Filozofija i drustvo 2014 Volume 25, Issue 3, Pages: 267-289
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1403267V
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Human rights and cultural rights: An anthropological critique
Vasiljević Jelena (Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju, Beograd)
The paper starts by examining some of the key conceptual problems related to
the idea of human rights, as well as some key arguments raised in defence of
human rights as universal and emacipatory modern project. This is followed by
a discussion on cultural rights, sometimes understood as a correction of
human rights’ universalism, at other times taken as their „logical
extension“; it will be shown how human rights have gradually begun to be
amalgamated with cultural and collective rights. The third section of the
paper continues with an overview of anthropological critique of cultural (and
collective) rights, with an emphasis on ethnographies critically examining
the domination of the „rights talk“ in perceptions and self-perceptions of
various local „cultural“ struggles. Finally, the issue of the universality of
human rights is reexamined from the perspective of the particularity of
citizens’ rights with the aim of questioning the validity of their conceptual
demarcation.
Keywords: human rights, cultural rights, paradigm of culture and rights, rights of citizens
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