lecture 9

Question 1

what are the 4 enlightenment-based intellectual foundations of human rights

Answer 1

Humanity
reason
Functional secularism
hope

Question 2

what is humanity

Answer 2

All humans are similarly endowed with the potential for reason and personal growth (Bildung).

Question 3

what is reason

Answer 3

Common sense is made sharper by training in logic. Opponents of reason=Church, state, class division, superstition, prejudice, poverty, vice. Reason is removed from socialization

Question 4

wha is functional secularism

Answer 4

Not abandonment of the idea of God, but of religious institutions and dogma. “Natural salvation

the secular orientating as essential for the success of this document
administration of justice and rights is what eves humanity forward to conditions of improvement

Question 5

what is hope

Answer 5

The age-old problems of discovering the essence of human nature and creating the just society are resolvable

Question 6

what do the 4 elements make up and how do they relate to the enlightenment

Answer 6

all these things constitute the current bill of human rights
ideas go back to the enlightenment— ideals of a unified humanity, these are core ideas
no question in human rights discourse that humanity is one, and it shares that with anthropology and in some ways anthropology and humans rights have gone together (first point)
can resolve the problems of humanity through the use of science (idea), and the real authority of justice does not lie in elite but in our common humanity so there is a questioning of authorities like the church— it doesn’t matter what beliefs you belong to, what really matters is the objective reasons of science (second point)

Question 7

what does samuel Moyn say about human rights

Answer 7

contemporary historian of human rights— makes an argument of discontinuity of the projection fo human rights
de-emphasizes the idea of utopian— points to it as changes in the 1970s and sees in this period the disillusionment toward existing utopian design
communism no longer had such a hold on people and human rights he saw as replacing a lot of these promises that didnt pan out and that fell apart in th 70s/80s and what he argues instead is that human rights, while the history is complex, you can point to the idea that it was a universal scheme (a type of utopia) that is now sort of a point that people refer to

Human rights . . . Have come to define the most elevated aspirations of both social movements and political entities—state and interstate. The evoke hope and provoke action (1).
The ideological ascendancy of human rights in living memory came out of a combination of separate histories that interacted in an unforseseeable explosion . . . [W]hat mattered most of all was the collapse of prior universalistic schemes and the construction of human rights as a persuasive alternative to them (7).

can trace the contemporary regime of human rights to the WW2, but that doesnt mean that it is the human rights era we are living in today

Question 8

what are the different human rights

Answer 8

individual and collective

Question 9

what are human rights

Answer 9

it is the tension between individual and collective human rights that give rise to questions
Individual human rights:
1. orientated to protecting individuals from abusing states (states could not be trusted to protect citizens and human rights were built around this perceptions)
2. it can be understood that even if the states have the welfare fo their citizens in mind, the individual has to be protected from discrimination (you cannot have discriminatory politics that favour to disfavour certain people)

Question 10

what is the question that gives rise to human rights

Answer 10

Are the obligations to which I am subject reasonable requirements of social belonging?
Eg. Female circumcision (FGM) and forced marriage.
Culture is invoked as a potential (or actual) source of oppression.

Question 11

what are collective rights

Answer 11

the idea of protecting the community to which a person belongs, their source of education, nurturing and support outside of their family

Question 12

what is the key question of collective rights

Answer 12

What are the collectivities with rights?

Question 13

how does collective rights Redefinition of rights holders

Answer 13

Redefinition of rights holders as “ethnic minorities” or “indigenous peoples.”

the groups themselves become the subjects of law
and we have culture that is something we have to protect and measure
with culture we have the subject matter of anthropology coming in

Question 14

what does collective rights say about culture

Answer 14

Culture is invoked as a source of vital heritage, something to be protected and treasured

Question 15

what is important about self determination

Answer 15

idea of self determination of peoples is key to collective rights, not just culture— culture is what is used in anthropology
but in law, self determination is the key
and int is the self determination of peopleS that is key— it is not the state or state members in the definitions, but the peoples, these are the subjects of rights and so there is tensions in places like Quebec where there is tensions between the aspirations of the minority and the states

Question 16

what did sally engle merry focus on

Answer 16

human rights and gender violence

Question 17

what did sally say Human rights relies on

Answer 17

Human rights relies on an essentialized model of culture [that] does not take advantage of the potential of local practices for change

Question 18

what did sally say about issues brought up by human rights

Answer 18

some issues brought up by human rights and the way they are universalized
tensions betweent the way human rights works universally and in application to individuals belonging
when you have the idea of minorities (or gender, disabilities, any category of law), you then have the task of defining in law who s the beneficiary of rights and who is not? Who can claim the status and who can not so there is a process of discussion and debate that is on going abut who is the proper subjects about the different declaration nd covenants of human rights
so a variety of anthropologists have pointed to this centralization this is the exercising reducing things to their essence… what are the ket components of the group that make them the rights owner
so there is an effort to make the categories coherent
this takes us back to some of the debates we saw in the customary law where there is this idea that customary law is ridged ad inflexible but what we really find is that it is the legal and foalistic approach that are ridged and unbending

Mary finds this idea of essentialized models of culture that do not tae advantage of local capacities of change

Question 19

what does marilyn strathern say

Answer 19

Strathern looks at the way victims become described in ways that emphasize their qualities as well
the categories of claimants that emerge out of the rights
people who suffer human rights absue become centralized— people become and enter into and populate and perform categories of victim or survivor or various other ways that subjects of human rights are conceived

