![to expose many of these: trafficking for sex work,22
slavery as domestic
servants,23
bonded sweatshop work,24
death due to botched illegal
abortion,25
and domestic violence,26
to name a few.27
Health, labor,
homeless, and indigenous activists similarly attempt to make the invi-
sible visible. In each of these cases there are particular individuals who
have violated particular individuals’ human rights.28
However, social,
political, and economic conditions in particular contexts and relative
conditions between contexts are particularly conducive to these viola-
tions. Global social, political, and economic factors – not fate or karma
which influence the accident of birth – determine which children are
most likely to grow up to be able to take advantage of social, political,
and economic conditions and which will grow up with their opportu-
nities constrained by those same conditions.
Consider women trafficked from Nigeria to Italy for prostitution.
Illegal but well-established paths, particularly from the Ebo state and
Benin City, create conditions of vulnerability, in which women choose
to engage because of the economic landscape in Nigeria and in which
they are kept to work in a form of bondage due to the immigration laws
of Italy.29
The relative economic prospects in Italy and Nigeria com-
bine with the familial and legal context of Nigeria to generate an
economic opportunity for these mostly young women, but that oppor-
tunity is constrained by exploitable hierarchies.30
Like Marie, trafficked
22
Orhant 2001. 23
Chin 1998; Human Rights Watch 2002.
24
Bender and Greenwald 2003; Brooks 2003; Elson and Pearson 1997.
25
Jen Ross 2005.
26
Agnew 1998; Coomaraswamy 2002; Milwertz 2003; Pence and Shepard 1988;
Schechter 1998; Vickers 2002.
27
Bunch 1990; 1995; Mayer 1995a; [1991]1999.
28
The Committee Against Slavery and Trafficking (CAST) cases and Tahari Justice
Center are two among many organizations worldwide whose work documents
cases of individuals violating the human rights of other individuals in a context
of domestic servitude or marital violence that is not publicly visible.
29
A new European agreement regarding trafficking could potentially mitigate
some aspects of vulnerability (Council of Europe Convention on Action against
Trafficking in Human Beings 2005).
30
Is every instance of exploitable hierarchy (MacKinnon 1993), domination (Pettit
1997), or capability failure a human rights violation? Some people want to save
‘‘rights’’ for some subset of these conditions. I argue with women’s human rights
activists that without attention to the broader context, no subset is secure. And
so at a minimum every instance of exploitable hierarchy, domination, or
capability failure is cause for skeptical scrutiny of the prospect that human rights
have been or may be violated.
10 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-30-320.jpg)
![accept such violations as culturally appropriate either as a form of
cultural relativism or due to their resonance with similarly oppressive
conditions in their own context.35
Once made visible, some may be able to see these as human rights
violations. However, such human rights violations may be invisible to
others, particularly (but not exclusively) to those with certain forms of
privilege or to those willing to respect cultural norms without critically
reflecting on their historical and social construction.
To help illustrate this form of acculturated human rights violation,
I adapt a concept put forward by Joyce King, a teacher educator who
focuses on ways that US schooling ‘‘contributes to unequal educa-
tional outcomes that reinforce societal inequity and oppression.’’36
King seeks to reveal to her students the habits of racism that they
have internalized and that they replicate. She calls these repressive
habits ‘‘dysconsiousness’’:
Dysconsciousness is an uncritical habit of mind (including perceptions, atti-
tudes, and beliefs) that justifies inequity and exploitation by accepting the
existing order of things as given. If, as Heaney (1984) suggests, critical
consciousness ‘‘involves an ethical judgement’’ [sic] about the social order,
dysconsciousness accepts it uncritically. This lack of critical judgment
against society reflects an absence of what Cox (1974) refers to as ‘‘social
ethics’’; it involves a subjective identification with an ideological viewpoint
that admits no fundamentally alternative vision of society.37
Not all dyconsciousness rises to the level of human rights violation,
but dysconsciousness is what enables us to partake uncritically in
practices that are human rights violating or to leave certain human
rights violating practices unexamined. It is even possible to examine
human rights violating practices in a dysconscious way. For example,
William Talbott’s examination of women’s rights and female genital
cutting practices is dysconscious, uncritical about the neo-colonial,
political, social, and economic oppressive habits that his criticism of
treaty, which mandates state parties to condemn discrimination in all its forms
and to ensure a legal framework, including all laws, policies, and practices that
provide protection against discrimination and embody the principles of equality.
Egypt had reservations about Articles 2, 9, 16, and 29 (see United Nations 1979).
35
Marglin 1990; Song 2005.
36
King 1991: 134. Thanks to Jennifer Obidah for introducing me to King’s
concept.
37
King 1991: 135.
12 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-32-320.jpg)
![existence (‘‘always already’’)43
of power – perpetuated through our
relationships. The greatest challenge of human rights activism is mov-
ing our attention beyond the individual actions we see so that we see
the rights violations in their context of power relations. The most
challenging reconceptualizations take us beyond these observations
of (1) others and (2) conditions in order to see (3) our own position
in the relationships of power that enable such conditions to continue
and therefore such individual acts to be politically sustainable.
For example, the structures of patriarchy enable the rapist and the
abusive husband. The habits of my daily life and discourse enact
patriarchal norms. For example, my husband takes our daughters to
do our grocery shopping Saturday mornings so that I can work.
Though the gender roles are reversed (the man doing the care-giving,
the woman working), the roles of child care and shopping are linked in
a traditionally gendered way. Similarly, when a friend comments that
her family has a similar inversion of traditional gender roles – she with
a primary breadwinning income, her husband with a job that lets him
be the primary care-giver – she is reifying a conventional way of under-
standing of income-earning work and care-giving work. Certainly, we
wouldn’t say that by our daily practices we were violating the human
rights of a woman on the phone with a domestic violence shelter trying
to decide if she should leave her husband, go to a shelter, and begin a
long process of education and training that might lead her to be able to
earn a family-sustaining wage. But neither does our working within
these roles (reversed as they may be) help us as a society to consider why
we organize work and care such that ‘‘work’’ requires seventeen-hour
days and weekends and ‘‘care’’ means going shopping. Why aren’t I at
the park with my children while my husband shops? Why are there
kinds of work (‘‘breadwinning’’ jobs) that require someone else to care
for children, shop for groceries, or the worker’s double shift to do these
things? If work and care were differently organized – with the hours
required for success more closely matched with the number of hours
that it is reasonable for a child to be in institutionalized care44
– the
43
Foucault 1978.
44
States limit the number of hours a child may be in institutionalized care. For
example, The State of Tennessee (Rule 1240-4-3.06) ‘‘Children shall not be in
care for more than twelve (12) hours in a twenty-four (24) hour period except in
special circumstances (e.g. acute illness of or injury to parents, natural disaster,
unusual work hours)’’ (Tennessee [1974] 1998).
Universal human rights in a world of difference 15](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-35-320.jpg)
![cultural, or religious values make it difficult to see that it is incoherent
and even destructive to support some rights but not all rights, or some
people’s rights, but not all people’s rights. Such cognitive dissonance
is supported by unexamined dichotomous thinking that enables people
to disaggregate political and economic rights or women’s and human
rights for example. Such cognitive dissonance and unexamined dichot-
omous thinking can be attributed to activist and scholar alike, often
a result of dysconscious, uncritically examined, or unexamined social
habituation.
However, it is not enough to want to learn from activists. Theorists
need a method for doing so, a method that guides our work and enables
others to follow and assess our work.58
It is not enough to have an
epistemology – a ‘‘theory of knowledge’’59
– that values activists as
knowers. It is not enough to have a theoretical methodology – that is,
‘‘a theory and analysis of how [theoretical] research does or should
proceed’’60
– a methodology that requires us to learn from activists
themselves as opposed to learning from social science research on
or about activists. As all research, political theory of activism needs a
theoretical method – a ‘‘technique for (or way of proceeding in) gather-
ing evidence.’’61
However, for normative inquiry, a method gives us
specific tools not only for gathering data, but also for translating,
interpreting, and analyzing that data. For example, it not only specifies
our methods for identifying whose insights and experiences we should
draw upon, but also gives an account of the steps we take to mitigate
the potential for reading our theoretical views into our observations.62
A method enables others to assess and contribute to our research
58
The method as I used it was very expensive and was successful only with
generous research support from Vanderbilt University, the University of
Southern California, the Ford Foundation, and United Nations Research
Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), some of which was specific to my
project, some of which was possible by coordinating my project with other
projects under way. However, depending on research design, similar research
can be done with different resources. Thus, while my project was expensive, the
expense was a function of my research question and research design. Field-based
inquiry supported by opportunities for deliberation may in fact often be
expensive, but the general approach set out in Part II need not be.
59
Harding 1987: 3. 60
Harding 1987: 3. 61
Harding 1987: 2.
62
A method may also specify how power dynamics in the relationship between the
researcher and her interlocutors are to be navigated. For discussion of these and
other ethical dimensions of methodological choice see Ackerly, Stern, and True
(2006) and Smith (1999).
20 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-40-320.jpg)
![Each of these views has been supported by a range of academics and
activists. They are in fact foundationally important to the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights itself.76
However, securing them in
international institutions is insufficient for their global recognition
and realization. Some will dismiss them as moral values unsustainable
by political institutions.77
Some will see them as institutions condi-
tioned by cultural values, that is, where the implications of the institu-
tions and values conflict, the cultural values trump.78
If we see human rights as either a system of values or a system of
institutions we miss what human rights has in common with law.
