Human Rights and Their Extra-Legal Circulations: Some Anthropological Reflections

Abstract

This paper builds on some anthropological reflections on human rights and addresses three questions that guided my participation in the Workshop Global Phenomena and Social Sciences (Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University, February 4^th 2016): (1) How have laws and legal professionals dealt with increasingly intense movements and flows of people and goods? (2) Is it possible to say that these movements and flows are out of control? (3) Is it possible to legislate about what is moving and in flow? Among the conclusions, the paper stresses that classic political-juridical categories and institutions, such as people, state, nation and individual fall short of addressing contemporary questions about collective agents agencies, whose power dynamics is network-based. Anthropology can contribute of these to widening present horizons, by opening up to the perception and the understanding of these collective subjects: by establishing a dialogue with other fields of knowledge: and by making possible a ethic human-rights based.