Human Rights and the Right to Culture in China

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-31
Author(s):  
John Young
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
World War ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Understanding ◽  
Policy Failures

As anthropologists we are often preoccupied with our own circumscribed studies of local communities. Only during World War II did we embrace the global dimensions and importance of cultural differences. Many Western anthropologists who have recently, and as a matter of conscience, become concerned with globalization have abandoned the concept of culture as an organizing principle, perhaps in part because they confuse cultural relativism with moral relativism, and perhaps because it is fashionable to denounce their forebears. As professionals I think we must deal with the cultural dimensions of a problem first before making moral judgements. I remain convinced that the concept of culture is a useful tool for understanding and shaping macro-level political understanding and dialogue, in somewhat the same way as Ruth Benedict and others demonstrated more than half a century ago. American policy failures in the international arena, of which the war in Afghanistan is one result, are related to arrogance (ethnocentrism) which breeds ignorance of other cultures and a lack of comparative perspective on American culture as well. Human rights is one issue where the United States is blindly pushing its own agenda to its own detriment.

18. Human Rights

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
World War ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Human

This chapter examines the concept of human rights, which derives primarily from the Charter of the United Nations adopted in 1945 immediately after World War II. It first provides a brief account of the history of the concept of human rights before describing the international human rights regime. It then considers two persistent problems that arise in applying the concept of human rights to the developing world: the relations between the claim that the concept is universally valid and the realities of cultural diversity around the world; and the relations between human rights and development. In particular, it explores cultural imperialism and cultural relativism, the human rights implications of the rise of political Islam and the so-called war on terror(ism), and globalization. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the new political economy of human rights.

The United States and Self-Determination: Perspectives on the Wilsonian Conception

1976 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michla Pomerance
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
The United States ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Autonomy ◽  
Conflicting Demands ◽  
The Right

Ever since the principle of self-determination entered the lexicon of international politics during World War I, American foreign policymakers have had to contend with problems revolving around that concept. The need to favor one or another claimant, each waving the banner of self-determination and invoking the “right to determine its own fate,” continues to present dilemmas, often extremely troubling ones, for U.S. decisionmakers. Examples from recent history come readily to mind. The entire post-World War II decolonization process entailed an endless series of such dilemmas, and even after formal decolonization was all but completed, such nagging issues as Katanga, Biafra, and Eritrea remained, not to mention the problems of South Africa, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and Indochina. Indeed, even within America’s own imperial domain, the United States was faced with the conflicting demands of the Puerto Rican nationalists and the majority of the Puerto Rican electorate, the claims of the Marianas as against those of Micronesia as a whole, and demands for cultural autonomy on the part of diverse ethnic groups.

Latin American Trade Relations

1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-83
Author(s):  
Shirley Christian
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Latin America ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Cold War

There has always been a certain attitude in Washington having to do with Latin America. It is that Latin America is not quite a grown-up place and, therefore, is worthy of intense US interest only when the region, or part of it, falls into a crisis that crosses paths with one of the US hot-button issues of the moment: drugs, immigration, human rights, communism (until recently) and, farther back, fascism. In other words, Latin America has been worthy of attention only when the United States decided to “do good” (e.g., human rights crusades), incorporate the region into efforts at solving US domestic problems (e.g., drugs), or needed firm support from the region in some international effort (e.g., the Cold War and World War II).

Africa, the United Nations, and Third Generation Rights

2020 ◽  
pp. 96-133
Author(s):  
Derrick M. Nault
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Inequality ◽  
Right To Development ◽  
International Body ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Right

Chapter Four assesses Africa’s contributions to ‘third generation’ rights—‘solidarity’ or ‘group rights’ that emerged in tandem with decolonization after World War II. It traces the genealogy of three such human rights incorporated into the mandate of the United Nations (UN) from the 1950s to 1980s—the right to self-determination, the right to racial non-discrimination, and the right to development—arguing that African political lobbying proved decisive for the recognition and codification of these interrelated rights at the UN. Through writings and speeches critical of colonialism, racism, and global inequality; cultivating alliances with non-African Third World nations; and making the United Nations a more inclusive and representative international body, African leaders, it is shown, helped redefine human rights at the UN in ways that continue to reverberate in our own era.

CONSIDERING CAPITALISM IN AMERICAN SOCIAL THOUGHT

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
MARK PITTENGER
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
New Left ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
World War ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
American Capitalism ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Right

Triumphant capitalism seems nowadays to be a fact of nature, requiring no name and admitting, as Margaret Thatcher famously put it, of “no alternative.” Neither American Capitalism nor Transcending Capitalism shrinks from “naming the system,” as perplexed New Leftists once struggled to do when trying to articulate their own alternative. But having named it, neither book takes as its primary task to define or fully describe that economic and sociocultural system. Rather, both are concerned principally with how twentieth-century American intellectuals, broadly construed, oriented and addressed themselves to the idea of capitalism in light of their respective historical moments’ shifting economic and social realities. Some reformist thinkers came to deny the efficacy of “capitalism” for describing a political–economic order which they believed to be rapidly passing away; their rivals to the right, meanwhile, mounted a reinvigorated defense of the term and its classical implications. While Daniel Bell announced in his 1960 essay on “The End of Ideology in the West” that post-World War II intellectuals had achieved a “rough consensus” on the desirability of the welfare state and political pluralism, the essays in American Capitalism suggest a more complicated picture. The “age of consensus,” that favorite punching bag of recent historians of the United States, takes a few more ritual knocks in the Lichtenstein volume. But the book's essays, in conjunction with Howard Brick's monograph, do establish that the lively discourse on the future of American society which proceeded in the aftermath of World War II was also part of a continuous debate that ran across most of the century's course. Bell suggested one theme of that debate when he argued that Western intellectuals must turn their attention away from political economy in order to address “the stultifying aspects of contemporary culture,” which could not be adequately framed in traditional right-versus-left terms. If Bell's generation, along with the younger New Left thinkers who were soon to appear, found the contradictions of capitalism to be decreasingly pressing, they would find sufficient challenge when they engaged instead with the knotty social and cultural issues of modern America.

