debate among those working on sexual-
ity about proper terms: L.G.B.T.Q.I; S.O.G.I – sexual orientation gender identity;
S.O.G.I.E – sexual orientation gender identity and expression. At a certain point in
time, in an attempt to be inclusive, there was use of the term sexual minorities. Rosa-
lind Petchesky critiqued that very strongly on the basis (implicit in your question) that
adopting a language of minority fixed lesbians or gay men or intersex in problematic
ways, including that they are necessarily a monolith separate from the majority, rather
than intersecting in complex ways with numerous identities. I very much see how ‘sex-
ual minorities’ is a problematic term. At the same time, however I also think – drawing
from the language of Arjun Appadurai and the ways in which states often demonize
minorities and create minorities in order to reinforce their own power – that there’s a
certain power in accepting that term ‘minority,’ i.e., despite whatever differences and
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diversities, being part of a group that is subject to marginalization by majoritarian
ideas of authority and power.
Often these categories, or the groups themselves that are being categorized, use
their categorizations or descriptive identities to further their own human rights agen-
das. However, the imposition of such labels/identities from the outside may be un-
wanted or unhelpful. Specifically with regard to this journal issue, two of the articles
illustrate this dichotomy. One article addressed the Teroko in Taiwan who used their
categorization to fight for certain rights. Another, based on research in Tanzania, ex-
amined the somewhat unhelpful external implementation of the Convention on the
Rights of the Child onto a group of street children, which illustrated the conflict that
can arises when a more Westernized, abstract understanding of human rights comes
up against a more contextualized local-level reality of human rights. How do we rec-
oncile this dichotomy?
I think that’s a question that gets us back to an anti-foundational notion of human
rights. It seems to me the question about human rights should not be if they fit into
a universal culture, but rather to what degree are human rights owned by the groups
they’re attempting to empower? This recognizes that human rights are both a tool of
struggle but also a site of struggle. In terms of more impact or less impact it seems
to me that the variable at play is the degree to which human rights are or are not
owned by those peoples engaged in struggles to which human rights language could
be relevant. You gave one example among many possible examples of international
organizations or states “giving” human rights from the top down, and then being sur-
prised when the beneficiaries don’t seem to appreciate it. Conversely, there are other
examples of peoples seizing the language of human rights, reinterpreting the language
of human rights, and thereby making that language more relevant to their particular
social struggles. That’s when human rights work. That’s when human rights are em-
powering as that’s when there’s an embrace of human rights from the bottom up. So
it seems to me that regarding the pros and cons of categorization -- the pros and cons
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of who’s doing the categorizing in a certain sense -- that one has to be open to the
ways in which human rights can be re-envisioned and such categories rethought. This
also means allowing for a re-envisioning of identity and allowing new identities into
that framework – i.e., in terms of our previous discussion [of] SOGI-related rights,
allowing them into the framework. Very much along the lines of that conversation,
if those groups are rejecting a singular notion of identity in favor of more fluid no-
tions of sexual identity then I think that also has to be welcomed. And that’s one of
the positive elements of the engagement with human rights from groups working on
sexuality: that many have insisted that sexual minorities, to use that phrase, need hu-
man rights protections, and that they are subject to systemic human rights violations;
however, at the same time, to make human rights more relevant to diverse members
of such groups human rights need to be re-envisioned in ways that reject a simplistic
categorization of identity and allow for a more pluralistic idea of identity.
Does the operation of attribution and categorization have a place today, especially
with regards to human rights? There seems to be a growing trend to do away with
descriptive identities, like gender for example. Is this indicative of a general trend
towards vanquishing categorization all together?
I very much support greater recognition of pluralistic rather than singular identi-
ties – the human rights regime should not be reinforcing the inscription of identities
on peoples. This is not to deny, however, that peoples still identify themselves accord-
ing to certain identities and sometimes quite powerful with a single identity, particu-
larly when that identity is subject to attack. I don’t think one could or should ignore
that. People do, in fact, have their human rights violated on the basis of their gender
identity, on the basis of their ethnic identity, on the basis of their ideological identity.
