Abstract
This paper interrogates a ‘positive’ view of culture’s (potential) role in widening compliance with international human rights standards, which (1) concentrates on the ‘cultural’ bases of conflict over rights and, in consequence, (2) focuses primarily on cultural interpretation as a means of achieving greater respect for rights norms. The thrust of the paper is that the relationship between culture and human rights norms is much more complex than this positive perspective implies and, this being so, that some of its claims about the potential benefits of cultural interpretation for widening rights compliance are hard to sustain. I substantiate this argument by exploring five challenges to this approach.
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Notes
Broadly, the suspicion of bias is grounded in presuppositions concerning the implications of both the origination of rights talk in a Western historical and philosophical context (Powell 1999: 203–206), and the levels of participation in the formulation of existing rights norms. So, for instance, Iris Marion Young observes that ‘those nations and groups in the world today who question the application of existing human rights covenants … argue that the particular formulations of those rights applied today were developed largely by Western powers, and that … these formulations should be subject to review in a process that includes them’ (Young 2000: 271). On this suspicion of bias see also Deborah Weissman (2004).
On cosmopolitan and anti-cosmopolitan arguments, compare the position of John Rawls with those of some of his cosmopolitan critics: Rawls (1999), Thomas Pogge (1994) and Darrel Moellendorf (2002). Within feminism, see Martha Nussbaum (2004, 2005) and Susan Okin (1994, 1998). For communitarian views, see Charles Taylor (1999) and Michael Walzer (1994).
‘Culture’ is, of course, a contested concept and as such may be defined in a variety of ways. See Abdullahi An-Na’im (An-Na’im 1992: 22–23). I borrow Daniel Bell’s view of cultural tradition as ‘an ongoing argument about the good of the community whose identity it seeks to define’ (Bell 1996: 652, n.31). The idea here is that ‘the cultural traditions of interest to human rights activists…should be living in the sense that fundamental values still have the capacity to motivate action in the contemporary era’ (ibid). It is worthwhile noting that human rights norms might, themselves, be thought of as embodying a specific kind of culture, i.e. ‘human rights culture’. On this view, the relationship between rights and bounded cultures gets recast as a relationship between two kinds of culture; see Richard Rorty (1993). On the relationship between culture and human rights, see Catherine Powell (1999). On the malleability and internal diversity of cultures, see Melville Herskovits (1964) and Roger Keesing (1974). More generally, on the relationship between culture and rights from an anthropological perspective, see Bell et al. (eds) (2001); Cowan et al. (eds) (2001); Mahmood Mamdani (ed.) (2000) and Richard A. Wilson (ed.) (1997).
On the relationship between Islam and human rights see Janet Afary (2004); Reza Afshari (1994; 2001); Waheeda Amien (2006); Heiner Bielefeldt (1995); Riffat Hassan (1982); Berta Esperanza Hernandez-Truyo (1996); Ann Elizabeth Mayer (1999); Mahmood Monshipouri (1998); Mahmood Monshipouri and Reza Motameni (2000); also, Norani Othman (1999).
On this, see David Held et al. (2005).
These injustices include sex-selective abortions, female infanticide, dowry burnings, suttee, ‘honour’ killings and prostitution as female slavery (MacKinnon 2006: 194–5). Of course, the accommodation of customs may have both good and bad effects for women, and as such, granting cultural rights as human rights can also have contradictory effects on women’s everyday lives. Women may benefit from the public accommodation of cultural practices because it may make their lives less burdensome; see Alison Dundes Renteln (2005) and Niamh Reilly (2005).
It is important to note the controversy that Nussbaum’s treatment of social criticism has attracted. The suspicion is that her account of internal criticism attempts to impose ‘expertocratic’ knowledge on local contributions by not taking seriously enough the articulation of the ‘voices’ of those oppressed and marginalised women whose situation it seeks to capture (Jaggar 2006; Okin 2003). For instance, Okin observes of Nussbaum’s methodology that ‘whereas Nussbaum aims to enable the…women [in her enquiry] to speak for themselves, and to avoid the error of imposing on them categories that “reflect [her] own immersion in a particular theoretical tradition,” as their interpreter, she has allowed her own voice to dominate’ (Okin 2003: 297). See also Alison Jaggar, who complains that Nussbaum’s approach ‘encourages “us,” the theory builders, to use the ideas of others as evidence or raw data for “our” theories. When “we” are Western philosophers and the others in question are non-philosophers in the Third World, this may come uncomfortably close to treating them as “native informants.”… Rather than recommending genuine consultation with others, this approach recommends that “we” select among others’ expressed preferences in order to appropriate those that “we” endorse for “our” own theoretical and political purposes,’ (Jaggar 2006: 319). Other possible means of dealing with instances of mistaken desires include subjecting participants’ claims in public discourse to a kind of dialogical ‘test’. For Nussbaum’s response to this critique, see (2004b). On the dangers of ‘Western’ feminists ‘speaking for’ oppressed Muslim women, see Lila Abu-Lughod (2006).