Human rights is, as Habermas characterizes law, ‘‘two things at once:
a system of knowledge and a system of action.’’79
These two systems are
importantly interrelated. Human rights are a dynamic system of action
because they have been and will continue to be incompletely, and in fact
unsystematically, developed. Not only have ‘‘human rights’’ been devel-
oping within and between states, in treaties, in national legislatures,
in international courts, in United Nations sponsored meetings, and in
activists networks, but also, because they have been developing institu-
tionally, they have been developing as a system of knowledge and
values. Because women’s human rights activists ask more of these
systems of institutions and knowledge, because these activists are parti-
cularly attentive to marginalization and invisibility, I focus on these
activists. However, in many realms in which human rights have become
important, the same phenomenon of human rights as an evolving system
of knowledge and tool for guiding action has been observed.80
If we appreciate context as characterized by systems of knowledge,
values, practices, norms, and institutions, then when we distinguish
between social values and political institutions, we construct a false
dichotomy. The dichotomy between institutions and values may be
rhetorically useful for dismissing the universal aspiration of human
rights, but it is not substantively meaningful among people of religious
communities where, for many, institutions are the context and the
structure of moral value systems.81
Moreover, even secular society is
76
Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948.
77
Bentham 1823; cf. Sen 2004: 319.
78
Shea 2003. See also many countries’ reservations to CEDAW.
79
Habermas 1996a: 79. 80
Bellah 1992.
81
Hauerwas [1988] 2001; Niebuhr 1951; Vandenbergh 2001; 2005; cf. Rubin
2005: chapter 8 and 332–333.
24 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-44-320.jpg)
![Critical theory and methodology
The key to my identification and articulation of the activists’ argu-
ment is methodological. In different ways Foucault, post-modernists,
post-colonialists, transgender theorists, and Third World feminists ask
us to subject knowledge claims – any claims to have identified any
truth or fact – to scrutiny.91
These theorists seek to challenge unre-
flective ways of knowing in order to reveal forms of power concealed
in institutions and habituated practices. Taking the insights of critical,
post-modern, post-colonial, and Third World feminists as having
foundationally epistemological importance, I build a methodology of
inquiry that seeks out different and even competing accounts of
human rights. The methodology requires sustained self-reflection
which is facilitated by a destabilizing epistemology, perpetually atten-
tive to the power dynamics manifested in any account that is likely to
be interpreted as in any way definitive.92
Consequently, with the
activists, I build a political account of immanent universal human
rights from the perspective of those fighting for their rights. Rather
than assumed away prior to the exercise of theory building, the politics
of being a source for this account, the politics of non-transcendence,
and the politics of argument are all part of this account of universal
human rights.
Whatever account of universal human rights theorists offer, and
whatever their predisposition toward critical theory, by taking up the
question of human rights itself, political theorists are somewhat obli-
gated to test out their theories in practice as critical theorists inspire
us to do.93
Interestingly, in this case, with so much diversity on
the ground, the critical theorist is equally challenged. How can she
be expected to author a theory coherent with social action when so
91
Ackerly 2000. See Harding, ‘‘Only in this way can we hope to produce
understandings and explanations which are free of distortion from the
unexamined beliefs of social scientists themselves’’ (1987: 9). Habermas shares
the feminist focus on theoretical methodology, and yet feminists find his
methodology is not sufficiently critical (Fraser 1991; Habermas 1984; Mies 1983).
92
Talbott calls on human rights theory to be ‘‘epistemically modest’’ (2005).
93
Marx defines the role of criticism as promoting the ‘‘self-understanding of the age
concerning its struggles and wishes. This is the task for the world and for us’’
([1843] 1967). Gramsci writes in a letter to Tatiana, ‘‘thinking ‘disinterestedly’ or
study for its own sake is difficult for me . . . I do not like throwing stones in the
dark; I like to have a concrete interlocutor or adversary’’ (December 15, 1930)
(1971: x).
Universal human rights in a world of difference 27](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-47-320.jpg)
![redress women’s rights violations with changes in social habits, not just
institutional changes, is universal.99
Because all human societies are hierarchical,100
the political attempt
to mitigate the abuse of hierarchy is universalizable. Given the power
dynamics of some contexts in which these claims arise, an appeal to a
transcendental moral justification of such claims is common.101
This
observation has empirical and normative implications. A correlated
empirically testable hypothesis might be: the more totalitarian (com-
plete) the political authority, the more likely a moral claim will be
couched in transcendental terms. If the particularity of each context in
which such claims are made can likewise be taken as given, then a
second, empirically testable hypothesis is that the language and theore-
tical resources of transcendental claims will vary quite significantly.102
Mine is not an empirical argument about when, and under what condi-
tions, human rights claims will emerge as ‘‘human rights’’ claims. Nor is
it an argument about when human rights claims will have political
legitimacy in the Weberian sense. Political Science, History, Sociology,
and Anthropology can research these observable phenomena. I am
interested in a normative argument that can interpret a range of parti-
cular claims103
as not particular but rather based on the substance of the
claims as immanent and universal. These claims emerge in particular
contexts and yet have a political basis for being universalizable.
As was suggested at the outset of this chapter, exploring these
questions with an epistemological uncertainty means that even the
definitions of society, obligations, and rights should be interrogated.
The notion of rights as entitlements with corresponding duty-bearers
is common in Western social contract framing of rights.104
George
99
After studying 15,000 proverbs originating in 245 languages, Mineke Schipper
argues that there are general categories of proverbs, one of which is ‘‘Female
power (. . . mentioned in terms of verbal talents, work, knowledge, witchcraft
and so forth), and the countermeasures invented to restrict all that female power
(such as numerous prescriptions and proscriptions for female behaviour, and, of
course the recommendation of violence as a last means of utter helplessness)’’
(Association for Women’s Rights In Development 2005; cf. Schipper 2003).
100
Diamond [1997] 2003.
101
I will discuss examples of these in chapters 2 and 3.
102
This work is being done in linguistics (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002a; 2002b).
103
As we will discuss in chapter 3, many claimants ground their particular claims
on a particular interpretation of transcendental authority.
104
See also Ackerly (forthcoming-b).
30 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-50-320.jpg)
![just like the difficulty in seeing the need for change, does not allow us
to dismiss our global social ethical obligations.
I aspire to offer a theoretical argument whose politics are transparent
and democratic. One long-standing theme in contemporary feminist
theory has been the politics of knowledge.115
From this huge body
of literature, I understand feminist theoretical inquiry to require (1) a
commitment to ongoing interrogation of epistemological assumptions
(articulated and masked), (2) a commitment to methodological inno-
vation in seeking insights in which we make use of the multiple per-
spectives we can know, seek out others, and be aware that there are
many more we cannot know, and (3) a commitment to theoretical
work that is inspired by and relevant to contemporary political strug-
gles.116
I am not confident in the political legitimacy of this argument
in the way that Rawls, Habermas, and others are confident in the
political legitimacy of theirs,117
but rather I am interested in assessing
the political legitimacy of the argument presented in this book.
I offer a theory of universal human rights whose political legitimacy,
such as it is, comes from the epistemological obligation to challenge the
unexamined, the absent, and the silent. Because the theory is attentive
to cross-cultural and intra-cultural differences and dynamics, the poli-
tical legitimacy of this theory of universal human rights does not come
from singular contested cultural resources but rather from intra-
cultural and cross-cutural contestations.118
Concerned about margin-
alization, I have sought a theory that is informed by (and potentially
critical of) political, social, cultural, and economic institutions and
practices that provide the contexts of human lives. To the extent that
the theory of human rights presented here is a definition of politically
legitimate universal human rights, it is not a static definition.
In order for us to ‘‘see’’ why this immanent account of universal
human rights is necessary, I need to offer the reader illustrative
115
In International Relations see for example Tickner (1992; 1997). In Black
Feminist Thought see for example Crenshaw (1989) and Collins ([1990] 1991).
In Sociology see for example Reinharz (1992). In Political Theory see for
example Benhabib (1987) and Hawkesworth (2006a).
116
Ackerly 2000.
117
See Habermas (1984: especially the last chapter), Rawls (1993), Nussbaum
(2001), and my discussion of Rawls in chapters 2 and 4. See also Hampton
1989.
118
On my reading both Weberian traditional authority and Rawls’s account of free
and equal citizenship are contested cultural resources as we will see in chapter 3.
Universal human rights in a world of difference 33](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-53-320.jpg)
![tunic became a petticoat and the over-tunic a dress. Often they also
wore a fan with a mirror, a ball of scent, a miniature portrait of
someone dear to them, and sometimes a watch. Single ladies did
not wear hats, but had long, flowing hair and low cut dresses
showing their bosoms. Married ladies curled their hair and wore it in
high masses on their heads with jewels interwoven into it. Both
gentlemen and ladies wore hats both indoors and outside and large,
pleated collars around their necks (with the newly discovered
starch), perfume, rings with stones or pearls, and high-heeled shoes.
Gentlemen's' tight sleeves, stiffened and fitted doublet with short
skirt, and short cloak were ornamented and their silk or velvet hats
flamboyant, with feathers. At their leather belts they hung pouches
and perhaps a watch. They wore both rapiers [swords with cutting
edges] and daggers daily as there were many quarrels. There were
various artistic beard cuts and various lengths of hair, which was
often curled and worn in ringlets. Barbers sought to give a man a
haircut that would favor his appearance, for instance a long slender
beard for a round face to make it seem narrower and a broad and
large cut for a lean and straight face. Men now wore stuffed
breeches and stockings instead of long hosen. Some wore a jeweled
and embroidered codpiece between their legs to emphasize their
virility. Both gentlemen and ladies wore silk stockings and socks over
them and then boots. Coats dipped in boiled linseed oil with resin
served as raincoats. Both men and women wore velvet or wool full
length nightgowns with long sleeves and fur lining and trimming to
bed, which was the custom for the next 150 years. Fashions
changed every year due to the introduction of cheaper, lighter, and
less durable cloths by immigrant craftsmen. When Elizabeth became
old, she had a wig made to match her youthful long red hair. Other
ladies then began wearing wigs.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-57-320.jpg)
![Every few years, Elizabeth issued a proclamation reminding people
of the apparel laws and reiterating certain provisions which had been
disregarded. For instance, only the royal family and dukes and
marquises in mantles [cloaks] of the garter could wear the color
purple. One had to be at least an earl to wear gold or silver or sable.
