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Negotiating Culture and Human Rights provides a new interdisciplinary approach to issues of cultural values and universal human rights. Central to the discussion is the "Asian values debate," so named because of the culturally relativist ideals embraced by some key Asian governments. By analyzing how cultural difference and human rights operate in theory and practice in such areas as legal equality, women's rights, and ethnicity, the contributors forge a new way of looking at these critical issues. They call their approach "chastened universalism," arguing that respect for others' values need not lead to sterile, relativist views. Ultimately the authors conclude that it is less important to discover pre-existing common values across cultures than to create them through dialogue and debate
List of contents
Part 1. Human Rights and the Asian Values Debate
Introduction. Culture and Human Rights, by Lynda S. Bell, Andrew J. Nathan, and Ilan Peleg
1. Who Produces Asian Identity? Discourse, Discrimination, and Chinese Peasant Women in the Quest for Human Rights, by Lynda S. Bell
Part 2. Culturally-informed Arguments for Universal Human Rights
2. Getting Beyond Cross-Talk: Why Persisting Disagreements are Philosophically Nonfatal, by Michael G. Barnhart
3. Western Defensiveness and the Defense of Rights: A Communitarian Alternative, by Kenneth E. Morris
4. Rights Hunting in Non-Western Traditions, by Steven J. Hood
Part 3. Human Rights Law and its Limits
5. How a Liberal Jurist Defends the Bangkok Declaration, by Michael W. Dowdle
6. Are Women Human? The Promise and Perils of "Women's Rights as Human Rights", by Lucinda Joy Peach
7. Re-Positioning Human Rights Discourse on "Asian" Perspectives, by Sharon K. Hom
Part 4. Rights Discourse and Power Relations
8. Human Rights and the Discourse on Universality: A Chinese Historical Perspective, by Xiaoqun Xu
9. Jihad Over Human Rights, Human Rights as Jihad: Clash of Universals, by Farhat Haq
10. Universalization of the Rejection of Human Rights: Russia's Case, by Dmitry Shlapentokh
11. Ethnicity and Human Rights in Contemporary Democracies: Israel and Other Cases, by Ilan Peleg
12. Walking Two Roads: Reading Human Rights in Contemporary Chinese Fiction, by Thomas N. Santos
Part 5. Beyond Universalism and Relativism
13. Universalism: A Particularistic Account, by Andrew J. Nathan
14. Dedichotomizing Discourse: Three Gorges, Two Cultures, One Nature, by Jennifer R. Goodman
Appendix A: Universal Declaration on Human Rights
Appendix B: Bangkok Declaration on Human Rights
Appendix C: Bangkok NGO Declaration on Human Rights
Appendix D: Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
About the author
Edited by Lynda S. Bell, Andrew J. Nathan, and Ilan Peleg
Summary
By tracing the relativist and universalist arguments of human rights through such issues as criminal justice, women's rights, and ethnicity, the contributors forge a new way of looking at this dichotomy. This new view is articulated as a sort of "chastened universalism," not as concerned with searching for pre-existing common values among different cultures, but for ways to create them.
