Pluralist Approaches to Human Rights

Some anthropologists criticize United Nations "universal" human rights as ethnocentrically Western. But all sociocultural groups define some concept analogous to human rights, and multiple political and philosophical cultures have contributed to the evolving UN framework. This essay traces the four major sources of modern human rights (Western political liberalism, socialism and social welfare principles, cross-cultural rights traditions, and the UN instruments) and focuses on points of agreement in the evolving framework. The evidence is used to argue for a pluralist approach to human rights (rather than narrower universal, Western, or broader cultural relativist approaches) and suggests points for additional anthropological contributions.