Only dukes, marquises, earls and their children, barons, and knights
of the order could wear imported wool, velvet, crimson, scarlet, or
blue, or certain furs., except that barons' sons, knights, or men who
could dispend at least 200 pounds yearly could wear velvet in gowns
or coats, embroidery, and furs of leopards. Spurs, swords, rapiers,
daggers, and woodknives were restricted to knights and barons'
sons or higher. A man who could dispend at least 100 pounds per
year could wear taffeta, satin, damask, or cloth made of camels' hair
and silk, in his outer garments. One had to be the son and heir or
the daughter of a knight or wife of said son or a man who could
dispend 20 pounds yearly or had 200 pounds worth in goods to wear
silk in one's hat, bonnet, nightcap, girdle, scabbard, or hose.
Yeomen, husbandmen, serving men, and craftsmen were very
restricted in what they could wear. Poor men wore skirted fustian
tunics, loose breeches, and coarse stockings or canvas leggings.
Children wore the same type of apparel as their elders. They were
given milk at meals for good growth. It was recognized that sickness
could be influenced by diet and herbs. Sickness was still viewed as
an imperfect balance of the four humors.
Women spent much of their time doing needlework and
embroidery. Since so many of the women who spent their days
spinning were single, unmarried women became known as
spinsters.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-58-320.jpg)
![table. Grace was said before the meal. Noon dinner and supper were
served by cupbearer, sewer, carver, and assistants. Fine clear Italian
glass drinking vessels replaced even gold and silver goblets. Food
was eaten from silver dishes with silver spoons. Some gentry used
two-pronged forks. Meats were plentiful and varied: e.g. beef,
mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, hare, capon, red deer, fish and wild
fowl as well as the traditional venison and brawn [boar]. Kitchen
gardens and orchards supplied apricots, almonds, gooseberries,
raspberries, melons, currants, oranges, and lemons as well as the
traditional apples, pears, plums, mulberries, quinces, pomegranates,
figs, cherries, walnuts, chestnuts, hazel nuts, filberts, almonds,
strawberries, blackberries, dewberries, blueberries, and peaches.
Also grown were sweet potatoes, artichokes, cabbages, turnips,
broad beans, peas, pumpkins, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, celery,
parsnips, onions, garlic, leeks, endive, capers, spinach, sorrel,
lettuce, parsley, mustard, cress, sage, tarragon, fennel, thyme, mint,
savory, rhubarb, and medicinal herbs. The well-to-do started to grow
apricots, peaches, and oranges under glass. Sugar was used to
make sweet dishes. Toothpicks made of brass or silver or merely a
stiff quill were used. After the meal, some men and women were
invited for conversation in a withdrawing or drawing chamber. Some
might take a walk in the gardens. After the upper table was served,
the food was sent to the great hall to the steward and high
household officers at the high table and other servants: serving men
and women, bakers, brewers, cooks, pot cleaners, laundresses,
shepherds, hogherds, dairy maids, falconers, huntsmen, and stable
men. What was left was given to the poor at the gates of the house.
Great chambers were used primarily for meals, but also for music;
dancing; plays; masques; playing cards, dice, backgammon, or
chess; and daily prayers if there was no chapel.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-63-320.jpg)
![crafts such as glovers and pursers. Another 9% worked in metals,
such as the armorers, smiths, cutlers, locksmiths, and coppersmiths.
8% worked in the building trades. The victualing trades, such as
bakers, brewers, butchers, costermongers [sold fruit and vegetables
from a cart or street stand], millers, fishmongers, oystermen, and
tapsters [bartender], grew from 9% before 1600 to 16% by 1700.
Of London's workforce, 60% were involved in production; 13% were
merchants before 1600; 7% were merchants by 1700; 7% were
transport workers such as watermen, sailors, porters, coachmen,
and shipwrights; and 5-9% were professionals and officials (this
number declining). Life in London was lived in the open air in the
streets. The merchant transacted business agreements and the
attorney saw his clients in the street or at certain pillars at St. Paul's
Church, where there was a market for all kinds of goods and
services, including gentlemen's valets, groceries, spirits, books, and
loans, which continued even during the daily service. Some
gentlemen had offices distant from their dwelling houses such as
attorneys, who had a good income from trade disputes and claims to
land, which often changed hands. Plays and recreation also occurred
in the streets, such as performances by dancers, musicians, jugglers,
clowns, tumblers, magicians, and men who swallowed fire. The
churches were continuously open and used by trades and peddlers,
including tailors and letter-writers. Water carriers carried water in
wood vessels on their shoulders from the Thames River or its
conduits to the inhabitants three gallons at a time. A gentleman
concocted an engine to convey Thames water by lead pipes up into
men's houses in a certain section of the city. In 1581, a man took
out a lease on one of the arches of London Bridge. There he built a
waterwheel from which he pumped water to residents who lived
beside the bridge. Soldiers, adventurers, physicians, apprentices,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-69-320.jpg)
![The first stage of education was primary education, which was
devoted to learning to read and write in English. This was carried
out at endowed schools or at home by one's mother or a tutor. The
children of the gentry were usually taught in their homes by private
teachers of small classes. Many of the poor became literate enough
to read the Bible and to write letters. However, most agricultural
workers and laborers remained illiterate. They signed with an x,
which represented the Christian cross and signified its solemnity.
Children of the poor were expected to work from the age of 6 or 7.
The next stage of education was grammar [secondary] school or a
private tutor. A student was taught rhetoric (e.g. poetry, history,
precepts of rhetoric, and classical oratory), some logic, and Latin and
Greek grammar. English grammar was learned through Latin
grammar and English style through translation from Latin. As a
result, they wrote English in a Latin style. Literary criticism was
learned through rhetoric. There were disputations on philosophical
questions such as how many angels could sit on a pin's point, and at
some schools, orations. The students sat in groups around the hall
for their lessons. The boys and some girls were also taught hawking,
hunting and archery. There were no playgrounds. The grammar
student and the undergraduate were tested for proficiency by
written themes and oral disputations, both in Latin. The middle
classes from the squire to the petty tradesman were brought into
contact with the works of the best Greek and Roman writers. The
best schools and many others had the students read Cicero - the De
Officiis, the epistles and orations; and some of Ovid, Terence,
Sallust, Virgil, some medieval Latin works, the Distichs of Cato, and
sometimes Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. The students also had to
repeat prayers, recite the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments,
and to memorize catechisms. Because the students came from the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/887806-250612222441-9b6b261d/85/Universal-Human-Rights-In-A-World-Of-Difference-1st-Edition-Brooke-A-Ackerly-76-320.jpg)
Universal Human Rights In A World Of Difference 1st Edition Brooke A Ackerly
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- 7. Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference From the diverse work and often competing insights of women’s human rights activists, Brooke Ackerly has written a feminist and a universal theory of human rights that bridges the relativists’ concerns about univer- salizing from particulars and the activists’ commitment to justice. Unlike universal theories that rely on shared commitments to divine authority or to an ‘‘enlightened’’ way of reasoning, Ackerly’s theory relies on rigorous methodological attention to difference and disagreement. She sets out human rights as at once a research ethic, a tool for criticism of injustice, and a call to recognize our obligations to promote justice through our actions. This book will be of great interest to political theorists, feminist and gender studies scholars, and researchers of social movements. B R O O K E A . A CK ER LY is Associate Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism (Cambridge, 2000) and co-editor of Feminist Methodologies for International Relations (Cambridge, 2006).