So, as far as that exists those [singular identities] are going to be relevant and cannot
be ignored out of some sort of abstract academic notion that we need to move beyond
them. I think we can both recognize the relevance of singular identity formations and,
at the same time, recognize the overarching multiplicity of identities and work toward
greater recognition of that multiplicity.
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2 0 1 6 T H E U N I V E R S A L | 35
Do you have any practical suggestions on how we can get a more nuanced, more
re-envisioned way of approaching this from say a more pragmatic legal sense? How do
we nuance our instruments to accommodate this understanding?
I wish I had a great answer to that, but I don’t. From an academic perspective,
it goes back to our conversation about interdisciplinarity: I would hope this can in-
form a more nuanced, multiple conceptualization of the human rights regime’s foun-
dations. One element of this, you’re absolutely right, is legal instruments in which
international human rights are grounded. A second element is institutions – state
institutions as well as international organizations and transnational groupings – that
integrate human rights into everyday policymaking. It is essential to include the legal
and the institutional in any conceptualization of human rights. At the same time, the
political and normative are third and fourth elements that have to be taken into ac-
count. Human rights need to constantly be reinvented and revived and this is done
through political contestations and normative changes – redefinitions in those con-
texts are essential.
Being in tune to the dynamic of those four foundations and how they intersect
in ways that can be complementary or contradictory is key. Again an example drawn
from sexual orientation and gender identity related rights could be helpful, thinking
now of the United States under Obama and the UK under David Cameron making
respect for the rights of LGBTQ populations part of their foreign policy. In some sense
I’m clearly sympathetic and this has been part of the momentum toward developing
SOGI-related legal instruments and greater institutionalization in policy-making of
SOGI. On the other hand, however, I think there’s no doubt that the whole dynamic
of U.S. and U.K. sponsorship is extremely problematic because it revives a notion of
human rights as a top down gift from great powers. In a normative sense that’s going
to be counterproductive, displacing the grassroots activist work on these issues over
the past decades across the globe in favor of identifying SOGI with Western power.
In a political sense, this risks empowering those most opposed to LGBTQ rights and
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36 | T H E U N I V E R S A L 2 0 1 6
SOGIE-related rights. And so it isn’t that I am opposed, per se, to those policy initia-
tives by the U.S. and the U.K, but one can recognize how they’re most likely coun-
terproductive, and therefore are something that should be looked at skeptically in a
political sense. I think that this is one way that the academic conversation we have had
can help us practically understand which sort of policies to support or not. Even poli-
cies that in some abstract moral sense seem fine can be problematic when one takes
into account predictable political and normative backlashes, resulting in a recognition
that such policies are likely to be counterproductive in reality.
Anthony Chase is a professor at Diplomacy and World Affairs, Occidental College in
Los Angeles, California. His research and teaching interests focus on human rights,
the work of international organizations, and the politics of the Middle East and the
broader Muslim world.
Lisa Haagensen holds an MSc in Political Science from University of Amsterdam and
is master student at Global Refugee Studies at Aalborg University. She is a student
assistant at the International Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Victims, a board mem-
ber at Think Rights and an editor at The Universal.
