Insecurity and Human Rights

2020 ◽  
pp. 129-152
Author(s):  
Liora Lazarus
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
Positive Rights ◽  
State Coercion ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Extension Of State ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
State Protection

The twenty-first-century challenge that the chapter faces is how to ensure that positive rights to state protection are properly balanced against duties of state restraint in a climate of insecurity. It argues that, contrary to conservative caricatures, human rights are not only liberal ‘politically correct’ mechanisms of state restraint. Rather they have become increasingly associated with the extension of state coercion, a process which risks securitizing human rights. While courts have had to balance carefully between these imperatives, politicians and philosophers are less keenly aware of the danger that human rights will be instrumentalized to legitimize overblown claims to state coercive protection. The chapter concludes by arguing that we can follow the lead of courts, who have had to confront the nuanced balance between duties of protection and restraint, and start to embrace a concept of ‘tolerable insecurity’. Only by embracing the risks that come with freedom can we have a productive debate about the relationship between insecurity and human rights.

Human Rights and 21st Century Challenges

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
World Population ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Relative Share ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century

The world faces significant and interrelated challenges in the twenty-first century which threaten human rights in a number of ways. This book examines the relationship between human rights and three of the largest challenges of the twenty-first century: conflict and security, environment, and poverty. Technological advances in fighting wars have led to the introduction of new weapons which threaten to transform the very nature of conflict. In addition, states confront threats to security which arise from a new set of international actors not clearly defined and which operate globally. Climate change, with its potentially catastrophic impacts, features a combination of characteristics which are novel for humanity. The problem is caused by the sum of innumerable individual actions across the globe and over time, and similarly involves risks that are geographically and temporally diffuse. In recent decades, the challenges involved in addressing global and national poverty have also changed. For example, the relative share of the poor in the world population has decreased significantly while the relative share of the poor who live in countries with significant domestic capacity has increased strongly. Overcoming these global and interlocking threats constitutes this century’s core political and moral task. This book examines how these challenges may be addressed using a human rights framework. It considers how these challenges threaten human rights and seeks to reassess our understanding of human rights in the light of these challenges. The analysis considers both foundational and applied questions. The approach is multidisciplinary and contributors include some of the most prominent lawyers, philosophers, and political theorists in the debate. The authors not only include leading academics but also those who have played important roles in shaping the policy debates on these questions. Each Part includes contributions by those who have served as Special Rapporteurs within the United Nations human rights system on the challenges under consideration.

scholarly journals Capitalism and democracy in the twenty-first century: does it still take two to tango?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Matteo Marenco
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
First Century ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Digital Capitalism ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
Science Question ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article reviews three books that offer thought-provoking insights on a central political science question, namely the relationship between capitalism and democracy in the twenty-first century. First, ‘Democracy and Prosperity’ by Iversen and Soskice posits a symbiotic relationship between capitalism and democracy. Advanced capital thrives on nationally rooted institutions, hence it needs democratic politics. A majority of voters ask for pro-advanced-capital reforms, hence democratic politics needs advanced capital. Second, ‘Capitalism, Alone’ by Milanovic depicts a troubled coexistence between capitalism and democracy. The former's tendency to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of the few is the main reason why democratic politics is under pressure. Third, ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ by Zuboff suggests a negative relationship between digital capitalism and democracy. Surveillance capitalism increasingly acts as a control means of individuals' behaviour, which undermines democracy at its roots. The last section brings the three contributions together. It maintains that a mutually beneficial coexistence between capitalism and democracy currently faces both internal (from within) and external (from without) challenges. In line with Milanovic and Zuboff, it argues that the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the few is the most apparent from-within challenge. Drawing on Milanovic, it contends that rise of China as a global power combining capitalism with non-democracy challenges the relationship between capitalism and democracy from without. Finally, it contends that the environmental question and the pandemic represent two windows of opportunity for democracy to recover lost ground and re-establish a more balanced relationship with capitalism.

