Deploying Cognitive Sociology to Advance Human Rights
AbstractNo one, neither speculative philosopher nor empirical anthropologist, has ever shown human rights to be anything other than a culturally particular social construction. If human rights are not natural, divine, or metaphysical, then they can only be a social construction of particular cultures. If so, then many cultures may justifiably reject them as culturally foreign and hence without local normative validity. In response to this conclusion I develop a cognitive approach to any local culture ‐ a cognitive approach in distinction to a normative one. It allows for advancing human rights as rights internal to any given community’s culture. Human rights can be advanced internally by means of “cognitive re-framing,” a notion I develop out of Erving Goffman’s theory of frame analysis. I deploy it in two examples: female genital mutilation in Africa and child prostitution in Asia.
Gender equality and human rights approaches to female genital mutilation: a review of international human rights norms and standards