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2 0 1 6 T H E U N I V E R S A L | 37
T H E R E V I V A L O F T A R O K O
H E A D H U N T I N G R I T U A L S I N T A I W A N
A U T H E N T I C I T Y , I D E N T I T Y , A N D I N D I G E N O U S R I G H T S
Kristoffer Ravnbøl
A B S T R A C T
During the latter half of the 20th century, indigenous communities worldwide
began to organize themselves politically in order to demand indigenous rights, recog-
nition of ethnic identities, and reclaim lost land. In accordance with this political or-
ganization, many indigenous groups have made an effort to revitalize their old cultural
traditions. To portray the authenticity of the indigenous Taroko tribe to the dominant
Han society, and thereby gain government funding, Taroko elites revitalized head-
hunting rituals in 1999. However, many local Taroko felt that these new rituals were
not only disconnected from traditional Taroko beliefs but also from contemporary
Christian Taroko lifestyles. This article focuses on authenticity in the revitalization of
Taroko headhunting rituals and shows how different understandings of authenticity
between Taroko elites on the one hand and local Taroko on the other created tension
in contemporary Taroko communities. However, rather than focusing on the new
rituals as ‘fake’ or reinvented performances by elites, this article employs a practice-ori-
entated approach to analyse the ways in which the new rituals reinforced local Taroko
identity. Ritual practices and symbols, despite being reinvented or non-authentic, still
had an affect on ordinary people’s experiences of being a Taroko. This provides us with
important insights into the relationship between authenticity and identity in the re-
vitalization of traditions for obtaining indigenous rights. Furthermore, it allows us to
move beyond simplified dichotomies of culture, traditions and identity as authentic/
inauthentic or modern/traditional, in favour of focusing our attention on what au-
thenticity actually means to ordinary people in the revitalization of cultural practices
in indigenous communities.
T H E R E V I V A L O F T A R O K O H E A D H U N T I N G R I T U A L S I N T A I W A N

38 | T H E U N I V E R S A L 2 0 1 6
U N I T E D N A T I O N S D E C L A R A T I O N
O N T H E R I G H T S O F I N D I G E N O U S P E O P L E 2 0 0 7 :
“ I N D I G E N O U S P E O P L E S H A V E T H E R I G H T T O P R A C T I S E
A N D R E V I T A L I Z E T H E I R C U L T U R A L T R A D I T I O N S A N D
C U S T O M S . T H I S I N C L U D E S T H E R I G H T T O M A I N T A I N ,
P R O T E C T A N D D E V E L O P T H E P A S T , P R E S E N T A N D
F U T U R E M A N I F E S T A T I O N S O F T H E I R C U L T U R E S . ”
(United Nations 2007, p. 6)
1 . I N T R O D U C T I O N
In the early 1990’s, Taiwan witnessed a cultural and political reorientation as the
Island began to differentiate itself from Mainland China (Rudolph 2008, p. 1). In this
way, the indigenous population of Taiwan not only became a symbol of Taiwan’s non-
Chinese origins but also of Taiwan’s commitment to the development of democracy
and universal human rights as espoused by the outside world (Rudolph 2008, p. 205).
Within this new political climate, indigenous groups were not only able to apply for
government funding for cultural revitalization but they were also able to claim rights
that had been suppressed for centuries (Rudolph 2008, p. 6-7). Consequently, in
1999, Taroko elites1 began organizing revitalized headhunting rituals so as to con-
vince the Han-society2 of the their tribe’s authenticity, which would in turn qualify
them for government subsidies (Rudolph 2008, p. 9). However, their efforts were met
with scepticism from many ordinary Taroko, who felt that the new rituals were not
only ‘fake’ but also solely motivated by the elite’s political purposes (Rudolph 2008,
p. 9,21).
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP)
was passed in 2007, and under Article 11.1 it states: “Indigenous peoples have the
1 I follow Rudolph and take the Taiwanese use of elites, which includes people with sig-
nificant influence on society, politicians, local leaders, elders, and intellectuals (Rudolph 2008,
p. 21). When using elites alone, I refer to Taroko elites and not Han-Taiwanese elites.
2 In this essay, ‘Han’ refers to ‘Han-Taiwanese’ exclusively and not ‘Han-Chinese’ from
the Mainland.

