Week 4 INR
Pe0512
INRWEEK4CulturalRelativism.pptxWeek 4: Cultural Relativism
INR 4075
SPR 2019
Significance of International Human Rights—Thomas Pogge 2001
Two basic components: the Concept and the Substance
So What are Human Rights? And What Human Rights are there?
What: Universally express moral concerns relating to human beings.
Substance: Any instant understood as an outright abuse of once relative civil liberties—inherently challenges cosmopolitanism.
”Every person has a negative duty not to collaborate in the avoidable imposition upon others of an institutional order in which they lack secure access to the objects of their human rights.”
“Do not the Chinese, the Indians…have traditions of their own from which they can construct their own moral conception—perhaps wholly without the individualistic concept of human rights?”
Pogge (2001) Cont’d
When we imagine human rights as moral obligations pegged to global institutions, then it makes sense that we a plurality of rules may govern a regime of international partners, regardless of differing histories.
Alternatively, said universal application neglects similar refutes international diversity.
“There can be…only one global institution.”
Defends the utility of placing international regimes and institutions under moral claims as a way of mitigating some human rights violations.
Review of H. Lauterpacht
How can law and international law maintain a free society?
To elucidate this, the author examines human rights provisions expressed in the UN Charter, and the subsequent efforts to make the provisions effective.
The Rights of Man and the Law of Nations
Human Rights Under the Charter of the UN
International Bill of the Rights of Man
The Law of Nature and the Rights of Man: Contemporary concerns for human rights is set deeply in “antiquity” and human nature.
Lauterpach Continued
The Law of nature, acts as an ”instrument of reaction” as well as a ”lever of progress.”
Article 55, promotes the legal duty to respect human rights…and establish agencies for the effective international support of these rights.
Though throughout the remainder of his book, Lauterpacht deplores the “timidity and inadequacy,” of various proposals for the Covenant of Human Rights, the Covenant itself and simliar draft instruments, though these she be regarded as steps in the process of adopting the International Bill of Human Rights.
International Human Rights & Cultural Relativism
Term borrowed from anthropology and moral philosophy ( Alain Locke 1924).
”The position according to which local cultural traditions (including religious political, and legal practices) properly determine the existence and scope of civil and political rights enjoyed by individuals in a given society.”
Relativists argue: HR standards vary considerably between different cultures.
The Elitist Theory of Human Rights
Argentina
Democracy only works for superior cultures
“The Conspiracy Theory of Human Rights” – Popper
Machiavellian creation of the West, calculated to impair the economic development of the Third World.
Marxists assumptions is that civil and political rights are ”formal” bourgeois freedoms that serve only the interests of the “capitalists.
Cannot Detract from their Beneficial Features
HR Movement has resisted the relativist attack: Social Inst (international law) are created by and for the individual.
“International human rights law embodies the imperfect yet inspired response of the international community to a growing awareness of the uniqueness of the human being and the unity of the human race. It also represents an eloquent body of norms condemning the effects of organized societal oppression on individuals.”
Considerations
“Coercing Religious uniformity leads to far more social disorder than allowing diversity.”
Before and without government, there would have been a state of nature. But later voluntarily consented to cede some of their rights, which later gave protection to other rights.
Tabular Rasa
Follow up Questions
1.) Following Pogge, how do some of the world’s largest Multinational Corporations (MNCs) violate international human rights standards?
2.) Explain negative duties-–i.e., to avoid certain actions, and their role in human rights protection.
3.) Define the elitist perspective of Cultural Relativism . Do you agree?
4.) Explain Kanarek’s attack of cultural relativism e.g., what are its deficiencies.