Temporal Emotions and Historical Vulnerability: Music as a Vehicle of Ideology in Cold War and Peste Noire

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
Louise D’Arcens
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
First Century ◽  
White People ◽  
Black Metal ◽  
Ideological Differences ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This essay focuses on the Polish film Cold War and the oeuvre of the French nationalist black metal band Peste Noire, examining them as twenty-first-century texts that disclose music’s capacity to solicit emotion in the service of ideology. Despite their aesthetic and ideological differences, each text demonstrates the importance of temporal emotions – that is, emotions that register a heightened sense of the relationship between present, past and future. Each text portrays these emotions’ ideological significance when attached to ideas of a national past. Dwelling on Peste Noire’s racist-nationalist use of the medieval past, the essay explores music as a medium for emotional performances in which white people appear to convey vulnerability while actually reconfirming white supremacy. Peste Noire’s idiosyncratic performance of aggressive vulnerability is a temporal emotion that self-consciously lays claim to a long emotional tradition reaching back to the French Middle Ages.

Messiah with the Microphone? Oral Historians, Technology, and Sound Archives

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Perks
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Digital Audio ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
The World ◽  
Technological Skills ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Relationship

For decades, oral historians and their tape recorders have been inseparable, but it has also been an uneasy marriage of convenience. The recorder is both our “tool of trade” and also that part of the interview with which historians are least comfortable. Oral historians' relationship with archivists has been an uneasy one. From the very beginnings of the modern oral history movement in the 1940s, archivists have played an important role. The arrival of “artifact-free” digital audio recorders and mass access via the Internet has transformed the relationship between the historian and the source. Accomplished twenty-first-century oral history practitioners are now expected to acquire advanced technological skills to capture, preserve, analyze, edit, and present their data to ever larger audiences. The development of oral history in many parts of the world was influenced by the involvement of sound archivists and librarians. Digital revolution in the present century continues to influence oral history.

scholarly journals Heartfelt Love: Singing Maiden Characters in Romantic Vocal Music, 1800-1850

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Haiman Liu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
First Century ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
German Lieder ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Vocal Works ◽  
Female Singers ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Relationship

<p>The images of maidens in Italian opera and German lieder from the period 1800-1850 are vivid. In the plots of the operas and the scenes and stories of the lieder almost invariably these characters focus enthusiastically on heartfelt love. This exegesis explores the relationship between the expression of love by unmarried women in selected lieder and opera of the first half of the nineteenth century and performance of these works by the young soprano in the twenty-first century. In the period when these songs and operas were written, performers of lieder would often have been of a similar age to the maiden characters portrayed in the songs, and in the case of Italian opera at the time, the singers who created such roles were usually in their twenties or early thirties. As a young soprano myself, in my study I consider some questions which are relevant for twenty-first century female singers who choose to perform these nineteenth-century portrayals of virgin characters. The figures in the works I have selected to study display a wide variety of personalities, moods and emotions, from the tenacious wild rose in Schubert’s ‘Heidenröslein’, to his passionate Gretchen and the melancholic Amina in Bellini’s La Sonnambula. I consider how the soprano may express the different emotions involved and approach performing young maiden characters such as these, whose experiences of life and status in society may be substantially removed from twenty-first century experiences.   In order to address these questions, I examine the selected song and aria texts in terms of the relationship between the content of the stories and the characters, as well as analyzing the vocal skills that can be used and vocal effects that may be applied when shaping these roles according to the music as written. In addition, I combine the background to the story and the plot with the musical markings in selected phrases to explore the emotional variety of the characters so as to interpret the deeper significance in the compositions. Through learning and performing these particular pieces I have explored the vocal techniques which are required in singing them from a practical perspective and this enables me to contribute insights I have gained to the general understanding of the skills required for this particular area of the repertoire. Having chosen repertoire for this study which combines Italian opera arias and lieder, and I also consider how the differences I have found in the vocal works may reflect their respective genres and distinguish the skills required for each. Through writing about my own research into the performance of these works, I provide new insights and ideas about these maiden characters which may be applicable to any young sopranos who sing repertoire from this period, and useful for their own vocal perfo</p>

scholarly journals Interpretations of Emanuel Swedenborg’s image of the afterlife in the novel Oneiron by Laura Lindstedt