2 0 1 6 T H E U N I V E R S A L | 39
right to practise and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs (United Nations
2007, p. 6). The Taroko case is a suitable, but not exclusive, example of the complex
political interplay between nation-states, local elites, religious institutions, and local
people in the revitalization of cultural traditions. This article focuses on the notion
of authenticity in the revival of indigenous traditions and how the new headhunting
rituals affected local Taroko communities. In addition, the article illustrates how – due
to differing perceptions of ‘authenticity’ in Taroko culture between elites and locals
– the new rituals created tension in Taroko communities. Importantly, rather than
viewing the new rituals as elite strategies, this article focuses on how the new rituals,
despite being ‘fake’ and contested, affected both local Taroko identity and also power-
relations with the Han. As such, the article attempts to move beyond fixed notions of
culture and tradition as modern/traditional, pure/impure or authentic/inauthentic, to
rather provide a revisited understanding of authenticity. By focusing on how identity
and power are negotiated during the new Taroko rituals, this article presents an ap-
proach that can aid our understanding of the ways in which authenticity relates to
identity in the revitalization of cultural traditions in indigenous communities.
The article is based on research conducted for my BA-thesis in anthropology during
a one-year exchange to Taiwan (2012-2013). The empirical data selection was based
on an extensive review of the literature as well as information obtained in dialogues
with scholars in the field of Taiwan’s indigenous people. The empirical cases have been
carefully selected from relevant anthropological monographs and articles written on
the Taroko tribe by both Western and Taiwanese scholars and anthropologists over the
last fifteen years. The material was predominantly collected from fieldwork and with
anthropological research methods of participant-observation and interviews. It is ac-
knowledged that, due to the predominance of headhunting rituals performed between
the early to mid 2000’s, the article lacks more recent empirical case examples.
2 . T A I W A N ’ S I N D I G E N O U S P O P U L A T I O N
Taiwan’s indigenous population3 belongs to the Austronesian family and is be-
lieved to have arrived in Taiwan around 4.000-4.500 B.C.E (Bellwood 1985; Cau-
3 The term aboriginal and indigenous seems to be used somewhat interchangeably in
aboriginal studies. I use the term indigenous.

40 | T H E U N I V E R S A L 2 0 1 6
quelin 2004). From the early 17th century onwards, Taiwan has been under a range of
different regimes of governance. The most significant political authorities in Taiwan’s
history are: the Dutch East India Company Period (1624-1661); the Chinese Koxinga
Period (1661-1683); the Chinese Qing Dynasty Period (1683-1895); the Japanese
Colonial Period (1895-1945); the Chinese Nationalist Period (1949-1996); and the
current Independent or Democratic period (1996-present) (Lo 2013; Munsterhjelm
2002; Yoshimura 2007).
During the Qing Dynasty Period, many indigenous people living on the lowland
plains of Western Taiwan gradually assimilated with the surrounding Han society (Lo
2013, p. 13). Most tribes in the mountains of Central and Eastern Taiwan, however,
remained more or less untouched. Nevertheless, during Japan’s rule, the mountain
tribes, and in particular the Taroko, were eventually defeated, despite fierce resistance
(Lo 2013, p. 13). Following this, the Japanese banned all headhunting rituals and
practices4, which were central to Taroko culture, cosmology, and identity (Lo 2013,
p. 14; Simon 2012). The suppression of indigenous traditions continued during the
Chinese Nationalists period, and with the mass conversion to Christianity after 1945,
many indigenous people abandoned their traditional beliefs (Rudolph 2008, p. 6).
The lift of martial law5 in 1987 facilitated Taiwan’s democratization processes and
the formation of different social movements, including the Aboriginal Movement that
fought for political rights, the return of lands, and name rectification (Rudolph 2008,
p. 5-6). The movement began in 1984 with strong support from the Presbyterian
Church that, for a long time, had promoted local self-autonomy for Taiwan’s indig-
enous tribes (Simon 2010, p. 728). In the early 1990s, the focus on nation-building,
multiculturalism, and human rights gave the Aboriginal Movement new support from
Han elites, and Taiwan’s indigenous were officially recognized in 1994 (Simon 2007,
p. 227).
Today, Taiwan’s indigenous population is divided into fourteen tribes and num-
4 According to Simon (2012), traditional headhunting rituals consisted of a series of ritu-
als and practices including warfare (hunting for human heads), hunting wild animal prey,
animal blood sacrifice, and worshipping ancestor-spirit rituals. For more on the anthropology
of headhunting see (George 1993; Hoskins 2002; Rosaldo 1984).