- 9. Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference B R O O K E A . A C K E R L Y Vanderbilt University Political Science [email protected]
- 10. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK First published in print format ISBN-13 978-0-521-88126-5 ISBN-13 978-0-521-70755-8 ISBN-13 978-0-511-40894-6 © Brooke A. Ackerly 2008 2008 Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521881265 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org paperback eBook (EBL) hardback
- 11. For Aasha
- 13. Contents Acknowledgments page ix 1 Universal human rights in a world of difference: challenging our thinking 1 Part I Epistemology, diversity, and disagreement in theory and practice 41 2 Universal human rights? 43 3 Universalisms and differences 70 4 Immanent and universal human rights: more legitimate than reasonable 91 Part II A methodology for immanent theory 125 5 Feminist curb cutting: a methodology for exposing silences and revealing differences for the immanent study of universal human rights 127 6 Listening to the silent voices, hearing dissonance: a methodology for interpretation and analysis 154 Part III Immanent universal human rights: theory and practice 195 7 An immanent and universal theory of human rights 197 8 Terrain(s) of difficulty: obligation, problem-solving, and trust 232 9 Feminist strategies 271 10 ‘‘If I can make a circle’’ 307 vii
- 14. Bibliography 316 Interviews 360 Index 364 viii Contents
- 15. Acknowledgments Writing is a privilege. Writing acknowledgments is a challenging privi- lege. How do I appreciatively bring to light the collective effort that this project has been and take single authorship of the ideas it generated? My first thanks goes to Marie and her family for asking for help, instilling their trust, and (much later) allowing me to tell their story. Despite our challenges of communication and their accumulation of unbelievable misfortunes, they were continually courageous. I appreci- ate their renewable faith in the possibility of a better world and better life for the children. I am also grateful to the host of people who helped me understand their life situation and support their case. At times it was unreal to me; by listening to me retell their story and offering constructive advice or direct help, many friends sustained my commit- ment to Marie’s family. These include Catia Confortini, Sarah Park, Klint Alexander, and Bina D’Costa. Holly Tucker and Anne Marie Goetz showed true friendship by helping me understand, fulfill, and find the boundaries of my obligations to Marie and her family. During the beginning and middle of this project, I have had the privilege of being hosted away from home. I owe a special debt to the University of Southern California’s Center for International Studies (CIS), in particular its then Director, Ann Tickner, and an enthusiastic graduate student, Catia Confortini, for encouraging the first workshop. Like the CIS, the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University created the ideal work environment for an aca- demic – great colleagues, administrative smoothness, and tea. Thank you Marisela Schaffer, Mona Frederick, Galyn Martin, Lacey Galbraith, Tonya Mills, Tommy Womack, and Darlene Davidson, whose efficient administration enables so many to focus on ideas. And, though it wasn’t home for long, thank you to Richa, Mrinalini, and Sonalini Sapra for giving me a home and family in Mumbai that was rich in food and conversation. ix
- 16. I am also appreciative of the opportunity to participate in two inter- disciplinary groups sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture at Vanderbilt University. These groups, one on Spirituality and Ecology and one on Poverty and Religion, supported my indivi- dual work on human rights as an assistant professor with faith that ultimately my scholarship on global social justice and my tenure would enable me to make a contribution to collaborative scholarship on poverty, the environment, and religion. This faith is an essential ingre- dient of transdisciplinary collaboration that is inclusive of pre-tenure colleagues. I am particularly privileged to have worked with Bina D’Costa – co-researcher, co-author, and co-traveler. I am grateful to her for collaborating on a related project through which much of the interview data in this book were generated. During our work together we explored many of the meanings and challenges of collaboration. These chal- lenges and their fruit continue to inspire as does Bina through her scholarship, activism, and teaching. Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference has benefited from critical engagement with so many. I include among these Vanderbilt colleagues who have stretched my disciplinary boundaries by sharing their own work: Ed Rubin, Lenn Goodman, Melissa Snarr, Monica Casper, and Jaya Kasibhatla. Uma Narayan, Moira Gatens, Ted Fischer, Beth Conklin, and Jaya Kasibhatla were always looking over my shoulder reminding me that I too am claiming an epistemological authority. I particularly appreci- ate Ted and Moira reading my first chapter so reflectively (and quickly). I was holding my breath. By thanking them, I don’t mean to indicate that they approve of my methodological solution to the always present challenge of making the exercise of the power of epistemology visible. A number of specific conversations along the way had greater impacts on my work than perhaps the interlocutors realized. Many of these were with one person: the creative and generous Mona Frederick. Others, while not ongoing, had significant impact. Hayward Alker and Ted Slingerland led me to reflect on the work of Lakoff and Johnson and on the importance of metaphor. This influence is visible in the central role that the ‘‘right of way’’ metaphor plays in my view of human rights. For discussions about justification and legitimacy, I am grateful to Michael Goodhart, Josh Cohen, and Moira Gatens. I am particularly x Acknowledgments
- 17. grateful to Michael for being the person I can call on a rainy day and to Moira for that great conversation underneath the L in Chicago. For keeping me reflective about methodological challenges, I am pri- vileged to have had ongoing and fruitful discussions with Bina D’Costa, Maria Stern, Jacqui True, Carol Cohn, Lyndi Hewitt, Sonalini Sapra, all of the participants in the edited volume Feminist Methodologies for International Relations, and my collaborators in the Global Feminisms Collaborative at Vanderbilt. For great conversations and for hosting those conversations during the formative year of this project I thank Sarah Song and colleagues at the Gender and Political Thought seminar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I am particularly appreciative of Jane Mansbridge, Josh Cohen, Sarah Song, and Sally Haslinger for making me consider the normative power I claim to be drawing from the study of activism. I am particularly grateful to Josh, forever the promoter of deliberation, for encouraging my criticism of his work. For being a great discussant and host at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Political Theory Workshop, I thank Jeff Spinner-Halev for giving me a chance to reflect in public on human rights as a non- ideal theory. The influence of the faculty and graduate students’ reflec- tions are visible mostly in chapter 2. In addition, Susan Bickford had a profound affect on my thinking about the role of listening in human rights praxis and her work is central to my exposition of immanent universal human rights theory in chapter 7. At University of Pennsylvania Women’s Studies Program, the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, and Political Science Department, I received generous feedback from Nancy Hirschmann, Rogers Smith, and their colleagues. Also thanks to Jim Bohman for inviting me to the Democracy and Global Justice Conference. Special thanks to Larry May and Marilyn Friedman for pushing me to clarify that one could hold deep religious convictions and a commitment to immanent universal human rights. For important nudges here and there thanks to Michael, Bina, Don Herzog, Joanna Kerr, and Audie Klotz. For generously reading through the entire manuscript, Bina, Jessica Kruetter, Umi Lasmina, Ali Sevilla, and two anonymous reviewers, thank you so much. Special thanks to Adrian Stenton for attention to detail. I am grateful for all of my colleagues at Vanderbilt, particularly James Booth and Neal Tate. George Graham, after reading the entire Acknowledgments xi
- 18. manuscript, offered suggestions for where else I could go with this project. He never showed evidence of ‘‘chemobrain’’ and was an enga- ging colleague throughout his life and illness. I am still grateful to Susan Okin, who was supportive, always enga- ging, and always insightful. I am grateful for the conversation that opens chapter 5 – and for so many other conversations. For research assistant work at various points throughout this project, thanks to Katy Attanasi, Lyndi Hewitt, Jessica Kruetter, Sonalini Sapra, Ali Sevilla, Sarah VanHooser, and Sasha Zheng. And thanks to Chris DeSante for doing research for another project so that I could finish this one. Thanks to Vicky Abernathy for handling the repetitive bibliography entry work and to Stacy Clifford for editorial typing that I was unable to do due to a repetitive strain. For translation thanks to Guilherme de Araujo Silva, Maria Clara Bertini, Julie Huntington, Mingyan Li, Ararat Osipian, Fabrice Francois Alain Picon, and Sonalini Sapra. For funding my work, I thank the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Vanderbilt’s Center for the Study of Religion and Culture, the Center for the Americas, the Graduate School, the College of Arts and Science, and the Warren Center. For funding the meetings that made my participant observation possible, thanks to the Association of Women’s Rights and Development, Women’s World Congress, the World Social Forum, the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California, and the Ford Foundation. Thanks particularly to all those admininstrators and service people whose excellence at their work is often best recognized by its invisibility. Finally, in case sprinkling their names throughout these acknowl- edgments is seen to dilute their influence, to Bina D’Costa, Sonalini Sapra, and Lyndi Hewitt for being engaged colleagues throughout the research phase of this and related projects, this project owes a huge intellectual debt. Working with them is a privilege. My greatest privilege is my near and far family who care for and complement each other. Not living in a feminist world, it is hard to live a feminist life in community. Yet, Aasha, Annlyn, and Bill Zinke, Beth Gaddes, Katherine Stevenson, Barbara Zinke, Rick Ackerly, and I have thoughtfully created a dynamic, supportive, and wonderful life. I appreciate the joy they bring to this way of living and working and the fun they create in the process! Perhaps, despite all of its influences, a piece of feminist scholarship can be understood to be single-authored. (Certainly, I wouldn’t want xii Acknowledgments
- 19. the reader to hold anyone other than me responsible for the mistakes herein.) However, with apologies to Mary Catherine Bateson, the project shows again that a feminist cannot compose her life or her scholarship alone. My particular circumstances and relationships have enabled me to compose this feminist life, and this feminist work on immanent universal human rights. At the center of this project are all of the contributors who generously gave of their time and reflection in public venues and in private. I hope that each is strengthened in her attempt to make it possible for others to live a feminist life in their not-so-feminist worlds. Acknowledgments xiii
- 21. 1 Universal human rights in a world of difference: challenging our thinking Feminist activists have done the apparently impossible: they’ve shown us how to think about human rights as local, universal, and contested. They have shown us that contestation over human rights is not evi- dence that rights do not exist. Rather, contestation provides a basis for understanding their universal meaning. Or so I argue here. Before we get to that argument, let us consider why we need a political theorist to argue that there are human rights and human rights violations. Do we need a theorist to tell us that our moral intuitions are universal? That sounds like the basis for imperialism.1 Can a political theorist offer any argument that would persuade a torturer that torture is wrong? That seems like a waste of time, light, and ink. When even the well-intended can go wrong and the ill-intended cannot be convinced, why do scholars, why do feminist activists, keep at it? What can we learn from them about human rights? And what would it mean for these activists to be accountable in practice to their own theory of human rights? As the research leave during which most of this book was drafted came to an end, Marie sent me her latest plan. Marie is trying to get her children out of Rwanda. She had two with Jean-Paul, her husband, three more, orphaned in Burundi, whom Jean-Paul and she adopted in 1992, and a sixth child whose parents were recently killed. Her country did not demilitarize after the Rwandan Liberation Front and 1 Jon Sobrino SJ notes the ironic juxtaposition of the theoretical advance and formal spread of universal human rights against ‘‘considering life for the vast majorities, the actional condition of this life does not improve in line with theoretical advances’’ (2001: 135). Sobrino cites Father Ignacio Ellacurı́a, who was one of eight defenders of human rights who were executed in El Salvador, November 16, 1989: ‘‘The problem of human rights is not only complex but also ambiguous, because within it not only does the universal dimension of man meet with the actual situation in which men’s lives are lived, but it tends to be used ideologically in the service not of man and his rights, but rather in the interests of one group or another’’ (Ellacurı́a 1990: 590). 1
