The 2019 Annual Lecture on Law & Social Transformation

How are international human rights «vernacularized» and applied in local contexts? And what happens when we develop global indicators to measure their effects? Leading legal anthropologist Sally Engle Merry discusses 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).