Military and Absentee Voting in the United States: History and Modern Practice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald S. Inbody
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Military Personnel ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Military ◽  
States History ◽  
Absentee Voting

The advent of absentee voting for American citizens began with the desire on the part of soldiers to participate in the electoral process. It was aided by politicians who wanted the support of those soldiers. The rise of absentee voting was later extended to nonmilitary Americans living overseas or otherwise away from their home precincts. Resistance to absentee voting was strong at first, largely on philosophical grounds (i.e., the question of why someone away from home would be interested in voting, or absentee voting inviting vote fraud). It was also resisted by political parties who were convinced that those voters may vote for the opposition candidate. Gradually, in the post-World War II years, nearly all resistance faded but never disappeared. Vestigial perceptions of the voting habits of military personnel remained as late as the first years of the 21st century. Congress was convinced to pass several voting rights laws that eventually extended the right to vote to all Americans serving in the military or living overseas, although some barriers remain to be overcome.

Human Rights

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Wronka
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Periodic Review ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Rights Of The Child ◽  
Guiding Principles ◽  
The Right

At the heart of social work, human rights are a set of interdependent guiding principles having implications for meta-macro (global), macro (whole population), mezzo (at risk), micro (clinical), meta-micro (everyday life), and research interventions to eradicate social malaises and promote well-being. They can be best understood vis-à-vis the UN Human Rights Triptych. This consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, increasingly referred to as customary international law on the center panel; the guiding principles, declarations, and conventions following it, on the right panel—like the conventions on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); and implementation mechanisms, on the left panel—like the filing of country reports on compliance to conventions, the Universal Periodic Review, thematic and country reports by special rapporteurs, and world conferences. Briefly, this powerful idea, which emerged from the ashes of World War II, emphasizes five crucial notions: human dignity; non-discrimination; civil and political rights; economic, social, and cultural rights; and solidarity rights. Whereas this article emphasizes issues pertaining to the United States, it touches upon other countries as appropriate, calling for a global vision in the hopes that every person, everywhere, will have their human rights realized. Only chosen values endure. The challenge, through open discussion and debate, is the creation of a human rights culture, which is a lived awareness of these principles in one's mind, heart, and body, integrated dragged into our everyday lives. Doing so will require vision, courage, hope, humility, and everlasting love, as the indigenous spiritual leader Crazy Horse reminds us.

Continuing the Conversation on Chinese Human Rights

1997 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 177-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger T. Ames
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Confucian Values ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Human

In recent years China has entered the international human rights debate, consistently making the case for cultural diversity in the formulation of human rights policy. Ames follows this argument of cultural relativism, emphasizing China's cultural differences and critiquing the concept of universal human rights, particularly as presented by Jack Donnelly in his book Universal Human Rights. Discussing the history of universal human rights and Confucian values, Ames asserts that a growing dialogue between China and the United States would benefit China in terms of political and individual rights and the United States in terms of a greater sense of civic virtue.

Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the Interamerican System

1977 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence J. LeBlanc
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
International Agreement ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
The Right ◽  
Health And Well Being

The human rights proclaimed and affirmed in the various international declarations, conventions, and covenants adopted since World War II fall into two broad categories: civil and political; and economic, social, and cultural. The former includes the traditional rights of man, such as the rights to life and liberty; the latter includes such rights as the right to work, to social security, and to the preservation of one's health and well-being.International agreement in principle on most civil and political rights as human rights has been relatively easy to achieve; disagreement has occurred—and is likely to continue to occur-primarily over their precise meaning. Virtually everyone endorses, for example, a right to life; not everyone agrees, however, that capital punishment or abortion must therefore be prohibited by law.

scholarly journals REVIEW ON THE MONOGRAPH BOLDIZHAR SANDRA ALEXANDROVNA ON THE TOPIC «ADMINISTRATIVE AND LEGAL REGULATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS OF THE FOURTH GENERATION IN THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM»

2021 ◽  
pp. 326-327
Author(s):  
S.G. Stetsenko
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Fourth Generation ◽  
World War ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
National Community ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
The Right

moral rights only because she is a human being. However, it does not follow that the rule of law is aimed at protecting all rights agreed within the international or national community. The foundation of fourth-generation human rights was laid after World War II, when the right to be informed before a medical experiment arose. However, the vast majority of fourth-generation human rights norms were formulated only in the last decades of the twentieth century. In this regard, the study of the administrative and legal regulation of human rights of the fourth generation is important, thanks to which it will be possible to reveal the mechanism of this regulation. The peer-reviewed monograph is devoted to this question. In addition, it meets the requirements of today and is of considerable interest to the scientific community.

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