5 Chiang Kai-Shek imposed martial law over Taiwan when he fled there in 1945 with his
defeated troops from the Chinese Civil War. The lift in 1987 signalled the end of over 40
years of authoritarian rule over Taiwan (Brown 2004).

2 0 1 6 T H E U N I V E R S A L | 41
bers roughly 500.000 – slightly over two percent of Taiwan’s otherwise Han-Chinese
population (Simon 2010, p. 728). The Taroko, a patrilineal people of about 26.000
in East Taiwan, were formerly categorized as a sub-group of the Atayal, but gained of-
ficial recognition as an independent tribe in 2004 (ibid.).
3 . R E D I S C O V E R I N G H E A D H U N T I N G R I T U A L S
By the time the new headhunting rituals6 were reintroduced into Taroko society,
the ‘original’ rituals had largely been forgotten (Rudolph 2008, p. 106). The ritual
performances were reconstructed from Japanese colonial material and oral accounts
of Taroko elderly. While observing some of the new ritual performances, Michael Ru-
dolph noted how ‘original’ headhunting practices had been replaced with a theatrical
performance, featuring a plastic head and red paint (2008, p. 106). In addition, an
animal blood sacrifice was often completely omitted. Instead of the traditional hunt-
ing of wild pigs, a boy played the pig and was hunted down by other boys with paper
sticks (Rudolph 2008, p. 110).
According to Rudolph, not only did these new rituals have little to do with the
‘original’ rituals, but they also seemed disconnected from the contemporary Christian
Taroko life-style (2008, p. 8-9). The Church played a significant role in their revital-
ization, with priests often acting as ritual leaders (ibid., p. 118). During one ritual
observed by Rudolph in a Taroko village, the priest accused the animal sacrifice of be-
ing blasphemous. Moreover, the Church tended to view former headhunting practices
as sin (ibid., p. 200). As a result, many local Taroko feared that the revitalized rituals
would bring misfortune to their villages. Others felt that they had to choose between
modern-day Christian beliefs or traditional ancestral beliefs (ibid., p. 127).
While participating in some of the new rituals in Taroko communities in 2000,
Scott Simon describes how, “[Taroko] participation consisted merely of eating bar-
becued meat and drinking [...] they described the formal event as a failed attempt to
attract tourists; and laughed at the organizers, whom they imagine to enrich them-
6 Rudolph uses the term ancestor-spirit rituals, while Simon uses headhunting rituals. In
this article, I use the latter, though it refers to the same traditional rituals and practices of
ancestor-spirit worship, headhunting, wild hunting and animal sacrifice (Simon 2012).

42 | T H E U N I V E R S A L 2 0 1 6
selves through such projects” (Simon 2012, p. 167). The new rituals did not appear
to embrace the local community at large as many ordinary Taroko did not see the ad-
vantage in revitalizing forgotten traditions or in supporting the elites in their pursuit
of political power (Simon 2010, p. 17).
4 . E L I T E S ’ A U T H E N T I C A T I O N P R A C T I C E S
Rudolph uses the term ‘authenticating practices’ to describe the strategic way the
elites reconstructedTaroko cultural traditions in order to compete with other tribes for
subsidies (2008, p. 66). The elites’ authenticating practices can be seen as what Joane
Nagel (1998) calls cultural reconstruction, in which forgotten or lost cultural prac-
tices are reintroduced into contemporary culture. Nagel draws on Eric Hobsbawm &
Terrance Ranger’s influential work The Invention of Tradition (1983), in which they
argue that traditions are mostly invented practices that seek to repeatedly assert values
and norms that connect the present to the past. Moreover, (invented) traditions often
attempt to link the past with suitable present conditions, making the past-present
continuity mostly factious (Hobsbawm & Rangers 1983).