- 22. paramilitaries ended the 1994 genocide.2 When her family returned from a refugee camp in Uganda, though he had not participated in the genocide, her husband was killed by paramilitaries in post-genocide violence. Over the next ten years she worked in a pharmacy, aspiring to start her own, but eventually started a photocopy shop which required less start-up funds. Her efforts to rebuild her life were stymied by her own ill-health, recurring mental illness, and bleeding ulcers. In renewed violence in 2004, her children were explicitly threatened. A relative and the parents of the baby she now cares for were killed. Government efforts to deal with this growing violence were not obvious. Living in fear, they left the house at night to sleep. Now, she has hidden her children in a neighboring country and is trying to figure out how to keep them safe. She has even considered putting her children up for international adoption. While she is hiding her children, she has no economic means to support them. Under this kind of stress, she has difficulty thinking clearly, assessing proposals that others make to her, or designing a plan of her own. Is Marie’s situation unique? In what sense? Of course, the life she had with Jean-Paul was their own: their hard work in the early years of their marriage when they were both thin from physical work, the later success at their farm by getting cows to produce more milk through improving diet, their sharing that success through a non-government organization (NGO), their adoption of the children from Burundi. Certainly, they had a unique marriage and life together. However, the 1994 genocide, retributive violence, health problems, and limited eco- nomic opportunity are not unique to Marie and Jean-Paul. Sadly, in Rwanda they are not unique to their family, to a particular ethnic group, or to people from certain regions. Further, the complicated context of post-conflict insecurity – conflict, inadequate civilian rule of law, difficult health conditions, and economic uncertainty – is not unique to Rwanda. In 2005, Amnesty International reports from Afghanistan, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte D’Ivoire, Haiti, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Sierra Leone, and Sudan describe these conditions.3 Even when the 2 On one reading, demilitarization in Rwanda was a difficult project because militants and population could not be distinguished. Moreover, disarmament had a different meaning in Rwanda because the primary weapon of the genocide was an agricultural tool (Waters 1997). 3 Amnesty International 2005: 36, 80, 86, 134, 139, 221, 235. 2 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 23. violence is not imminent, fear creates an environment where basic health, education, and opportunity for livelihood are conditional. For example, in Israeli Occupied Territories, Palestinians’ mobility is con- strained with checkpoints and barriers such that getting adequate health care, seeing and supporting their family members, going to school, and getting to work are severely curtailed. Images from Hebron before the 2006 violence between Israel and Hezbollah reveal the constrained conditions of daily life. A man walks down a street; wire mesh prevents trash from Israeli settlements from falling on the Palestinians in the old city. A woman takes her daughters to school, her younger son in tow.4 4 Tone Andersen, photographer. Universal human rights in a world of difference 3
- 24. The complexity of insecurity – political, social, and economic – is not unique to post-conflict contexts. For example, in Bangladesh violent crimes against women – rape, dowry death, domestic violence, acid burning, and suicide – go under-reported; when reported, women are discouraged from filing their cases; when filed, cases are pursued slowly. Although these crimes are illegal, the police’s willingness and ability to enforce these laws, and the judiciary’s uneven record at carrying out the law, mean that women live in a context of insecurity.5 Of course the police failure to ensure women’s safety is an important element of the human rights context for women in Bangladesh; how- ever, the human rights violating social practices are inextricably linked to these legal failures. The practices of dowry, of integrating a new bride into the domestic hierarchy of her husband’s family, of domestic violence in order to gain a first wife’s assent to a second wife, of forced marriage, of local religious and community leaders issuing fatwas or community-authorized punishments all contribute to the context of 5 Women aged thirteen to eighteen are most often victims of rape and acid burning; women over nineteen are most often victims of domestic violence and dowry death (Ain o Salish Kendra 1999; 2000). 4 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 25. human rights violations.6 Further, the economic context of poverty and increasing local class inequality influence the evolution of these practices such that dowry amounts have risen; the period over which they are paid now extends after the marriage, often years after the marriage; and new dowry demands made after marriage are increas- ingly common. The complexity of insecurity – political, social, and economic – is not confined to so-called developing countries. In parts of the United States, lack of economic development creates a different but equally distressing context. Often concerns about these forms of insecurity are brought to our attention through statistics. According to 2001 statis- tics, in the US 18.2% of children under six live in poverty and 48.9% of children living in female-headed households live below the poverty level.7 Nearly half of all US children aged one to four live so close to poverty that their families need federal assistance in order to afford adequate nutrition.8 Of the 11.1% of the US population who experi- ence food insecurity, 3.5% were not caught in either government or private safety nets and experienced hunger during the year.9 In the United States, the infant mortality rate is about 7 per 1,000, and almost 15 per 1,000 among children born to African American mothers.10 In the United States 20.7% of the population lacks functional literacy.11 Because of familiar media images in the United States, these statistics evoke images of poor urban minority children.12 However, these sta- tistics are as bad or worse among certain regional and ethnic subsets of 6 Government of Bangladesh 2001. 7 Proctor and Dalaker 2001: 4. 8 The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) was started in 1972 and catered to an average of 88,000 participants per month. That number has now risen to an average of 7.2 million in 2000. Almost half of all infants and all children of one to four years of age participate in the program. WIC accounts for almost 12% of total federal expenditure for food and nutrition assistance (Oliveira 2002). 9 On any given day in 2003 that number was between 490,000 and 698,000 (Nord 2004). 10 MacDorman 1999. 11 The National Adult Literacy Survey (reported in 1993) found a total of 21–23% (40–44 million) of American adults (defined as age 16 or older) functioned at the lowest literacy level, i.e. they had difficulty using certain reading, writing, and computational skills considered necessary for functioning in everyday life (South Carolina Department of Education 1998). 12 For a critique of the politics of poverty see Kimberle Crenshaw on the Monyihan Report (1965) (Crenshaw 1989). Universal human rights in a world of difference 5
- 26. the population who live in some persistently poor and economically depressed rural areas, such as in the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, and the lower Rio Grande Valley.13 In the US, 20% (55.4 million people) of the population is rural14 and the rural poverty rate has always been higher than the urban rate (2.1% higher in 2003) though the gap has been closing due to increases in urban povety. In 2003, 7.5 million people, or 14.2% of the population who lived in non-metropolitan areas, were poor.15 These statistics, while shocking, and while they may stir us to action, are measures of symptoms: symptoms of political, social, and economic institutions and practices that perpetuate these conditions. These social, political, and economic conditions limit the opportunities for composing a life. Consider the child born into each of these contexts. From birth she experiences constrained health and education. Her opportunities for developing herself and her economic prospects are constrained. In each context for developing a life – in Rwanda, in Israel and the Occupied Territories, in Bangladesh, in the United States – we should ask if human rights are being violated. In the case of Marie, the answer must be ‘‘yes.’’ The lives of her children have been explicitly threatened; the police are not a reliable resource and to her knowledge have perpetrated or condoned some of the acts of violence she has witnessed. Due to this fear she is prevented from living in her home, her health is unstable, and she cannot support her family despite her ability and willingness to work. Even though she cannot name the government officials who are failing to secure her children, even before her own children were explicitly threatened, the environment of fear perpetuated by the sight of murdered neighbors in the street itself constitutes a human rights violation. The destructive impact on economic and social systems of an ‘‘environment of fear’’ makes the human rights impact more complicated to understand and address.16 More generally, consider the life chances of a child born and raised in this context. Can we think of the lack of opportunities – that 13 Lichter and Leif 2002. 14 Hobbs and Stoops 2002. 15 Economic Research Service 2004. 16 Some scholars have been developing different methods for identifying and studying insecurity that do a better job than the study of war alone at making visible the insecurity of marginalized populations (Ackerly, Stern, and True 2006; Derriennic 1972; Galtung 1969; Krause and Williams 1996). 6 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 27. is, her lack of possibility to develop as she might choose to if the possibility existed – as a human rights violation?17 Familiar accounts of human rights treat rights as ‘‘entitlements’’ with corresponding ‘‘duty-bearers.’’18 Is there no rights violation if there is no identifiable collective or individual duty-bearer? Does society bear responsibility for the contexts it creates? Do individuals bear responsi- bility for the contexts their society creates? What are the boundaries of the society that bears that responsibility? Are they local or global boundaries? Geopolitical or geographic boundaries? Are they eco- nomic or moral boundaries? These questions are hard to answer and raise doubts about the usefulness of the thinking about human rights as entitlements with duty-bearers in the familiar senses. In the examples I have been offering, there are sometimes identifiable actors, but their actions would not be characterized as human rights violations but for the collective failure of social, political, and eco- nomic institutions and the habits and practices that sustain them. While it is important for a theory of human rights to enable us to be critical of 17 While some proponents of the capability ethic hesitate to equate human rights with human capabilities, the view of human rights presented here treats these as very similar. Institutions and practices that create and foster conditions in which human rights are violated are the same that make human capabilities unrealizable. Sen (1999a) argues we would do well to think of human rights violations as unfreedoms. Sen (2004) and Nussbaum (1997) tentatively suggest that human rights concerns are a subset of human capabilities concerns. But Sen’s 1999 argument does not require this interpretation. Even his later argument does not argue that rights are not capabilities (2004). 18 ‘‘A claim about rights generally involves a fourfold assertion about the subject of entitlement, the substance of entitlement, the basis for entitlement, and the purpose of entitlement’’ (Shapiro 1986: 14). ‘‘A right in this sense can be thought of as consisting of five main elements: a right-holder (the subject of a right) has a claim to some substance (the object of a right), which he or she might assert, or demand, or enjoy, or enforce (exercising a right) against some individual or group (the bearer of the correlative duty), citing in support of his or her claim some particular ground (the justification of a right)’’ (Vincent 1986: 8). ‘‘Historically, the idea of rights has embodied two foundational claims. First, that there is an identifiable subject who has entitlements; and secondly, that to possess a right presupposes the existence of a duty-bearer against whom the right is claimed’’ (Dunne and Wheeler 1999: 3–4). Though freedom is important to Benhabib’s account of rights, she uses the language of entitlement (2004b: 140). I think the constraint of this metaphor on the theoretical imaginary is in part to blame for the difficultly she takes in explaning why membership is a right. As we will see, in an immanent theory of human rights what Benhabib conceives of as ‘‘membership rights’’ can be easily understood in their social, political, economic, and civil indivisibility. Universal human rights in a world of difference 7
