Table of Contents

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction: “Studying Up” and the Anthropology of Transnational LGBT Human Rights Advocacy

1. From the Castro to the UN: IGLHRC in Historical Perspective
2. Bodies of Law: Activists and Brokerage in Practice
3. Fusing Human Rights and Sexual Politics: Advocating for LGBT Human Rights Worldwide
4. LGBT Human Rights Advocacy and the Partnership Principle
5. Knowledge as Power: The Structural and Strategic Complexities of Information Politics
6. Demanding Rights, Compelling Recognition: LGBT Advocacy in the Global Human Rights Arena

Conclusion. For Everyone, Everywhere: Universality, Relativism, and the Anthropology of
Human Rights

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

About the Author

Ryan R. Thoreson, a JD candidate at Yale Law School, is a former Scott Hitt Research Fellow at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

Reviews

"The first of its kind, this book responds in a balanced, self-reflexive, nuanced, empirically-based way to a number of sharp critiques of Western human rights activists, frameworks and ‘imperialisms.’ With careful ethnographic observation in a series of case studies, Ryan R. Thoreson makes a significant contribution to the scholarship on human rights, on global sexualities and, hence, to the cause of sexual minority rights in the global South and Africa in particular." —Marc Epprecht, Queen’s University


"This groundbreaking book provides a first-ever in-depth, ethnographic examination of the internal process of a northern NGO focused on LGBT rights in global context." —Amy Lind, University of Cincinnati