Question 20

what is indignation

Answer 20

such a common misunderstanding about human rights, as it is law they think of it is terms of courts and trials and jail and consequences of law and its enforcement, but when you think of human rights it is completely different; human rights and international law is generally anarchy. not much can force states to comply, the idea of compliance is difficult at best. It is very difficult in cases go human rights for the enforcement of clauses and articles and features of human rights that have gotten so much attention. How is it that human rights actually works in practice?
How many of you have ever participated in advocating for human rights (with some organization), there is a sense of indignation that feels people’s desire for justice. Desentism is orientated toward public outreach and lobbying, in some cases it is more effective than others— government can try to shut it down but sometimes it cant. There is the idea that if you expose things to the public only then will you get a popular response to call governments out and hold them to account. In the current regime of human rights we have, there is the Universe Periodic Review where the states themselves are in charge of evaluating and monitoring other states state of human rights. NGOs have a say int he Universal Periodic Review but it is other states that review the performance fo the states and this makes it so that it isnt the human rights agency or council that monitors them. This emphasizing the part of human rights that uses public opinions to succeed. States worry about their image and reputation in the international community because it can ultimately have an impact ont heir power and the reach of their influence, trade, finances, their ability to get IMF loans, so what is known as the international community is an important part of the bite human rights have in conjunction with public protest. There is a relationship with peples indignation and their ability to communicate their indignation to others. Some states don’t care about their reputation but that is not a universal feature of state and the way dynamic of human rights work is, in some places and cases, it works and is effective and sometimes it is not. We still live with places that commit genocide its impunity, but it is realized that the real power of persuasion isnt something that happens over night— it takes a ling time. Progress is measured n decades in global institutions.

Question 21

define indignation

Answer 21

The phenomenon of indignation—tantalizingly defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “wrath excited by a sense of wrong to oneself or, especially, to othrs,”—has become the central source of energy in movements of political and legal reform . Injustice is not just a formal contravention of law; it is the source of a powerful sympathetic emotion, sometimes expressed through a sense of personal moral outrage, even toward distant injustices involving unknown actors. And, like compassion, it is cultivable, stimulated into growth by strategic representation of suffering and injustice

Question 22

what does keith baler say about public opinion as political invention

Answer 22

[S]uddenly [public opinion] emerged as a central rhetorical figure in a new kind of politics. Suddenly it designated a new source of authority, the supreme tribunal to which the absolute monarchy, no less than its critics, was compelled to appeal

Question 23

what does the idea of indignation go back to

Answer 23

this idea of indignation goes all the way back the the enlightenment, idea that public opinion is a different kind of source of sovereignty. The idea of public is the new source of political legitimacy.
We have these social movements that emerge out of these ideas; the women movement in italy where womens rights provided insight into the importance of justice lobbying,

Question 24

what are the 3 negatives of human rights

Answer 24

invisibility
hegemony
incapacity

Question 25

what is invisibility

Answer 25

if we think about public exposure as the key to human rights compliance, that means that there is a market place of causes and complaints that cannot guarantee you success when there is a human rights problem. if it remains invisible how will you get the attention? Some people ho suffer the worst human rights problems, as a result of their suffering, they have less ability to get the word out, They are marginalized and oppressed and lack the resources to reach out and get the press out. The idea of being in the shadows on the regime of rights compliances.

Question 26

what is hegemony

Answer 26

the idea that human rights not only brings about an international reginme of law and introduced standards of rights and compliances on a global scale but it brings with it certain qualities of institutions, They are not only influencing the politics of the present but also during the tools that emphasize the idea that power doe not just reside in overt institutions and mechanisms in state compliance, but has effects on the way people think and their inner life. These are also the subject of anthropological inquiry, there is a set of works that bring out the disciplinary qualities that have a broader reach into the way people think

Question 27

what s incapacity

Answer 27

this is the easiest conception; the idea of human rights as part of agencies that are less than functional and that this incapacity comes about in good part as they have to compete with states and the interests.

Question 28

define invisibility (slide)

Answer 28

To properly understand the dynamics of justice lobbying through popular persuasion, we also need to consider the prevalence and consequences of failure, of the causes and people(s) who remain invisible to publics and their sympathy. What kind of issues do the consumers of injustice choose to ignore?

Question 29

talk about hegemony and NGOs

Answer 29

NGOs, human rights advocacy, and civil society spread as a transnational governmentality, a new imperial power that reaches deeply into human souls. The new subjects of liberalism are even more trapped in power because they imagine it as freedom

Question 30

what is another name for incapacity

Answer 30

fragility

Question 31

summarize incapacity

Answer 31

If you locked a team of evil geniuses in a laboratory, they could not design a bureaucracy so maddeningly complex, requiring so much effort but in the end incapable of delivering the intended result. The system is a black hole into which disappear countless tax dollars and human aspirations, never to be seen again

basically; states and their interests have to be accominated and through that accomidatin the UN has to try to navigate their way, they have to get funding when states are ready to pull funding when they do not agree with something
the unreliability of funding means they cannot rely of permanent employees who are qualified, they have to have flexible people who come when needed

the states are not reliable, mostly the powerful ones, play these kinds of games where they pay their dues late (if they pay it at all) and play with the finances and stuff