- 28. human rights violations by a single actor, a theory of human rights cannot be limited in application to such examples. A theory of human rights can also be a critical tool of macro political forces, such as state and global politics, that create exploitable hierarchies. Further, it can be a critical tool of micro political forces, such as the patterns created by language, ethical decisions, habits of consumption and expenditure, and aspirations that create exploitable hierarchies.19 Importantly, acti- vists and the oppressed use human rights to make their own claims. In the process, while struggling against their oppression – or rather the sources of oppression that their analysis has indicated are those against which they might be most effective – they are not reifying either the source of their domination or themselves as victims. Rather, they are realizing an identity as a political actor and, to the extent that their struggle is against some subset of their sources of oppression, as a strategically minded political actor at that. Though one identity or another may be strategically useful (mother, citizen, survivor . . .), the malleable identity forged through human rights activism is that of strategic political actor with all of the ambiguity that such an identity entails in any place and time and across space and time. The remoteness of the impact of our habits of daily life, institutions, practices, and global interactions conceal their rights-violating impli- cations. We need tools for revealing these, not definitions of ‘‘rights’’ and ‘‘duty-bearer’’ that obscure them. Further, the meanings of ‘‘society’’ and the boundaries of ‘‘obligation’’ they suggest need to be examined if they are to be resources in our reflections on human rights violations.20 We cannot assume that boundaries are geopolitical or that obligations are bounded. These need to be a part of a theory of human rights. In this book, I mean to confront well-reasoned theories of human rights with the reality of human experience, some of which might be invisible to the human rights theorist. The epistemological challenge for human rights theorists has always been not to bias our understand- ing of human rights as a theoretical inquiry by our comfortable but limited exposure to the experiences of human rights violation most often referenced by global politicians. Because a room, a pencil, paper, 19 As Wendy Brown puts it in summarizing what we learn from Nietzsche and Foucault about ‘‘the atomic powers of history’’: power is constructed and manifest ‘‘in the very making of bodily subjects and socio-political desire’’ (1995: xii). 20 See Galtung 1969; 1985; 1990. See also Brown 1995: 113. 8 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 29. and a cup of tea afford the luxury of reflection, the academic needs methodological tools for revealing the invisible to herself, to her the- ory, to her interlocutors, and to ‘‘us.’’ In this book I use many ‘‘we’’s. Sometimes, I mean the reader and I on a journey together, having covered one argument and moving on to the next. Sometimes, I mean my informants and I, or those who participated in the online groups and meetings that are part of the context of this study. Sometimes, I mean my research partners and I. Sometimes I mean human rights scholars more generally. I have tried to be careful. History (including the history of feminist thinking) includes lots of examples of political thought that over-determines (that is, assumes that the knowledge from one perspective applies to all, such that the differences of some are invisible) or under-determines (that is, assumes that the knowledge from one perspective doesn’t apply to all, such that some people are left out). Before we are done, I will have a lot more to say about invisibility and exclusion and I will likely have said things that cause both. The occasionally ambiguous use of ‘‘we’’ in this text is meant to provoke, not just the question, ‘‘Just who does she think ‘we’ is?’’ but also, ‘‘Who do I think ‘we’ is?’’ We cannot know who ‘‘we’’ are if we confine our self-understanding to engagement with the visible.21 Some of ‘‘us’’ are invisible and some of who ‘‘we’’ are we can come to know only by reflecting on the invisibility within ‘‘us.’’ Invisibility Now let’s take the inquiry one level further. What if we couldn’t see Marie and her children? What if the conditions of their lives were unknown to us. Would these conditions still constitute rights viola- tions? Certainly, if they do when we know about them, they do even if we do not know about them. Thus, to be fully attentive to human rights, we need to be attentive to human rights violations beyond our sights. There are many ways in which human rights violations may be invisible. Women’s human rights activism and scholarship have tried 21 A common concern about who ‘‘we’’ are is at once a concern about when and why we group ourselves as ‘‘moral beings, citizens, and members of an ethical community’’ (Benhabib 2002: 147). In addition, my concern about the use of the first person plural is as an exercise of power. Universal human rights in a world of difference 9
- 30. to expose many of these: trafficking for sex work,22 slavery as domestic servants,23 bonded sweatshop work,24 death due to botched illegal abortion,25 and domestic violence,26 to name a few.27 Health, labor, homeless, and indigenous activists similarly attempt to make the invi- sible visible. In each of these cases there are particular individuals who have violated particular individuals’ human rights.28 However, social, political, and economic conditions in particular contexts and relative conditions between contexts are particularly conducive to these viola- tions. Global social, political, and economic factors – not fate or karma which influence the accident of birth – determine which children are most likely to grow up to be able to take advantage of social, political, and economic conditions and which will grow up with their opportu- nities constrained by those same conditions. Consider women trafficked from Nigeria to Italy for prostitution. Illegal but well-established paths, particularly from the Ebo state and Benin City, create conditions of vulnerability, in which women choose to engage because of the economic landscape in Nigeria and in which they are kept to work in a form of bondage due to the immigration laws of Italy.29 The relative economic prospects in Italy and Nigeria com- bine with the familial and legal context of Nigeria to generate an economic opportunity for these mostly young women, but that oppor- tunity is constrained by exploitable hierarchies.30 Like Marie, trafficked 22 Orhant 2001. 23 Chin 1998; Human Rights Watch 2002. 24 Bender and Greenwald 2003; Brooks 2003; Elson and Pearson 1997. 25 Jen Ross 2005. 26 Agnew 1998; Coomaraswamy 2002; Milwertz 2003; Pence and Shepard 1988; Schechter 1998; Vickers 2002. 27 Bunch 1990; 1995; Mayer 1995a; [1991]1999. 28 The Committee Against Slavery and Trafficking (CAST) cases and Tahari Justice Center are two among many organizations worldwide whose work documents cases of individuals violating the human rights of other individuals in a context of domestic servitude or marital violence that is not publicly visible. 29 A new European agreement regarding trafficking could potentially mitigate some aspects of vulnerability (Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings 2005). 30 Is every instance of exploitable hierarchy (MacKinnon 1993), domination (Pettit 1997), or capability failure a human rights violation? Some people want to save ‘‘rights’’ for some subset of these conditions. I argue with women’s human rights activists that without attention to the broader context, no subset is secure. And so at a minimum every instance of exploitable hierarchy, domination, or capability failure is cause for skeptical scrutiny of the prospect that human rights have been or may be violated. 10 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 31. women make important life choices that may lead them into ever more exploitable contexts. Because legal immigration is constrained, the trafficked woman is subject to manipulation by the trafficker. Although she knew she was immigrating for prostitution, she may not have anticipated the working conditions, including exposure to AIDS and other STDs and the preferences of her Italian clients, that she met in Italy. Her trafficker kept her passport and forged her visa so her trafficker’s threat of deportation if she doesn’t pay her bond is credible. Like the conditions of Marie in Rwanda, these are structural conditions of human rights violations. Yet sometimes the very agency of these women renders the exploitable conditions of their contexts invisible.31 Similarly, in the US, low wage workers work multiple part-time jobs but are eligible for health insurance at none.32 Or low wage workers work full time, receiving health benefits but supplementing their family nutrition with foodstamps. Their lack of health care and nutrition are invisible to the broader society and even to some of those beside whom they work. These conditions may be understood as the result of the proper functioning of the market.33 Still other rights violations are invisible because their cultural con- text treats the practices that sustain them as socially appropriate and culturally important or as social manifestations of men’s and women’s natures. These might include a decision of a shalish (a local informal court of elites in Bengali villages) to deny a divorced woman sufficient financial maintenance, of parents to marry their daughter at a young age in Kenya, or of parents to force an arranged marriage in Pakistan. The acceptance of some rights violations as natural or socially appro- priate may come from some people within the cultural context in question.34 Further, others from outside the cultural context may 31 Jaggar 1994; Kinoti 2006; Marcus 1992. 32 For example, the HRSA Household Survey 2004 noted that 41% of uninsured adults in New Mexico work multiple part-time jobs (New Mexico Human Services Department 2005). Coverage is declining even for those with full-time employment: ‘‘the number of uninsured people in the United States has risen by nearly 4 million since 2001 to 45 million people in 2003 with nearly the entire increase accounted for by a decline in employer-sponsored health insurance coverage’’ (Collins et al. 2004; see also DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, and Mills 2004). 33 Adams and Neumark 2005; Bartik 2004; Sander and Williams 1997; Sander, Williams, and Doherty 2000. 34 Bangladesh and Algeria had reservations about Article 2 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Universal human rights in a world of difference 11
