Although campaigns for universal human rights have been intellectually and emotionally compelling for many anthropologists, they have tended to embroil them in fruitless polemics about cultural relativism with non-Western thinkers and policy-makers. Often “universalist” discourses about “rights” depend on values and distinctions that are far from universal and that stem, in fact, from Christian, secular, or “modernist” notions about punishment, suffering, and redemption. To make some practical contribution to the struggle for human dignity in the Middle East, it may be (...) preferable to aim for a more limited goal: the abolition of torture in the region. Consensus about the illegitimacy of torture is more easily reached, since none of the Middle East's religious or philosophical traditions condone it. What is more, empirical data demonstrate that torture has increased in frequency in the region and is widely perceived, both by insiders and outsiders, as a growing problem. Ethnographers could play a role in documenting incidents of torture and in building coalitions of Middle Eastern and outsider activists who, working together, could expose torture and bring pressure to bear on those who inflict it. (shrink)

E n est e a r tícul o e l auto r s e pr e gunt a s i l a teorí a socia l de l derech o pued e apo r tar un a contribució n especí f ic a a u n concept o d e justici a via b l e h o y e n día , frent e a l o que sobr e ell a pued e deci r l a f ilosofí (...) a moral , polític a y jurídica . E n s u opinión , lo s conceptos d e autopoiesi s y deconst r ucció n (Luhman n y De r rida ) tiene n e l potencia l su f icient e para act iv a r ta l contribució n e n do s direccione s diferentes : reconst r ucció n d e un a geneal o gía d e l a justici a y obse r v ació n d e la s paradoja s decisionale s de l derech o mode r no . E l planteamient o genealógic o intent a descubri r la s con e xione s oculta s entr e l a semántic a d e la justici a y l a est r uctur a socia l (l o cual , po r otr o lado , pued e desemboca r e n l a refo r mulació n d e u n concept o plausi b l e d e justici a e n la s condicione s actuales) . U n procedimiento deconst r uct ivo pe r mite , a s u v ez , obse r v a r e l hiat o e xistent e entr e la s est r uctura s jurídicas y la s decisiones , u n hiat o qu e pr o v oc a impo r tante s paradoja s e n lo s proceso s d e tom a de decisione s jurídicas . Mediant e ta l obse r v ació n e s posi b l e alcanza r un a comprensió n más profund a d e l a justicia , qu e e l auto r inte r preta , e n últim a instancia , com o u n proces o de autodescripció n de l derech o qu e soc a va e l carácte r recurs ivo d e la s operacione s jurídicas y qu e fuerz a a l derech o a s u autotrascendencia , per o qu e s e sabote a a s í mism o po r qu e en s u realizació n cre a siempr e un a nu eva injusticia : un a e xperienci a cuy a elaboració n literaria anticip ó Heinric h v o n Kleis t e n s u n o v el a Mi c hae l K ohlhaas. (shrink)

Sex change surgery has been practised in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa in 1982. Therefore, a medical and judicial process of transition has been regulated accordingly. However, this has not resulted in either the legalization of sex change surgery, nor in the recognition of transsexual identity within Iranian substantive law. Sex change surgery is allowed through Islamic law, rather than substantive law, in response to the existing social facts and norms, on the one hand, and structural cooperation with medical system, (...) on the other. In this article, I argue that the Iranian heteronormative law’s understanding of transsexuality has amounted to the misrecognition of trans persons’ status within law and society. Using semi structured interviews, intersectional content analysis, and feminist methodologies, the findings indicate that transsexual bodies have gained meaning through religious and medical discourses within a framework of power relations, and that Iranian transsexual persons have reconstructed and redefined gender and gender relations in a way that informs their understanding of gender and sexuality beyond the existing Islamic legal and social norms. Moreover, intersectional analysis of the interviews demonstrates how the legal misrecognition of transsexuality creates space for a discourse which in itself leads to the misrecognition of other gendered identities, such as homosexuals and transwomen. (shrink)

Two college-age samples, one from the United States and one from Spain, were studied with mixed methods, phenomenological and traditional experimental - regarding the alleged foundational topic of `unfairness'. Participants gave their instantiations of `It's not fair!', which were deconstructed and qualitatively analyzed to find and compare the essential types of unfairness. Using traditional experimental methods, unfairness vignettes were rated by severity and quantitatively analyzed, to see whether the two cultural groups make similar or different distinctions among the concepts of (...) `unfairness', `injustice' and `misfortune'. From qualitative analyses, the fairness principles of `equity' and `equality' appeared in both groups, but `honor and dignity' violations were much more frequent in the Spanish group, as different fairness principles interacted in complex ways. From the quantitative analyses, `unfairness' was the broadest of the three concepts, extending beyond `injustice' and both cultural groups viewed `misfortunes' as `unfairnesses'. Implications for a commonsense morality across cultures are discussed. (shrink)

In this article, I first criticize commonly held assumptions about what Islamic law is. I suggest that it is at best useless and at worst wrong to start with a label like ‘Islamic law’ to describe something that is presumed to be an instance of such a label. I identify the source of confusion, i.e. the postulate that there must be a kind of genealogical continuity between what people refer to as Islamic law and Islamic law as it is found (...) in the heterogeneous legacy of sharî’a and fiqh treatises. My contention is that Islamic law is what people consider as Islamic law, nothing more, nothing less, and that it is up to theologians, believers and citizens, not social scientists, to decide whether something does conform or not to some ‘grand tradition’. Second, I argue that instead of looking at the hypothetical Islamic-law model, which something like Egyptian personal status law would be an instance of, the task of social scientists is, rather, to describe the situations, the mechanisms and the processes through which people orient themselves to something they call ‘Islamic law’. This position is grounded on a principle of indifference that seeks to avoid any normative and evaluative engagement: the focus is put on the description of practices, not on their evaluation. Moreover, this position is based upon the refusal of any ironical standpoint. In other words, it denies that social scientists occupy any kind of overhanging position vis-a-vis the social that would allow them to ‘reveal’ to ‘self-deceived people’ the truth that is concealed from them because of their ‘lack of critical distance’, ‘ignorance’ and/or ‘bad faith’. Third, I ground this praxiological re-specification in examples drawn from Egyptian judicial activity in the field of personal status. (shrink)