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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE The Global Fight against Racial Discrimination: Human Rights Assessment and the Making of Obligation in Costa Rica and at the United Nations DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Anthropology by Joshua Patrick Clark Dissertation Committee: Professor Bill Maurer, Chair Professor Susan Bibler Coutin Professor George E. Marcus Associate Professor Kristin Peterson 2016 © 2016 Joshua Patrick Clark DEDICATION for Carlos Minott ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v CURRICULUM VITAE viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION xi CHAPTER 1: Introduction: Evaluation, State Obligations, and Obligated States in the 1 Global Fight against Racial Discrimination CHAPTER 2: Why Costa Rica? (An Interlude) 56 CHAPTER 3: Inclusiveness, Difference, Particularization: How to Self-Evaluate Like a 77 Discrimination-Fighting State CHAPTER 4: Between Reality and Rights: Producing Ethno-Racial Statistics in Costa 123 Rica CHAPTER 5: Truth Silences: Knowing and Relating at the UN Committee on the 163 Elimination of Racial Discrimination CHAPTER 6: Participation and State-ness in Costa Rica’s Anti-Discrimination 195 Policymaking Process CONCLUSION 245 WORKS CITED 264 iii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1 The conference room on the ground floor of the Palais Wilson 21 Figure 2 A member of the CERD turns to address a question to a state delegation 22 Figure 3 The Casa Amarilla 31 Figure 4 The Casa Amarilla’s Salón Azul 32 Figure 5 Physical map of Costa Rica 62 Figure 6 A photocopy of clippings from a 1976 issue of the newspaper Excelsior 69 Figure 7 Indigenous territories of Costa Rica 70 Figure 8 Ethno-racial variable (“Color or race”), 1950 census 134 Figure 9 Ethno-racial variable, 2000 census 134 Figure 10 Questions on indigenous identity and language, 2011 census 143 Figure 11 Question on (non-indigenous) ethno-racial identity, 2011 census 143 Figure 12 Ethno-racial sub-population counts in Costa Rican censuses 144 Figure 13 INEC map titled “% of Afro-descendants (without mulatos)” 156 Figure 14 INEC map titled “% of mulatos” 156 Figure 15 INEC map titled “% of Afro-descendants (including mulatos)” 156 Figure 16 Boxes and binders… where the CERD holds its meetings 165 Figure 17 The Palais Wilson 172 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wrote this dissertation in Sacramento, California, between September 2013 and October 2016. Sacramento being a significant distance from my home institution of UC Irvine, the dissertation was composed primarily in a number of coffee shops, in nearly every corner of the Sacramento State University Library, and occasionally in my car parked in a driveway or along the curb of a quiet street. My choice to “write-up” away from my campus meant that I missed out on some elements of the process that I can now say should not be undervalued – above all, an office that is not carried on one’s back, and an embodied (as opposed to “virtual”) intellectual community. That said, I think that this experience made me even more appreciative of the numerous sources of support I received from many people along the way. I will begin with some exceptional colleagues and friends who, despite lack of physical proximity, did indeed make me feel like I had a community during the dissertation writing process. In this regard, I thank especially Sean Mallin and Taylor Nelms, with whom I shared many draft versions of chapters of this dissertation and many fruitful conversations about them. Sean and Taylor always gave generously of their time and insights to help me improve and continue pushing forward with my work. Caitlin Fouratt also provided helpful comments and suggestions on chapters contained herein; I am further grateful for her invaluable support and advice about parenthood during fieldwork and as a junior scholar. I would also like to thank Michele Statz for her camaraderie and generous and committed friendship as we both navigated our respective metamorphoses into scholar-parents. My work has benefited as well from many long conversations and much encouragement from my colleague and friend Chima Anyadike- Danes. Also deserving special mention is Miia Halme-Tuomisaari, with whom I have maintained an enriching and invigorating dialogue about anthropology and human rights since we met at the AAA meetings in 2013. I thank Miia for her collaboration, her advice and support, and for at more than one critical juncture helping me to re-center myself and recover my voice. Finally, I would like to thank all of those with whom I worked on the Board of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology (APLA), and the wider APLA community, for their collegiality and mentorship. I am of course also quite grateful to the members of my dissertation committee for their guidance, encouragement, and patience throughout my research and writing process. Kris Peterson accompanied me through the conceptualization and writing of numerous revisions of grant