- 32. accept such violations as culturally appropriate either as a form of cultural relativism or due to their resonance with similarly oppressive conditions in their own context.35 Once made visible, some may be able to see these as human rights violations. However, such human rights violations may be invisible to others, particularly (but not exclusively) to those with certain forms of privilege or to those willing to respect cultural norms without critically reflecting on their historical and social construction. To help illustrate this form of acculturated human rights violation, I adapt a concept put forward by Joyce King, a teacher educator who focuses on ways that US schooling ‘‘contributes to unequal educa- tional outcomes that reinforce societal inequity and oppression.’’36 King seeks to reveal to her students the habits of racism that they have internalized and that they replicate. She calls these repressive habits ‘‘dysconsiousness’’: Dysconsciousness is an uncritical habit of mind (including perceptions, atti- tudes, and beliefs) that justifies inequity and exploitation by accepting the existing order of things as given. If, as Heaney (1984) suggests, critical consciousness ‘‘involves an ethical judgement’’ [sic] about the social order, dysconsciousness accepts it uncritically. This lack of critical judgment against society reflects an absence of what Cox (1974) refers to as ‘‘social ethics’’; it involves a subjective identification with an ideological viewpoint that admits no fundamentally alternative vision of society.37 Not all dyconsciousness rises to the level of human rights violation, but dysconsciousness is what enables us to partake uncritically in practices that are human rights violating or to leave certain human rights violating practices unexamined. It is even possible to examine human rights violating practices in a dysconscious way. For example, William Talbott’s examination of women’s rights and female genital cutting practices is dysconscious, uncritical about the neo-colonial, political, social, and economic oppressive habits that his criticism of treaty, which mandates state parties to condemn discrimination in all its forms and to ensure a legal framework, including all laws, policies, and practices that provide protection against discrimination and embody the principles of equality. Egypt had reservations about Articles 2, 9, 16, and 29 (see United Nations 1979). 35 Marglin 1990; Song 2005. 36 King 1991: 134. Thanks to Jennifer Obidah for introducing me to King’s concept. 37 King 1991: 135. 12 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 33. certain human rights violations itself reinforces.38 When Talbott seeks to answer the important question, ‘‘What Do Women Want?,’’ he does not refer to primary or secondary research that asks women the answer to that question.39 By answering this question about women’s demands for justice based on Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom and Steve Kelley’s article in the Seattle Times rather than drawing on any women’s insights directly, he deploys a privileged methodology that dysconsciously ‘‘admits no fundamentally alternative vision of society’’ than the one that supports the forms of gender hierarchy his question may have led us to criticize. Although not all dysconscious action rises to the level of human rights violation, dysconscious actions and argu- ments cannot be liberatory because they do not take on the fundamen- tal hierarchies of injustice. In sum, human rights violations may be invisible because they are remote and not covered by localized news. They may be invisible because they are illegal and concealed, as in the case of slavery, inden- tured servitude, and bondage. Invisibility may be the byproduct of our observing people making choices; that is, because we witness people making choices, the structural constraints of those choices may not be visible. Further, human rights violations may become invisible through habituation in the daily practices of cultural and economic life. Finally, dysconscious individual behavior can perpetuate the invisibility of rights violating acts, habits, and practices. Which nearly invisible insecurities constitute human rights viola- tions? What kind of theory of human rights would enable us to notice, assess, and address all of these rights violations? In this book, I develop an account of universal human rights that enables us to see violations of human rights regardless of the relative degree to which perpetrator action and structural factors function to create the human rights viola- tion. Of course, there may always be individuals, groups, and networks who try to violate human rights. The argument is that our efforts to expose, end, and ameliorate human rights violations will not be com- plete if they focus only on political institutions. The need to focus on the entire apparatus of civil society40 – social, cultural, familial, 38 Talbott 2005. 39 Talbott 2005: 101–102. 40 Note, whenever I refer to ‘‘civil society,’’ I mean to avoid listing the entire social, cultural, familial, religious, economic, and political infrastructure of institutions, values, practices, and norms, including those we understand as public and those some are inclined to treat as private. Universal human rights in a world of difference 13
- 34. religious, economic, and political – and to encourage a way to take individual responsibility for social ills by expecting a social ethics that willingly considers that there may be fundamentally alternative visions of society. To see the implications of our local and global civil society institu- tions and practices we need to see differently. Seeing in this way requires that we take individual responsibility not only for how we act toward others (we don’t murder), but also for how we see others (we see their experience and the ways in which it is conditioned by macro and micro political factors).41 Seeing with our new sense of what human rights violations look like expands the scope not only of our sense of social responsibility but also of what it means to think respon- sibly about the world. The suppression of rights is not always the result of direct individual action, but rather provides the context for indivi- dual and collective actions and patterns of behavior that (1) violate rights, (2) institutionalize the suppression of rights, and (3) perpetuate the norms that support that institutionalization. The difference between murder as a crime and murder as a human rights violation is the failure of society to identify, prosecute, and prevent patterns of murder. The ‘‘disappeared’’ during the Pinochet regime in Chile, the unsolved murders of many young women from Juárez, Mexico, since 1993, and the 50 million missing women around the world42 are all victims of human rights violations. Human rights violations need not be attributed to individual or institutional duty- bearers in order for the pattern to be recognized as a human rights violation. The suppression of rights may be most ‘‘visible’’ in the dis- appeared, but the rights violations are against not only those who experience the act (the disappeared and their loved ones) but against the whole of society, including those who fear being the next to dis- appear, those who mourn the loss of the disappeared, and those who are intimidated from demanding the terms of their inclusion in the subsequent democratic government because the threat of chaos or a return to authoritarianism is credible. Suppression of rights is the 41 This argument is consistent with the social ontology of Carol Gould and its foundation in equal positive freedom (1988; 2004). But one can adopt the view of human rights described here without adopting Gould’s social ontology. 42 Sen 1990c. Oster argues that Sen’s ‘‘More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing’’ is an overestimate because in places where Hepatitis B is high, more boy fetuses are born (2005). 14 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 35. existence (‘‘always already’’)43 of power – perpetuated through our relationships. The greatest challenge of human rights activism is mov- ing our attention beyond the individual actions we see so that we see the rights violations in their context of power relations. The most challenging reconceptualizations take us beyond these observations of (1) others and (2) conditions in order to see (3) our own position in the relationships of power that enable such conditions to continue and therefore such individual acts to be politically sustainable. For example, the structures of patriarchy enable the rapist and the abusive husband. The habits of my daily life and discourse enact patriarchal norms. For example, my husband takes our daughters to do our grocery shopping Saturday mornings so that I can work. Though the gender roles are reversed (the man doing the care-giving, the woman working), the roles of child care and shopping are linked in a traditionally gendered way. Similarly, when a friend comments that her family has a similar inversion of traditional gender roles – she with a primary breadwinning income, her husband with a job that lets him be the primary care-giver – she is reifying a conventional way of under- standing of income-earning work and care-giving work. Certainly, we wouldn’t say that by our daily practices we were violating the human rights of a woman on the phone with a domestic violence shelter trying to decide if she should leave her husband, go to a shelter, and begin a long process of education and training that might lead her to be able to earn a family-sustaining wage. But neither does our working within these roles (reversed as they may be) help us as a society to consider why we organize work and care such that ‘‘work’’ requires seventeen-hour days and weekends and ‘‘care’’ means going shopping. Why aren’t I at the park with my children while my husband shops? Why are there kinds of work (‘‘breadwinning’’ jobs) that require someone else to care for children, shop for groceries, or the worker’s double shift to do these things? If work and care were differently organized – with the hours required for success more closely matched with the number of hours that it is reasonable for a child to be in institutionalized care44 – the 43 Foucault 1978. 44 States limit the number of hours a child may be in institutionalized care. For example, The State of Tennessee (Rule 1240-4-3.06) ‘‘Children shall not be in care for more than twelve (12) hours in a twenty-four (24) hour period except in special circumstances (e.g. acute illness of or injury to parents, natural disaster, unusual work hours)’’ (Tennessee [1974] 1998). Universal human rights in a world of difference 15
- 36. woman on the phone with the domestic violence hotline would be facing a different decision. Even if the abusive patterns in which abu- sers discourage their spouses from furthering their education or from having jobs that enable their economic independence remained the same, the context of her decision would be different if work and care were not as opposed as they are in the US economy.45 Local and global, political, economic, social, religious, and cultural institutions, practices, and ways of thinking and not thinking need to be transformed so that social institutions, contexts, and norms are the subjects of human rights inquiry around the world. Identifying the theoretical demands and methodological implications of this task is one of the purposes of this book. Universal justification Though attention to invisibility and structural rights violations is important to the activists’ theory and therefore will be important to my argument, the turn that distinguishes my approach to theorizing about human rights is not the focus on structural and invisible viola- tions. Feminist theorists and other critical scholars have worked with great pedagogical ingenuity to try to break down the conceptual, ontological, and epistemological barriers of our disciplines that make questions about structural and micro politics fall on deaf ears.46 Specifically, feminists, colonized, ethnically marginalized, and indigen- ous people among others have worked for decades to bring margin- alization and civil society structures under consideration by human rights theorists and activists. What distinguishes my approach is that I seek an account of human rights that has normative legitimacy from the perspective of those who have been working to make marginalized people and marginalizing structures visible. In addition to taking seriously the theoretical criticism of human rights theory coming from post-modern and post-colonial 45 Vickers 2002. 46 Hirschmann develops a critique of individualistic freedom. She interrogates the familiar metaphor of freedom as a property right that an individual ‘‘has,’’ that a state ‘‘secures,’’ and that a villain can ‘‘violate.’’ Freedom that is not epistemologically used to individualism requires a ‘‘social understanding of power’’ (2003: 26). See also Gould’s social understanding of equal positive freedom (2004; see also Ackerly, Stern, and True 2006; cf. Mansbridge 1993). 16 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 37. theorists, I take seriously the activists’ criticism of academic theory in its mainstream and critical forms for reifying a political perspective that privileges the knowledge claims of the academic over the knowl- edge claims of the less educated.47 The post-modern and post-colonial perspectives make us suspicious of theoretical claims to legitimacy because so often such claims privilege already privileged voices and therefore are a mask for an exercise of political power. By contrast, the activist perspective makes us suspicious of theoretical claims whose implications for political action are withheld.48 A human rights theory needs to do both.49 Weber left an indelible mark on the study of legitimacy with his descriptive account of three kinds of authority: legal authority, tradi- tional authority, and charismatic authority.50 Rawls and Habermas offer an alterative to Weber’s empirical description of kinds of author- ity that rests instead on a normative claim about what kind of authority has political legitimacy. In their view, political authority derives from consensus. First Rawls states the question: in light of what principles and ideals must we, as free and equal citizens, be able to view ourselves as exercising that power if our exercise of it is to be justifiable to other citizens and to respect their being reasonable and rational? To this political liberalism says: our exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason. This is the liberal principle of legitimacy . . . Only a political conception of justice that all citizens might be reasonably expected to endorse can serve as a basis of public reason and justification.51 Habermas shares Rawls’s commitment to democratic inclusion, but authors an account of legitimacy that is more dynamic yet still com- mitted to consensus and the use of reason:52 47 Sonalini Sapra (I9 2004) and the Feminist Dialogue small group meetings described in greater detail in chapter 6. 48 For example, in an interview with Vicky Bell cited in chapter 3, Judith Butler says that she leaves to activists the responsibility of determining the political action inspired by her scholarship (1999) . 49 Sen 2004: esp. 356; Sobrino SJ 2001. 50 Weber 1947: 328ff. In what follows, I mean to respect that for many people Weber is the point of departure for the study of authority and legitimacy. I do not mean to be constrained by his point of departure. 51 Rawls 1993: 137. 52 Habermas 1979; 1984; 1996a. Universal human rights in a world of difference 17