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiina Mahlamäki ◽  
Tomas Mansikka
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Postmodern Novel ◽  
Western Esotericism ◽  
The Relationship

This article discusses the relationship between Western esotericism and literature. As an example of a secular author who uses and benefits from esoteric texts, ideas and thoughts as resources in creating a literary artwork, the article analyses Laura Lindstedt’s novel Oneiron. A Fantasy About the Seconds After Death (2015). It contextualises the novel within the frames of Western esotericism and literature, focusing on Emanuel Swedenborg’s impact on discourses of the afterlife in literature. Laura Lindstedt’s postmodern novel indicates various ways that esoteric ideas, themes, and texts can work as resources for authors of fiction in twenty-first century Finland. Since the late eighteenth century Swedenborg’s influence has been evident in literature and among artists, especially in providing resources for other-worldly imagery. Oneiron proves that the ideas of Swedenborg are still part of the memory of Western culture and literature.

Dewey and Confucian Philosophy

2018 ◽  
pp. 552-574
Author(s):  
Roger T. Ames
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Moral Imagination ◽  
First Century ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Confucian Philosophy ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Role Ethics

Perhaps the most important international relationship in the twenty-first century is that between America and China. Given the often delicate and sometimes underproductive history of the relationship between America and China broadly, this chapter argues that American pragmatism might serve as a vocabulary to promote a positive dialogue between these cultures at a moment in history when such a conversation is imperative. These commonalities provide a language introducing Confucian philosophy to the Western academy and also an external perspective from which to examine the presuppositions of our own worldview and common sense. The chapter compares the central Confucian notion of relationally constituted persons (ren 仁)— or human “becomings”—with Dewey’s technical term, “individuality.” It explores the centrality of moral imagination in Confucian role ethics and in Deweyan ethics and also concludes that these two traditions share the idea of a human-centered religiousness.

The Persecuted Body

Facing Fear ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melani Mcalister
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
First Century ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Evangelical Christians ◽  
The World ◽  
Politics Of Fear ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
International Religious Freedom Act ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the politics of fear underlying the antipersecution discourse that revolved around evangelical Christians at the turn of the twenty-first century. A video made by the U.S.-based Christian evangelical group Voice of the Martyrs showed that Christians are being persecuted all around the world. By the turn of the twenty-first century, a passionate concern with the persecution of Christians united conservatives as well as liberal and moderate evangelicals. The chapter shows how antipersecution discourse resulted in the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. It also considers the significance of spectacles of the violated body to the discourse of persecution and how intense attention to Christian persecution created a tension for evangelicals between the universalizing language of human rights and a specific commitment to the “persecuted body” of Christ. Finally, it explores how evangelicals' attention to Christian persecution intersects with Islamic concerns.

Contemporary Issues

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tolan ◽  
Gilles Veinstein ◽  
Henry Laurens
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
First Century ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
World War ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Newly Independent States

This chapter chronicles the struggles of the Muslim world and Europe during World War II as well as its aftermath. It shows how the war had helped to end European rule and begin the process of decolonization for Muslim nations such as Libya. And with the Muslim state now independent of direct European domination, the second half of the chapter explores the ways in which the Muslim world tackled the issue of development as well as a fresh wave of problems regarding human rights, universality, and other pitfalls of newly independent states struggling to survive in a world that has changed profoundly after a series of major conflicts. The chapter also reflects on the still-intertwined relationships between the Muslim world and Europe as history progresses into the twenty-first century.

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