If you would like to participate online or if you came to the meeting but didn't get a chance to say what you wanted, here is a place for you to say it.
Our readings for August 14, 2010 are:
a. What are human rights? Six historical controversies - by Micheline R. Ishay (from Journal of human rights, vol.3, #3, September 2004, pp.259-371)
b. Introduction: universal human rights versus cultural relativity - by Carole Nagengast and Terence Turner. (from Journal of anthropological research, vol.53, #3, Fall 1997 (2005)
Discussion:
1 . On the origin of human rights - Ishay: "Modern ethics is in fact indebted to a worldwide spectrum of both secular and religious traditions."
* Do you agree with that? Why? * What would upholding human rights look like in U.S.? Turkey? France? South Africa? Iran? Liberia? Iran?
2. On the Enlightenment legacy of human rights- Ishay: "...we find ourselves pondering the role of the state – as both the guardian of basic rights and as the behemoth against which one’s rights need to be defended. Both during the Enlightenment and today, this dual allegiance to one’s state and to universal human rights has contributed to the perpetuation of a double standard of moral behavior, in which various appeals to human rights obligations remain subordinated to the ‘the national interest’."
* What do you think about this?
3. On the socialist contribution to human rights - Ishay says that the struggle for universal suffrage was launched and largely waged by the socialist movement.
* What do you think? * Are the concepts of rights and economic equity balanced in the U.S.? * How does this fit the ideals that most Americans grow up with?
4. On cultural relativism versus universalism - Nagengast and Turner: "... homogenizing effects of global capital and consumerism will erase cultural specificity. Some theorists deplore this and condemn the export of "Western" ideas and practices as a form of cultural imperialism. Others argue that globalization is not the same as Westernization and note that it has also generated assertions of local and regional identity."
* What do you think? * Is globalization cultural imperialism? * Is universal human rights real or an ideal?
5. On the tension between security and human rights and the related question of historical progress of human rights - Ishay.
*Is it possible to have national security founded on human rights and global economic welfare?
6. On does globalization advance human rights? - Ishay: "A revealing exchange between New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman and the editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, Ignacio Ramonet, highlights conflicting perceptions over these two trends of globalization. For Friedman, globalization provides opportunities for more than just the wealthy. To his French interlocutor, he says: ‘[a]sk the high tech workers in Bengalore, India and Taiwan or the Bordeaux region of France, or Finland, or coastal China, or Idaho what they think of the opportunities created by Globalization . . . What about all the human rights and environmental organizations that have been empowered by the Internet and globalization, don’t they count?’5 Exasperated, Ramonet replies: ‘My dear Friedman, do read the 1999 Human Development Report from the United Nations Development program. It confirms that 1. 3 billion people (or one quarter of humanity) live on less than a dollar a day’. ‘The political consequences [of globalization]’, Ramonet adds,
‘have been ghastly . . . Borders are increasingly contested, and pockets of minorities give rise
to dreams of annexation, secession, and ethnic cleansing’ (Friedman and Ramonet 1999)."
* Discuss Friedman versus Ramonet.
No comments:
Post a Comment