Essay # 3- Julia Tew - The Globalization of Human Rights

The Globalization of the Human Rights

While many aspects of globalization are constantly under scrutiny, 
with analysts evaluating infrastructure, outcomes, and barriers to 
the oft-touted one world village ideal, the common issue running 
under them all is that of culture.  The questions of how to
unify people of such diverse backgrounds supply the
backdrop for all the other questions that
globalization raises.  Can unity be established across cultures? 
Should it be?  And of course, with these come
questions of power.  There are those, like McChesney,
who claim that the world cultures are being slowly
homogenized, and into one that reflects modern
capitalist Western culture (2001).  But in Hardt and
Negri's article, a different theory is presented, one
which suggests that not only is a global culture
possible, but it can be desirable and additionally, it
cannot be controlled by any single nation (2000).  

The theory that Hardt and Negri describe is that of
empire.  It states that within an empire-styled
culture, the world is governed by a set of rules, or
particular logic, that is both "decenterd and
[deterritoialized]" (Hardt and Negri, 2000, p. 2). 
Under this theory in order to maintain membership in the
global community, all nations, governments, industry
and people must play by the rules.  No one is exempt-
not even the more powerful nations.  Embedded in this
rule structure is also an implicit system of rewards. 
Those nations, corporations and governments that can
play the game the best are likely to be the most
successful, the most powerful.   

The ability of the empire to create a world culture
with both rewards and sanctions still allows for the
existance of diversity among sub-cultures, while
drawing on a the new world order for the regulation
and governance of general rules (Hardt and Negri, 2000,
p. 14).  Featherstone (1990) provides one example of the overarching global culture
in noting that "a crucial point of unification" has
often been simply a common humanity (p. 4).  It is on
this point of commonality that human rights movements
and organization mobilize.

Amnesty International (AI) carries individual stories
of personal sufffering to a global audience, and
relies on a universal intrepretation of basic human
rights to carry its message across cultural borders. 
Most of its members and supporters have never been to
Afghanistan, and many have no first-hand experience or
knowledge of Middle Eastern or Islamic culture.  But
these differences are transcended through a mutal
understanding of humanity.  Drawing from the United
Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, AI
campaigns for phyiscal, social, politcal, and economic
safety and security of women often using the women's
own words and cultural interpretations to situate
claims both within unique cultures and within a global
culture (UN, 1948, AI, 2007). This situated position
lends both form and support for their appeals.  In her
study of the globalization in Senegal, Fatou Sow (2003)
explains, "Women's claims to equality have been
strengthened by the international recognition of
universal human rights and by secrutiny of the extent
to which these rights are upheld in particular
contexts" (p. 73).  In this way, the particular
cultural issues are remain valuable while the
overarching empire's values are enforced. 

McChesney, R. W. (2001). Global Media, neoliberalism,
and imperialism. Monthly
Review 52(10).
http://www.monthlyreview.org/301rwm.htm.

Featherstone, M. (1990). Global culture: an
introduction. In M. Featherstone (Ed.), Global
culture: Nationalism, 
globalization, and modernity. London; Newbury Park :
Sage.

Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio (2000). ?Preface?
(pp.xi-xvii) and Part I (pp. 1-66), Empire. Cambridge,
MA, 
and London, England: Harvard University Press. 
Online: 
http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/~wiley/courses/447/hardtnegri2000.pdf.


Amnesty International. (2007). About Amnesty
International. Retrieved May 31, 2007,
from http://web.amnesty.org/pages/aboutai-index-eng



Sow, F. (2003). Fundamentalisms, globalisations, and
women's human rights in Senegel. Gender and
Development. 11(1). p. 69-76.

Posted at 04:41PM Jun 07, 2007 by TEW, JULIA in General  |  Comments[1]