Michał Rozbicki

"This book suggests instead that the process of worldwide expansion of human rights should be primarily viewed not as 'transnational' but as intercultural, and that it can be achieved not so much by enlightening the provincials and bringing them out of their localism to presumably global and Western modernity, but through a dialogue between one knowledge community with another." Each chapter of this edited volume describes an instance of local (cultural) law differing from the presumptively "universal" human rights values.… (mer)

"Through case studies spanning Europe, America, Africa, and Asia, this book illuminates our historical understanding of what happens when different cultures meet. Here, twelve cultural historians explore the mechanism and inner dynamic of such encounters, and demonstrate that while they often occur within a global context, they only acquire meaning locally, where culture inherently resides. The contributors show that traditional, macro-scale frameworks of interpretation are too abstract and general to capture change caused by cross-cultural contacts, and that such change can come about only at the grassroots level, where the domestication of otherness takes place."-- from publisher's web site… (mer)