Ronald Niezen

Memory Seeker

Kim Burgess

Manley Begay

"Niezen's fascinating analysis explores indigenism as a key concept of present-day international relations."—Jean-Loup amselle, author of Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere

Native North American Religions in the Age of Nation Building

Spirit Wars

Human Rights and the Politics of Identity

The Origins of Indigenism

"Social justice claims, and the human rights movement in particular, are entering a new phase. Social media, algorithms, and artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping the practices of advocacy and compliance. In this new era, technicians, lawmakers and advocates, sometimes in collaboration with the private sector, have increasingly gravitated toward the possibilities and dangers inherent in the non-human. Algorithms and automated data processing are unpredictable and opaque. The use of algorithms and artificial intelligence may be advancing the protection of human rights in some ways, but new technologically-enhanced forms of human rights abuse have emerged alongside these new protections. Ronald Niezen entreats readers not to be distracted by the shiny new innovations, and to instead consider how new tech interacts with the older models of rights claiming and communication, arguing that the key to understanding the new era of social justice is not in an exclusive focus on sophisticated, expert-driven forms of data management, but in considering how these technologies are interacting with other forms of communication to produce new avenues of expression, public sympathy, redress of grievances, and sources of the self. To do this, Niezen investigates various case studies of the pursuit of justice via technology, including Twitter-faciliated mobilizations, WhatsApp activist networks, and the news prioritization or "filter bubbles" fed through Google and Facebook algorithms to uncover how emerging technologies of data management and social media influence the ways that human rights claimants and their allies pursue justice, and the "new victimology" that prioritizes and represents strategic lives and types of violence over others"--

The Technologies and Politics of Rights Claiming in Practice

#HumanRights

Suitable for both introductory anthropology and upper-division courses in cultural anthropology The campaign of the Cree people to protect their forest culture from the impact of hydro-electric development in northern Quebec has been widely-documented. Few have heard in any detail about this campaign's outcome and impact upon indigenous societies' futures. This text gives equal attention to the Cree leadership's successful strategies for dealing with major social and environmental pressures with the forces of acculturation and native communities' social destruction. The titles in the Cultural Survival Studies in Ethnicity and Change series, edited by David Maybury-Lewis and Theodore Macdonald, Jr. of Cultural Survival, Inc., Harvard University, focus on key issues affecting indigenous and ethnic groups worldwide. Each ethnography builds on introductory material by going further in-depth and allowing students to explore, virtually first-hand, a particular issue and its impact on a culture.

Sovereignty and Forest Life in James Bay Cree Society

Defending the Land

The original edition of Truth and Indignation offered the first close and critical assessment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as it was unfolding. Niezen used testimonies, texts, and visual materials produced by the Commission as well as interviews with survivors, priests, and nuns to raise important questions about the TRC process. He asked what the TRC meant for reconciliation, transitional justice, and conceptions of traumatic memory. In this updated edition, Niezen discusses the Final Repot and Calls to Action bringing the book up to date and making it a valuable text for teaching about transitional justice, colonialism and redress, public anthropology, and human rights. Thoughtful, provocative, and uncompromising in the need to tell the "truth" as he sees it, Niezen offers an important contribution to understanding truth and reconciliation processes in general, an the Canadian experience in particular.

Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools, Second Edition

Truth and Indignation

Truth and Indignation offers the first close and critical assessment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission as it is unfolding. Niezen uses interviews with survivors and oblate priests and nuns, as well as testimonies, texts, and visual materials produced by the Commission to raise important questions: What makes Canada's TRC different from others around the world? What kinds of narratives are emerging and what does that mean for reconciliation, transitional justice, and conceptions of traumatic memory? What happens to the ultimate goal of reconciliation when a large part of the testimony--that of nuns, priests, and government officials--is scarcely evident in the Commission's proceedings? Thoughtful, provocative, and uncompromising in the need to tell the "truth" as he sees it, Niezen offers an important contribution to our understanding of TRC processes in general, and the Canadian experience in particular.

Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools

Social justice and human rights movements are entering a new phase. Social media, artificial intelligence, and digital forensics are reshaping advocacy and compliance. Technicians, lawmakers, and advocates, sometimes in collaboration with the private sector, have increasingly gravitated toward the possibilities and dangers inherent in the nonhuman. #HumanRights examines how new technologies interact with older models of rights claiming and communication, influencing and reshaping the modern-day pursuit of justice. Ronald Niezen argues that the impacts of information technologies on human rights are not found through an exclusive focus on sophisticated, expert-driven forms of data management but in considering how these technologies are interacting with other, "traditional" forms of media to produce new avenues of expression, public sympathy, redress of grievances, and sources of the self. Niezen considers various ways that the pursuit of justice is happening via new technologies, including crowdsourcing, social media–facilitated mobilizations (and enclosures), WhatsApp activist networks, and the selective attention of Google's search engine algorithm. He uncovers how emerging technologies of data management and social media influence the ways that human rights claimants and their allies pursue justice, and the "new victimology" that prioritizes and represents strategic lives and types of violence over others. #HumanRights paints a striking and important panoramic picture of the contest between authoritarianism and the new tools by which people attempt to leverage human rights and bring the powerful to account.

The Technologies and Politics of Justice Claims in Practice

Maria Sapignoli

This book assembles a range of work by researchers who have entered the social worlds of global organizations.

The Anthropology of Global Organizations

Palaces of Hope

A World Beyond Difference unpacks the globalizationliterature and offers a valuable critique: one that is forthright,yet balanced, and draws on the local work of ethnographers tocounter relativist and globalist discourses. Presents a lively conceptual and historical map of how we thinkabout the emerging socio-political world, and above all how wethink politically about human cultural differences Interprets, criticizes, and frames responses to worldculture Draws from the work of recent major social theorists, comparingthem to classical social theorists in an instructive manner Grounds critique of theory in years of ethnographicresearch

Ronald Niezen

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