Abstract
In this chapter I will comment on the social and economic dimensions of universal rights from the perspective of my concept of “human rights politics.” I will argue that social and economic rights seem to add legitimacy to the embattled human rights discourse today. From the area of social and economic rights, and mainly in the context of globalization, new concerns and new advocacy agendas are integrated into the human rights movement. The legitimation crisis caused by attacks on universality can be better addressed if social and economic rights are absorbed into the core of fundamental rights. The consistent, integrated human rights approach to social and economic issues will thus be better equipped to compete with nonliberal approaches originating outside the human rights paradigm.
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Stanley Cohen suggests that there exist several different human rights discourses, each with its distinct validity claims and norms of professionalism: the diplomatic, legal, social scientific, etc. See Stanley Cohen, Denial and Acknowledgement, Jerusalem: Hebrew University (1995) I-V, 1–17. For the sake of the simplicity of my argument, I will speak of one single human rights discourse, expecting that my main points would not change significantly if a plurality of human rights discourses was assumed.
Alfred Schutz, “The Well-informed Citizen: An Essay on the Social Distribution of Knowledge,” in Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, Vol. II, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff (1964) 120–134. Schutz distinguishes between the man in the street, the expert, and the well-informed citizen, each differing in their inclination to take things for granted. The well-informed citizen does not try to be an expert on everything, and neither does she accept the fundamental vagueness of simple perceptive knowledge or the irrationality of her own passions. She is able to form reasonably-founded opinions on issues that are not of immediate relevance to her purpose. The famous statement of Clemanceau that war is too important to be left to the generals illustrates the way in which the well-informed citizen reacts to expert advice.
Human rights ideology is an ideology of domination and a part of the imperialist world outlook,” says Issa G. Shivji. See Issa G. Shivji, The Concept of Human Rights in Africa, London: Codesria Book Series (1989) XX.
See, e.g., Louis Henkin, The Age of Rights, New York: Columbia University Press (1996). Henkin interprets universality as that of the values underlying modern human rights. See also Jack Donnelly, “Human Rights and Asian Values: In Defense of ‘Western’ Universalism,” in Joanne R. Bauer and Daniel A. Bell (eds.), The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights, New York: Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs (1999) 60–87.
See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, A Harvest Book reprint edition, Harcourt, Inc. (1985). (The reprint is of the 1936 English translation of the 1929 German original.) The history of ideas is rich in intellectual traditions of interpreting the concept and the reality of “ideology,” from Proudhon to some of the most far-reaching and comprehensive views developed in the Frankfurt School of social research. Here, however, I have chosen Mannheims conceptual dualism as a tool for conveying a hypothesis, and not as a substantial view to which I subscribe.
I must admit that the remaining value anchor here is “progressive social change”: in trying to define the latter, will I not need the ideas of dignity, freedom, rights, well-being? Human civilization may or may not be inseparable from value rationality. But at this time in history, humans are trapped in value language as long as they want to relate to existing political discourses and communities.
I have developed elsewhere a theory on the semiotic pluralization of value categories in the context of a specific understanding of values as such. In my theory of value rationality, the defining characteristic of values, their very raison d’être, is their functioning as false common loci of opposing positions. I refer to the ideological space of communication as the “false common locus” in order to grasp the presence of two opposing aspects: (i) the commonality, meaning the possibility of conversation, as opposed to violent conflict; and (ii) the falsity of this very commonality, insofar as the ideological discourse itself does not resolve in practice the conflict between adversarial positions. See Dimitrina Petrova, Utopia i tsennostna ratsionalnost [Utopia and Value Rationality], Doctoral Dissertation, Sofia: Vissha atestatsionna komisia (1993).
See, e.g., Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, New York: Random House (2001).
http://wwwl.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/b2esc.htm, visited 13 June 2002.
See Philip Alston, “U.S. Ratification of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,” 84, 2 American Journal of International Law (1990) 365–393.
European Union Annual Report on Human Rights, Brussels (2001) 88.
Scott Leckie, “The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Catalyst for Change in a System Needing Reform,” in Philip Alston and James Crawford (eds.), The Future of UN Human Rights Treaty Monitoring, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2000) 129–130.
See Anne Gallagher, “Making Human Rights Treaty Obligations a Reality: Working with New Actors and Partners,” in Alston and Crawford, op. cit., note 12, 223–224.
See Pierre Sane, forward to Amnesty International Report 2001, London: AI Publications (2001) 5.
Ibid.
Ibid., 6.
Ibid. 7.
The word “progress” for example has reached a semantic terminus—it has no agreed meaning and can be used by advocates of diametrically opposite ideas.
At a conference in Vienna in October 1998, Catherine Lalumiere stated that if the European Union does not hurry to develop a human rights policy, Europe would lose its soul. Peter Leuprecht left his high post in the Council of Europe, questioning the departure from original standards which was demonstrated in the acceptance of countries like Russia and Albania into the organization. Human rights professionals in prominent positions such as Aaron Rhodes, the executive director of the International Federation of Human Rights, have been trying to reestablish the movements claims on the moral realm in press publications, interviews, and other formats.
The European Union funding for human rights is mainly channeled through the European Initiative on Democratization and Human Rights (EIDHR), but only a very small portion of the funding goes to groups that do strictly human rights work. All grantees technically should define themselves as human rights defenders, but this would contribute little to striking alliances on issues.
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Petrova, D. (2004). Social and Economic Dimensions of Universal Rights. In: Sajó, A. (eds) Human Rights with Modesty: The Problem of Universalism. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6172-7_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6172-7_9
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