We can understand the reintroduced symbols, such as the plastic head, as a link to
the past traditions of headhunting, which legitimizes the authenticity of the Taroko
tribe. Rudolph explains that the elites “hoped that the enactment of cultural represen-
tations that seemed more authentic and archetypical than those of their tribal rivals
would eventually re-legitimate them and their alleged primordial rights in the eyes of
the Han public” (Rudolph 2008, p. 211). Qiu Yunfang points out that the elites stud-
ied the ‘original’ rituals like researchers from the outside, and translated them in ways
that the Han would understand (in Rudolph 2008, p. 218). In other words, the elites
composed the new rituals in a way that would re-confirm the Han’s stereotypical view
of authentic indigenous culture (Qiu Yunfang in Rudolph 2008, p. 141).
We have seen how the new rituals created tension in local Taroko communities,
and how the elites reconstructed cultural symbols and practices to portray Taroko
authenticity to the Han society. The following section will examine how the concept
of authenticity relates to indigenous rights more closely.

2 0 1 6 T H E U N I V E R S A L | 43
5 . A U T H E N T I C I T Y A N D I N D I G E N O U S P E O P L E
The revitalization of Taroko rituals can also be seen as part of a larger (elite driven)
movement for official recognition of the Taroko tribe (Rudolph 2008, p. 105; Simon
2010, p. 728). The Taroko case thereby provides a good example of an indigenous
group’s attempts to demonstrate its ‘authenticity’ to the outside society so as to obtain
certain rights and subsidies. According to Richard Handler, authenticity is a mod-
ern Western and anthropological construction rather than something evident in non-
Western cultures (1986, p. 2). Handler argues that anthropologists have tended to
construct cultures by describing them within their own monographs. Authenticity is
therefore not only embedded in anthropological theory but also in the self-conscious
ethnic ideologies of the many groups studied by anthropologists (Handler 1986, p. 4;
Wagner 1981[1976]).
The reconstruction of ‘authentic’ cultural traditions to gain political influence,
rights, subsidies, and recognition is not particular to Taiwan’s indigenous elites. As
Thomas Hylland Eriksen (2002) points out, indigenous people around the world
(Native-Americans, Sami, Intuits, Australian Aboriginals, etc.) have, from the 1970s
onwards, organized themselves politically to demand indigenous rights, to get their
ethnic identities recognised, and to reclaim lost land. Paul Brass also argues that the
survival of ethnic groups and ethnic cultures in modern societies does not depend on
cultural purity, but rather on how successfully identity symbols are used by compet-
ing elites (1991, p. 25). However, viewing the revitalized Taroko rituals as inauthentic
or invented traditions by elites, or as a matter of traditional Taroko culture versus
modern Christian lifestyles, would be an over-simplification. As Simon notes, the
elites could have composed the new rituals with fewer symbols and less drama and
still received government subsidies (2012, p. 168). Qiu Yunfang also argues that the
new rituals were directed at both Han and indigenous audiences, and that many local
Taroko were in fact still engaged in traditional beliefs when the headhunting rituals
were reintroduced (Rudolph 2008, p. 128-9).
In the following, I will take a look at Rob Van Ginkel’s (2004) analysis of the
revitalization of whale hunting by the Makah Indian tribe in The United States. Gin-
kel provides some useful insights into authenticity, which can help us move beyond
simplistic notions of revitalized traditions and help us gain a deeper understanding of
how the new rituals affected many local Taroko.

44 | T H E U N I V E R S A L 2 0 1 6
6 . T H E R I G H T T O R E V I T A L I Z E T R A D I T I O N S
In 1995, the Makah Tribal Council developed plans to revitalize the tribe’s old
whale hunting traditions. Upon receiving the official right to resume their tradition
in 19987, the Makah tribe came up against fierce resistance from groups of whale-
hunting opponents (Ginkel 2004, p. 63). During the debate that ensued over the
Makah’s right to hunt whales, opponents claimed that traditions such as whaling,
“should either go along with a complete return to traditional tools and traditional
values and beliefs or become extinct” (Ginkel 2004, p. 70). According to Ginkel, the
opponents frequently drew upon general, romantic, and neo-colonial ideas about Na-
tive Americans. Essentially, the opponents’ message seemed to be: “once you have as-
similated, you have lost your rights to maintaining or revitalizing a tradition” (Ginkel
2004, p. 79).
