Palaces of Hope

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

This volume assembles in one place the work of scholars who are making key contributions to the anthropological approach to the UN, other global organizations and international law more broadly. This emerging literature offers new perspectives on topics of timeless interest: bureaucracy, international law, advocacy, and, ultimately, justice.This volume assembles in one place the work of scholars who are making key contributions to a new approach to the United Nations, and to global organizations and international law more generally. Anthropology has in recent years taken on global organizations as a legitimate source of its subject matter. The research that is being done in this field gives a human face to these world-reforming institutions. Palaces of Hope demonstrates that these institutions are not monolithic or uniform, even though loosely connected by a common organizational network. They vary above all in their powers and forms of public engagement. Yet there are common threads that run through the studies included here: the actions of global institutions in practice, everyday forms of hope and their frustration, and the will to improve confronted with the realities of nationalism, neoliberalism, and the structures of international power.