scholarly journals Posthuman rights struggles and environmentalisms from below in the political ontologies of Ecuador and Colombia

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-204
Author(s):  
Rosemary J Coombe ◽  
David J Jefferson

In a decolonial determination to resist the modern ontological separation of nature from culture, political ontologies and posthuman legalities in Andean Community countries increasingly recognize natural and cultural forces as inextricably interrelated under the principle of the pluriverse. After years of Indigenous struggles, new social movement mobilizations and citizen activism, twenty-first-century constitutional changes in the region have affirmed the plurinational and intercultural natures of the region’s polities. Drawing upon extensive interdisciplinary ethnographic research in Ecuador and Colombia, the article illustrates how Indigenous, Afro-descendant and campesino communities express multispecies relations of care and conviviality in opposition to modern extractivist development through the concept of buen vivir. These grassroots collective life projects and life plans articulate rights ‘from below’ to support new practices of territorialization that further materialize natures’ rights and community ideals. Although human rights have modern origins, the implementation of third generation collective biocultural rights to fulfill natures’ rights may help to materially realize community norms, autonomies and responsibilities that exceed modern ontologies. The ecocentric territorial rights struggles and posthuman legalities we explore are examples of a larger emergent project of decolonizing human rights in a politics appropriate to the Anthropocene.

Author(s):  
Fred Powell

This chapter explores the political context of human rights and how it is shaping the future. It argues that human rights constitute the very substance of democracy by conferring a universal set of rights on the citizen, arguing that Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase ‘the right to have rights’ defines the complex relationship between democracy, human rights and civil society. It discusses how human rights embracing both individual liberty and social justice have been historically contested and critically assesses the state of human rights in today’s world along with the potential threats and opportunities for human rights development into the future. The chapter concludes by arguing that the restoration of a universal welfare state, as the embodiment of human rights in a globalised world, arguably should be the priority for the future of democracy in the twenty-first century.


Author(s):  
Harold Hongju Koh

In the globalizing twenty-first century, just about everything affects human rights and just about everything affects security. Conflicts large and small, detectable and covert, range across physical and virtual space, spurred by the proliferation of dramatic technological developments such as armed drones, lethal autonomous robots, and tools of cyberconflict. How do we reconcile these emerging security threats with a universal commitment to human rights? This chapter describes the political state of play in this complex landscape and explains how the chapters that follow in this part map the emerging legal and human rights dilemmas that flow from armed drone warfare, cyberconflict, ‘securitizing’ human rights, and pursuing sustainable security. It closes by offering the imperative of ‘humanizing security’ as the most promising way to reconcile these concepts in the future.


Author(s):  
Dapo Akande ◽  
Jaakko Kuosmanen ◽  
Helen McDermott ◽  
Dominic Roser

The interlocking threats of armed conflict, environmental degradation, and poverty constitute a central part of the political and moral challenges facing the world in the twenty-first century. However, anyone who considers that these challenges should be confronted with approaches that incorporate and are built upon human rights faces a difficult task. High regard for human rights seems to have developed in a particular and bygone political context. The rise of populism and nationalism in recent years may be seen as having created myriad novel and complex realities. These developments suggest that work now needs to be done to apply human rights to new realities but may also indicate that we need to adapt our understanding of human rights in light of them....


2008 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 449-460
Author(s):  
Jack Straw

If you read certain newspapers you might be forgiven for thinking that human rights were an alien imposition foisted upon us by ‘the other’. It is a misconception that has regrettably taken root. A central theme of my lecture this evening is to explode this myth, and to demonstrate how far from being some ‘European’ imposition, Britain has been at the forefront of the political and legal development of human rights across Europe and across the world.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-79
Author(s):  
Maria Kozyreva ◽  

The period of the end of the twentieth — the beginning of the twenty-first century can be called the heyday of human rights movements that advocate the inclusion of new agencies in the political, ethical, social and other fields. Among them arose the animal rights movement, which later developed into a philosophical turn called animal turn, which is now one of the most popular in the Western philosophical and anthropological discourse. Being mostly a media and popular science project, animal turn has been little studied and criticized from an academic point of view. In this article, it is proposed to explore the history of the turn, its development and, most importantly, how the ideas about man, animal and their relationships changed within the framework of animal turn. The new anthropology, which also includes the turn under discussion, inextricably links the concept of man with the concept of boundary, stating it as a necessary element for the constitution of the human self. As a part of a general philosophical trend to expand the discourse of the Other, animal turn suggests to consider the animal as a universal example of Otherness, which can not only coexist with a human, but also be an integral part of his self-perception. The article proposes to consider how the transition from the recognition of animals as "also feeling" was gradually made to the idea of maximum inclusiveness, openness and hospitality. It is also proposed to critically comprehend the new concept of man as a being who strives for maximum positive harmony with himself and the material world. As examples, the texts of the most famous representatives of animal turn are analyzed: P. Singer, T. Regan, J. Derrida, B. Massumi, P. Godfrey-Smith and V. Despre.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-66
Author(s):  
Julie Bates