Notions of authenticity that are in alignment with this sense of purity played a key
role in the opponents’ arguments against Makah hunting rights (Ginkel 2004, p. 59).
In this view, traditional practices like whale hunting cannot be authentic if combined
with modern lifestyles and practices (Ginkel 2004, p. 59, 71). Similarly, according to
the Han’s stereotypical view of the Taroko tribe, traditional headhunting rituals and
modern/Western Christianity should not be integrated (Rudolph 2008, p. 127). Yet,
in both Makah and Taroko communities, traditional beliefs did not completely cease
to exist but rather co-existed with modern lifestyles (Rudolph 2008, p. 129; Ginkel
2004, p. 59). Ginkel argues that the debate over Makah authenticity became polar-
ized between deconstructionists’ view of authenticity as pure on the one hand and
constructionists’ view of traditions as inauthentic fabrications on the other (2004, p.
59). For Ginkel, such a simplification only scratches the surface and does little to il-
lustrate what authenticity actually means for local people whose traditions are being
revitalized (2004, p. 59.).
Based on what this article has presented so far, it might be tempting to take a
constructionist view of the new headhunting rituals and view them mainly as elite
strategies and inauthentic performances for tourists and Han-elites. However, in order
to go deeper, we will need to thoroughly examine the ritual practices and how the
7 U.S authorities gave the Makah right to hunt five whales annually over a five-year period
with a maximum of twenty whales for subsistence and ceremonial purposes only (Ginkel
2004, p. 64).

2 0 1 6 T H E U N I V E R S A L | 45
revitalized rituals affected ordinary Taroko. Though Rudolph’s main emphasis is on
elites, he points out that what might have begun as authentication practices “became
an identity-instilling activity” (2008, p. 131). In the following, I will look at how the
new headhunting rituals, despite being ‘fake’, created a temporal socio-cultural space
for re-negotiating Taroko identity and power-relations with the Han. In this way,
I will attempt to move beyond dichotomies of authentic/inauthentic and modern/
traditional, and provide a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between
contemporary Taroko identity and the revitalized traditions.
7 . R I T U A L P R A C T I C E A N D I D E N T I T Y
According to Catherine Bell (1992; 1997), performative ritual practices have the
potential to establish and transform identity by providing a space for individual agen-
cy. Here, individuals can simultaneously reproduce the ritual performance while seek-
ing to transform socio-political difficulties (Bell 1997, p. 82-3). With Bell’s practice-
theoretical approach, we can consider the revitalized rituals not only as a theatrical
performance that represents Taroko society but also as a space that can catalyse socio-
cultural change and reconstitute Taroko identity.
During the new ritual performances, many Taroko began to re-apply facial henna
tattoos (Rudolph 2008, p. 124). Traditionally, the rituals were connected to head-
hunting and ancestor-spirit worship, and only headhunters could obtain the facial
tattoos so strongly associated with Taroko identity: “men who had the facial tattoo
were able to get married, to father children and to return to the realm of ancestors after
death” (Rudolph 2008, p. 105). According to Fredrik Barth (1969), ethnic identities
are constituted by symbolic interactions between different social groups and in accor-
dance with different experiences of the ‘other’. This is clear in the re-applying of facial
tattoos as an ethnic indicator that signifies the difference between Han and Taroko.
In the new rituals, the Taroko, both as a reference to their headhunting culture
and to differentiate themselves from the Han, ate raw meat – traditionally given to the
headhunters – and by displaying pig skulls (in former times human skulls) (Brown
2004, p. 117). According to Melissa Brown, the pig skulls and the eating of raw meat
served to frighten the Han who stereotypically feared the ‘barbaric’ indigenous people
(2004, p. 116). Brown argues that by exploiting the Han’s fear, the indigenous people

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