ANTH 3970 History and Theory of Anthropology
Group Final Exam ­ Fall 2014
Rosa Villanueva, Bryan Hurst, Dana Hopper, Rachel Smith

Group Final As a society, it’s true that we perceive the many issues that inevitably affect our world. Issues like human rights, human trafficking, immigration, poverty, and terrorism are undoubtedly issues that people all over the globe deal with on a daily basis, and many of us can only ever imagine what those people’s reality feels like. However, if we as a society know these issues exist, what do we really think about them? What do we do in regards to helping the people who need help? Do we do anything? Do we want to do anything? Or, do we merely have an idea of the situation and feel we don’t have much power to change anything? Through searching many of these issues and more on
Google images, we can get a sense of what people in our society think of these problems, and how we feel they relate to us as a nation.

Human rights is the idea that every human deserves the same rights as any other human on the planet, no matter what differences they may have. It is defined specifically as “a right that is believed to belong justifiably to every person.” People have been striving for this to become a reality in the United States for many years through rallies and protests, but it is taking shape slowly due to the amount of people opposed

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to change. Luckily it seems to be catching on a little faster after looking at the images associated with human rights on the internet. A majority of them seem to be positive in message by displaying images of hands of multiple colors together raised in unison.
This message of cooperation and togetherness is one that seems to be spreading through the people at a decent rate. These hands all have words on them as well which each represent a main focus in the fight for human rights. Words like freedom, hope, peace, justice, and prosperity all send a message detailing the parts of society we have to change to make human rights a reality.
Though most pictures were of hands up in the air together there were a couple that had a different message. There were three or four pictures that detailed the hands as being bound by chain or barbed wire. These seem to show that we are further away from the ultimate goal of human rights than the others show by giving us the image that some of the population is blocked off behind a barrier or tied down by an unknown force. There is also one image on the page that is of the hands, but in the revolutionary gesture. This sends the message that only through rising up will change ever truly take shape. All of these pictures though seem to be leaving out a certain portion of the population. Most of the hand pictures only seem to display either skin color or country of origin and leave out age or same sex couples while other pictures on the page include one of those but leave out others. This seems to show that the idea of human rights in the minds of the populace is not one that encompasses every man, woman, and child, but one for just some of the population.

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The images presented by searching for “human rights violations” overall are pictures that convey violence, oppression, and abuse. However, all of these images seem to come from other parts of the world, and not from the United States. When
Google pulls up the first page of images in this search, at the very top of the page, anyone can choose from images surrounding either posters, maps, Africa or statistics of human rights violations. In the actual results, we see pictures from all over the world.
Places like Syria, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and Africa are all represented. Taking these factors into consideration, we can comment on how human rights violations are perceived in the U.S. social mindset.
It would appear that in the U.S., we view human rights violations as a