Of course this specific challenge to the positive view links to another challenge that many interpretive approaches to justice more generally face, i.e. the question of how to adequately tackle instances of interpretive partiality or the distortion of claims occasioned, in part, by the exercise of power differentials upon public discourse. So, for example, Michael Walzer’s interpretive theory has been critiqued by Rawlsian-liberals for lacking critical external principles that could identify what would count as a ‘reasonable’ interpretation of historical values, see Erin Kelly (2001).
On the notion of the importance of a dialogical approach to justice, see James Tully (2004).
For a discussion of this gap, see David Held and Anthony McGrew (2002: 81ff).
Of course, elites in poor countries also benefit. So, for example, Pogge describes how in poorer countries putschist and tyrannical leaders benefit, at the expense of the poor, from entering their countries into multifarious loan and resource agreements with affluent states (Pogge 2007: 52).
On the link between trade and human rights, see generally Ana Gonzalez-Pelaez (2005); Frederick Abbott et al. (eds) (2006); and, Thomas Cottier et al. (eds) (2005). On the link between trade and human rights in respect of poverty and gender relations see generally Marzia Fontana et al. (1998) and Nilifer Çağatay (2001). For a discussion of the relationship between global structural factors and poverty see Pogge (2004). Though well established, the claim that such a correlation exists still has its critics. For example, according to the neo-liberal view of globalisation this link impacts positively on people’s welfare since the trade transitions required to facilitate the integration of developing countries into the global economy proffer new opportunities for these countries to better protect their members’ rights through increased growth. For empirical work on this link that affirms the neo-liberal view see Julie Harrelson-Stephens and Rhonda Callaway (2003). Yet this neo-liberal view is found wanting. As Cagatay observes, ‘despite the argument that trade liberalization leads to higher growth rates, the evidence is inconclusive’ (Çağatay 2001: 33). Growth cannot tackle the underfulfilment of rights associated with poverty on its own, and experiences of growth may in fact go hand in hand with increased inequality (Tsikata and Kerr 2000: 7, 8). Furthermore, the rate at which poorer countries integrate into the global economy is a significant factor in how well they fare. An ‘excessively fast’ integration, i.e. one which does not allow countries to develop ‘relatively quickly behind protective barriers, before they [have] liberalised their trade’ can tend to leave poorer countries worse off (Held 2005: 12). And yet the institutional economic kingpins of the global order over which rich countries exercise effective control, i.e. the influential international financial institutions, do not tend to favour slow integration. For a comparison of both positions, see David Held and Anthony McGrew (2002).
So, the implication is that, differently structured, international trade policies and rules could be made fairer. It is worth noting that this view finds broad support among those cosmopolitan theories of global justice which seek to arrest the distributive unfairness of the global order through support for the principle of global distributive justice, which underwrites protection for the economic interests of all persons everywhere, regardless of their political or cultural group membership. See Charles Beitz (1999); Moellendorf (2002); and Caney (2005).
While the discussion in this paper is focused specifically on material and cultural factors, as already noted, other factors may be involved in rights violations—political and legal, for example. As such, other hybrid factors also exist such as political–material, political–cultural and so on. For instance, commenting on the case of domestic violence in South Asia, Kamala Visweswaran asks ‘what would it mean to understand [this phenomenon]…and its narrative production, as a product not only of culture, but of state-level policy and the neo-liberal economy?’ (Visweswaran 2004: 511).
See Michel Chossudovsky (1995).
This of course is not to say that trade liberalisation can not have more positive outcomes (supra note 16). Rather, the point is that more positive outcomes are more likely to occur when liberalisation is accompanied by other ‘safety net’ measures for the most vulnerable, such as social protection and poverty reduction programmes, as well as some kind of protection for fledging industries (Held 2005: 166).
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Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the IRCHSS (Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences) for providing the postdoctoral funding that made this research possible. I am also grateful to John Baker of UCD and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful comments on an earlier version.
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Walsh, C. Compliance and Non-compliance with International Human Rights Standards: Overplaying the Cultural. Hum Rights Rev 11, 45–64 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-008-0107-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-008-0107-x