Search

Begin New Search Publishing Institution Center for International Studies, University of Southern California Publication Year within 25 Years

31. Women's Rights are Human Rites: Women's human rights activists as cross-cultural theorists

Author:
Brooke A. Ackerly
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
The familiar human rights paradigm, manifested in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and subsequent related international documents, is problematic. It cannot deal with 1) rights violations associated with a country's cultural norms that define what it means to be “human” and 2) rights violations that do not take the paradigmatic form of discrimination. Further, the framework for human rights set out by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights is insufficient for 3) adjudicating between seemingly competing liberal rights or between liberal and other rights, 4) attributing responsibility for human rights violations by state and non-state actors, attributing responsibility for structural causes of human rights violations, or imputing political import to private actions, and 5) reconciling the concept of universal human rights with cultural norms that violate certain universal human rights. These five problems are interrelated. Cross- cultural human rights theorizing is promising, but in its current articulations, it tends to focus on the last of these five problems. Moreover, it relies either on models of discourse that are exclusionary or on models of culture articulated by elites. Drawing on the theory implicit in their actions, I argue that women's human rights activists give us a way of theorizing that addresses the problems with the existing paradigm without being exclusive or elitist.
Topic:
International Relations, Gender Issues, and Human Rights

32. 'So how do you do culture?': A workshop to discuss methodological approaches to studying culture in International Relations

Author:
Patricia M. Goff and Jacinta O'Hagan
Publication Date:
04-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Increasingly, scholars of International Relations are acknowledging that attention to the various dimensions of culture can expand our understanding of world politics. This workshop was premised on the assumption that culture is a significant factor in international relations. Its objective was not to ask whether culture matters in IR; it assumes that it does. Instead, it asked “how do we study the influence of culture? What methodological approaches are available to us?” Part of the difficulty in addressing these questions lies in the epistemological and methodological divide that animates many IR debates. While discussions inevitably touched on these issues, the emphasis was on productive discussions of method. Rather than reprising debates over the relative merits of quantitative versus qualitative methods, or rationalist versus social construction approaches, the workshop sought to draw on all of these traditions, in an effort to assemble a problem-driven methodological toolkit that could make confident assertions and arguments about an increasingly important area of inquiry.
Topic:
International Relations