Más allá de una antropología de los derechos humanos: ¿los horizontes del diálogo intercultural y del reino de Shambhala?

Abstract

The anthropology of law studies human rights in–between universalism and relativism, global and local, theories and practices. Recent research allows to approach them in more pluralist and pragmatic ways through their contextual relativisation. This reflects an increased sensitivity of our theories to cultural diversity. But if there is an increasing interculturalization of our theories, one rarely explores the challenges of a radical relativisation of human rights through an intercultural approach. The latter does not only address the question of the transferability —or not— and its conditions of human rights in diverse cultural contexts. It also engages in intercultural dialogue with other worldvisions and their functional equivalents to human rights. It is not only about translating human rights into other cultural universes, but also about translating these universes into the human rights universe in order to understand how the construct of human rights appears from such a different perspective. This is the basis for genuine intercultural dialogue among the different Peace traditions of the world. The article explores such a dialogue with the Buddhist vision of the Kingdom of Shambala that can be seen as a functional equivalent to human rights. It invites to deepen the pressing stakes of interculturality which will oblige us to rethink our current epistemological frameworks, including legal theory and anthropology.