From human rights to local justice & the quiet power of indicators

Date: Wednesday 22 August
Time: 15:30-17:30
Place: Bergen University Aula 

Keynote address and roundtable 

From human rights to local justice & the quiet power of indicators with Sally Engle Merry, NYU

How are international human rights «vernacularized» and applied in local
contexts? And what happens when we develop global indicators to measure their effects?

In the 2018 Annual Lecture on Law & Social Transformation, leading legal anthropologist Sally Engle Merry will discuss what happens when culturally translated information is gathered and analysed in the production of «objective» global indicators, arguing that the design of measurement systems constitutes a power that is rarely acknowledged.

“those who create indicators aspire to measure the world but, in practice, create the world they are measuring”

The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion chaired by Antonio De Lauri (CMI).