Happy Days is contemporaneous with a number of seminal contributions to the concept of the everyday in postwar France. This essay suggests that the increasingly constrained verbal and physical routines performed by its protagonist Winnie constitute a portrait of the everyday, and goes on to trace the affinities between Beckett's portrait and several formulations of the concept, with particular emphasis on the pronounced gendering of the everyday in many of these theories. The essay suggests the aerial bombings of the Second World War and methods of torture during the Algerian War as potential influences for Beckett's play, and draws a comparison with Marlen Haushofer's 1963 novel The Wall, which reimagines the Romantic myth of The Last Man as The Last Woman. It is significant, however, that the cataclysmic event that precedes the events of Happy Days remains unnamed. This lack of specificity, I suggest, is constitutive of the menace of the play, and has ensured that the political as well as aesthetic power of Happy Days has not dated. Indeed, the everyday of its sentinel figure posted in a blighted landscape continues to articulate the fears of audiences, for whom the play may resonate today as a staging of twenty-first century anxiety about environmental crisis. The essay concludes that in Happy Days we encounter an isolated female protagonist who contrives from scant material resources and habitual bodily rhythms a shelter within a hostile environment, who generates, in other words, an everyday despite the shattering of the social and temporal framework that conventionally underpin its formation. Beckett's play in this way demonstrates the political as well as aesthetic power of the everyday in a time of crisis.


Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Natalie Kouri-Towe

In 2015, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Toronto (QuAIA Toronto) announced that it was retiring. This article examines the challenges of queer solidarity through a reflection on the dynamics between desire, attachment and adaptation in political activism. Tracing the origins and sites of contestation over QuAIA Toronto's participation in the Toronto Pride parade, I ask: what does it mean for a group to fashion its own end? Throughout, I interrogate how gestures of solidarity risk reinforcing the very systems that activists desire to resist. I begin by situating contemporary queer activism in the ideological and temporal frameworks of neoliberalism and homonationalism. Next, I turn to the attempts to ban QuAIA Toronto and the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ from the Pride parade to examine the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship. Lastly, I examine how the terms of sexual rights discourse require visible sexual subjects to make individual rights claims, and weighing this risk against political strategy, I highlight how queer solidarities are caught in a paradox symptomatic of our times: neoliberalism has commodified human rights discourses and instrumentalised sexualities to serve the interests of hegemonic power and obfuscate state violence. Thinking through the strategies that worked and failed in QuAIA Toronto's seven years of organising, I frame the paper though a proposal to consider political death as a productive possibility for social movement survival in the 21stcentury.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-59
Author(s):  
Farhod Khatamov ◽  

This scientific article analyzes the origin of the concept of "human rights", its historical evolution and role in the political development of society. Scientific conclusions were made by summarizing the interpretations of various periods and historical stages. The study also emphasizes that the protection of human rights and freedoms occupies a special place in the development of human civilization


Oikos ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (29) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Olga María Cerqueira Torres

RESUMENEn el presente artículo el análisis se ha centrado en determinar cuáles de las funciones del interregionalismo, sistematizadas en los trabajos de Jürgen Rüland, han sido desarrolladas en la relación Unión Europea-Comunidad Andina de Naciones, ya que ello ha permitido evidenciar si el estado del proceso de integración de la CAN ha condicionado la racionalidad política del comportamiento de la Unión Europea hacia la región andina (civil power o soft imperialism); esto posibilitará establecer la viabilidad de la firma del Acuerdo de Asociación Unión Europea-Comunidad Andina de Naciones.Palabras clave: Unión Europea, Comunidad Andina, interregionalismo, funciones, acuerdo de asociación. Interregionalism functions in the EU-ANDEAN community relationsABSTRACTIn the present article analysis has focused on which functions of interregionalism, systematized by Jürgen Rüland, have been developed in the European Union-Andean Community birregional relation, that allowed demonstrate if the state of the integration process in the Andean Community has conditioned the political rationality of the European Union towards the Andean region (civil power or soft imperialism); with all these elements will be possible to establish the viability of the Association Agreement signature between the European Union and the Andean Community.Keywords: European Union, Andean Community, interregionalism, functions, association agreement.


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