applications for this project. I appreciate her keen eye for spotting what I needed to tighten, and also often where I needed to loosen knots into which I was tying/writing myself. George Marcus provided much stimulating conversation and inspiration throughout my years as a Ph.D. student, and was a reliably energizing counterpart in many enjoyable, winding discussions of anthropology, academia, and much more. Susan Coutin has provided invaluable feedback and suggestions for improving my work over the past years. I thank her for generously giving her time to advise and mentor me on wider professional and “work-life” matters in addition to my scholarship. I am also grateful to Susan for initiating my involvement in the APLA community. Finally, I warmly thank Bill Maurer for his commitment to me as my advisor and dissertation committee chair. From my first seminar with Bill, he has challenged me to ask different questions and to think more complexly and creatively about law, ethnography, and a great deal else. I feel very fortunate to have had his example as a scholar, a teacher, and an advocate for students and for public higher education. v I am also fortunate to have had the ongoing, committed support and encouragement of mentors at my previous institutions, the University of Texas at Austin and Butler University. Here I would like to thank in particular my dear friends Karen Engle, Harry van der Linden, and Margaret Brabant. Without their guidance and examples as both scholars and people, together with those of the late Dale Hathaway, I never would have had the idea that I could pursue, or the drive to complete, a Ph.D. This dissertation has also benefited directly from the feedback and insights of a number of excellent scholars beyond the colleagues and mentors listed above. For their helpful comments on versions of this material previously presented at conferences and workshops, I thank Justin Richland, Adelle Blackett, Kregg Hetherington, Andrea Ballestero, Tess Lea, and Natali Valdez. I also thank all of those who offered stimulating questions and feedback on my presentations at the Socio-Legal Studies Workshop, UC Irvine School of Law; [Working Title] Ethnographic Writing Workshop, UC Irvine; the Harvard Law School Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) 2015 Workshop in Doha, Qatar; the Department of International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington; the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota; and Allegra Lab, Helsinki. I am thankful for financial support from a variety of sources that made possible my fieldwork, and my Ph.D. studies more generally. Here I would first like to acknowledge UC Irvine’s Department of Anthropology and School of Social Sciences. I am also grateful for financial support from the Brython Davis Endowment; the Dr. Dard Magnus Rossell Memorial Endowment, which recognizes graduate student-parents and non-traditional students; and the UC Irvine School of Social Science’s pilot program for supporting students with newborns and newly adopted children. Finally, I thank the Cultural Anthropology program and the Law and Social Science program of the National Science Foundation, which together funded the bulk of my fieldwork in Costa Rica and Geneva in 2012 and 2013. UC Irvine’s Center for Unconventional Security Affairs also provided crucial funding support for my fieldwork. To all of those in Costa Rica who contributed their time, energy, and thoughtful reflections to this project, I am forever grateful. They truly made this dissertation possible. Their collaboration as ethnographic interlocutors was of course invaluable, as it provided me with the most important and illuminating material contained in the pages that follow. But I would add as well that their dedicated efforts – whether as community leaders, as activists, as census personnel, or as policymakers and civil servants – gave me the inspiration I needed to push forward even at times when this process was at its most trying. I thank all of you who welcomed, and shared your insights, frustrations, and hopes, with a young gringo researcher who in more than a few cases had simply cold-called you or just showed up at your office door. I could not possibly go without singling out three Costa Rican interlocutors in particular, even if two of them I identify only by pseudonyms. If they read this, they will know who they are. “Azalea” and “Alfredo” were collaborators who exceeded every expectation I had of potential interlocutors in state institutions. Both bring levels of intellect, enthusiasm, resilience, and humility to their work that should impress and inspire anyone interested in public service. I know they do me. And finally, Carlos Minott, to whom I have dedicated this work. Carlos was a man of great intelligence, integrity, wisdom, kindness, and humor. He set a truly special example through his belief that a better and more just world is possible, his tireless and principled work to bring that world into being, and the joy he took in others and in life until his passing in March 2014.