Chapter 2. Problems of Universal Cultural Legitimacy for Human Rights

2011 ◽  
pp. 65-96
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Legitimacy

Cultural Relativism and Human Rights: Reconsidering the Africanist Discourse

2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonny Ibhawoh
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
Cultural Legitimacy ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
African Context ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

Discussions about cultural relativism and the cross-cultural legitimacy of human rights have been central to contemporary human rights discourse. Much of this discussion has focussed on non-Western societies where scholars have advanced, from a variety of standpoints, arguments for and against the cultural relativism of human rights. Arguments for ‘Asian Values’ and lately, ‘African values’ in the construction of human rights have defined this debate. This paper reviews some of the major arguments and trends in the Africanist discourse on the cultural relativism of human rights. It argues the need to go beyond the polarities that have characterised the debate. It argues that while an Afrocentric conception of human rights is a valid worldview, it need not become the basis for the abrogation of the emerging Universal human rights regime. Rather, it should provide the philosophical foundation for the legitimisation of Universal human rights in the African context and inform the cross-fertilisation of ideas between Africa and the rest of the world.

Elite Cultural Work and Discursive Obstruction of Human Rights Activism

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Shriver ◽  
Annika Wilcox ◽  
Laura A. Bray
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
The State ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Public Response ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Cultural Legitimacy ◽  
Charter 77 ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Status

When challenged, states frequently respond with discursive campaigns meant to undercut the legitimacy of social movements. However, we know little about how the social and cultural status of challengers affects the state’s discursive response. We address this gap by analyzing an important historical case of human rights activism in Communist Czechoslovakia. Despite its long history of violence and repression, Czechoslovakia signed several international human rights covenants during the 1970s to improve its reputation. A group of citizens that included well-known political, social, and cultural figures soon formed a domestic movement for human rights known as Charter 77. Drawing on state media articles, we analyze the state’s public response to Charter 77. Results highlight four discursive strategies through which the state sought to undermine the cultural legitimacy of the movement: vilification through character assaults, message distortion that constructed activists as enemies of socialism, symbolic amplification of socialist values, and the co-optation of culturally valued identities to speak as state proxies. By further developing the concept of discursive obstruction, we show how the state navigated the complex cultural field in its effort to suppress high-profile human rights activists.

Doing Transnational Feminism, Transforming Human Rights: The Emancipatory Possibilities Revisited

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niamh Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transnational Feminism ◽  
Cultural Legitimacy ◽  
Women’S Human Rights ◽  
Women's Human Rights

This article contributes to cross-disciplinary engagement with the idea of transnationality through a discussion of transnational feminisms. In particular, it reviews and responds to some of the more critical readings of the women's human rights paradigm and its role in underpinning, or not, emancipatory transnational feminisms in a context of increasingly fragmenting globalisation. The author considers two broad categories of critical readings of transnational women's human rights: anti-universalist and praxis-oriented. This includes discussions of recent feminist articulations of the ‘cultural legitimacy thesis’ and ‘vernacularisation’ and of obstacles to contesting the oppressions of neo-liberal globalisation through human rights feminisms. Ultimately, the author argues that the emancipatory possibilities of human rights-oriented transnational feminisms reside in dialogic, solidarity-building feminist praxis tied to transnational processes of counter-hegemonic (re)interpretation and (re)claiming of human rights from previously excluded positions.

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