- 38. we can say that actions regulated by norms, expressive self-presentations, and also evaluative expressions, supplement constative speech acts in con- stituting a communicative practice which, against the background of a life- world, is oriented to achieving, sustaining, and renewing consensus – and indeed a consensus that rests on the intersubjective recognition of criticizable validity claims. The rationality inherent in this practice is seen in the fact that a communicatively achieved agreement must be based in the end on reasons.53 In the Rawlsian and the Habermasian theories, consensus is possible and everyone is committed to achieving consensus and to achieving consensus through the use of shared understandings of what constitute reasonable claims and reasons. In chapter 2, I trade on Rawls’s distinc- tion between an ideal and non-ideal theory and argue that human rights theory is non-ideal theory. To anticipate, in non-ideal theorizing the theorist recognizes that the conditions necessary to bring about her theoretical objectives are lacking. In fact, they are so lacking that she lacks the ability to see clearly all that the theory should entail once fully articulated. Non-ideal human rights theory does not require that the conditions necessary to bring it about be in place in order to be a useful guide for political decision making. Nor does it merely describe authority (following Weber) without normative assessment of the political conditions that at any given time give a voice of political legitimacy. So what kind of claim is a claim that human rights have legitimacy? Can a claim have no decisive source of political power and no decisive normative power and yet have political authority to guide and even compel criticism not only of individual and group actions but also of civil society institutions, values, practices, and norms?54 Most accounts of legitimacy proceed as if the answer must be ‘‘no.’’ I want to proceed as if the answer might be ‘‘yes.’’ To do that I will need to develop a theory by engaging with activists who challenge both political authority and normative authority in their work for women’s rights, women’s human rights, gender equality, women’s empowerment, and a host of issues that fall within and around these ways of describing activist work. These activists are diverse and may or may not describe themselves as feminist (though in the era of gender mainstreaming, they are increasingly aware of the 53 Habermas 1984: 17. 54 Cf. Bentham 1823. 18 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 39. need to politicize their work so that local, national, and transnational institutions are accountable to women). These activists are particularly instructive for this project because of their two-pronged critical engage- ment with authority – with the authority to claim the ‘‘truth’’ and with the authority to enforce that truth. What would it mean to theorize in partnered engagement with activists?55 As I explain in Part II, my own methodology is not designed to find generalizations or representations of activists as a group, but rather to reveal differences. Differences among them make general- izations misleading.56 Yet, we can say that the activist’s perspective is that of the social critic. Furthermore, the human rights activist is particularly critical of materially and physically exploitable hierar- chies that may not be visible to other victims, survivors, and humani- tarians.57 Some human rights activists are able to think through the relationships between different manifestations of hierarchy. Those who cannot do that have the ability to maintain dichotomies between different kinds of hierarchy, noticing one hierarchy, but seeing it as separable from another. In the meetings of feminist activists I attended while researching this book, those who saw the relationships between multiple forms of inequality seemed to outnumber those who did not. But as is revealed in my interviews and in less formal conversations with other activists, human rights activists sometimes exhibit unexa- mined dichotomous thinking that results in a cognitive dissonance. As we will see, some activists want to support one kind of human rights, or the human rights of some people, but their way of life or their social, 55 I have argued elsewhere that activist-informed theory requires a theory and method of social criticism (Ackerly 2000; cf. Fonow and Cook 2005). In chapter 5 I discuss other feminist perspectives that inform this inquiry. 56 For example, in Fields of Protest Raka Ray explores the way in which the political field in each of two cities in India affects the ways in which women identify and mobilize around their interests. For example, Bombay-based women’s activists are centrally concerned with issues of patriarchal hierarchy such as domestic violence, whereas Calcutta-based women’s activists are more centrally concerned with issues of economic inequality. Working in different political environments – West Bengal has traditionally been Communist- governed, Maharashtra ruled by the more right-wing Shiv Sena – affects the focus of their activism (1999). 57 For example, the humanitarians to which David Kennedy refers in The Dark Sides of Virtue do not see many of the forms of human rights violations that are the subject of activists studied in this book (2004; cf. MacKinnon 2006: chapter 5). Universal human rights in a world of difference 19
- 40. cultural, or religious values make it difficult to see that it is incoherent and even destructive to support some rights but not all rights, or some people’s rights, but not all people’s rights. Such cognitive dissonance is supported by unexamined dichotomous thinking that enables people to disaggregate political and economic rights or women’s and human rights for example. Such cognitive dissonance and unexamined dichot- omous thinking can be attributed to activist and scholar alike, often a result of dysconscious, uncritically examined, or unexamined social habituation. However, it is not enough to want to learn from activists. Theorists need a method for doing so, a method that guides our work and enables others to follow and assess our work.58 It is not enough to have an epistemology – a ‘‘theory of knowledge’’59 – that values activists as knowers. It is not enough to have a theoretical methodology – that is, ‘‘a theory and analysis of how [theoretical] research does or should proceed’’60 – a methodology that requires us to learn from activists themselves as opposed to learning from social science research on or about activists. As all research, political theory of activism needs a theoretical method – a ‘‘technique for (or way of proceeding in) gather- ing evidence.’’61 However, for normative inquiry, a method gives us specific tools not only for gathering data, but also for translating, interpreting, and analyzing that data. For example, it not only specifies our methods for identifying whose insights and experiences we should draw upon, but also gives an account of the steps we take to mitigate the potential for reading our theoretical views into our observations.62 A method enables others to assess and contribute to our research 58 The method as I used it was very expensive and was successful only with generous research support from Vanderbilt University, the University of Southern California, the Ford Foundation, and United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), some of which was specific to my project, some of which was possible by coordinating my project with other projects under way. However, depending on research design, similar research can be done with different resources. Thus, while my project was expensive, the expense was a function of my research question and research design. Field-based inquiry supported by opportunities for deliberation may in fact often be expensive, but the general approach set out in Part II need not be. 59 Harding 1987: 3. 60 Harding 1987: 3. 61 Harding 1987: 2. 62 A method may also specify how power dynamics in the relationship between the researcher and her interlocutors are to be navigated. For discussion of these and other ethical dimensions of methodological choice see Ackerly, Stern, and True (2006) and Smith (1999). 20 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 41. agenda, putting into practice the insight that the struggles and wishes of the age are important problems for us to work on together. Regardless of the differences among activists, it makes sense to theorize about universal human rights by assuming that making a human rights argument is an exercise of power. Whatever else is required to theorize in engagement with the perspectives of activists, engaged theorizing requires assuming that, just as any theoretical argument is an exercise of power, the argument of a human rights defender is an exercise of power in the interest of those whose rights are violated63 (or an attempt to mask an exercise of power as being in the interests of those whose rights are violated).64 What is wrong with exercising power in the interests of the vulnerable or violated? Often, nothing. However, exercising that power responsibly means being attentive to all human rights violations, even those that are invisible or marginal, and doing so without dysconsciousness, without reifying certain social hierarchies. This feminist view of theoretical argument itself requires the theorist to feel ‘‘the possibility of incompleteness.’’65 In this feminist view, the power to go unchallenged (Weberian legal, traditional, or charismatic authority) is an exploitable hierarchy.66 Because it does not rely on common philosophical epistemological assumptions about what constitutes a convincing argument or a philo- sophical justification, the theory I present is not strictly a philosophical account. Such agreement would require a prior agreement – itself an exercise of power – about what constitutes good argument that would suggest ignoring the arguments of activists because, as we will see, many exhibit cognitive dissonance, unexamined dichotomies, and disagree- ment as to what constitutes a convincing argument or justification.67 Likewise, this account of human rights is not a transcendental account, relying on a prior agreement about what constitutes transcendental or religious authority and who is qualified to recognize and interpret such authority. While many human rights activists are sustained by their faith and understand human rights in theological terms, religious and all transcendental beliefs are an exercise of power or they authorize one, in 63 Barsa 2005. 64 Klinghoffer 1998. 65 Bickford 1996: 151. 66 Susan Okin offers one such argument utilizing the social theory of Robert Goodin in Protecting the Vulnerable: ‘‘While we should always strive to protect the vulnerable, we should also strive to reduce . . . vulnerabilities insofar as they render the vulnerable liable to exploitation’’ (Goodin 1985: xi, cited by Okin 1989: 137). 67 Cf. Young’s work on activism and deliberation (2001a). Universal human rights in a world of difference 21
- 42. the same way that philosophical arguments are. They depend on agree- ment about, but are subject to disagreement about, truth claims. Instead, human rights theory needs to assume the challenge of agree- ment despite disagreement. The challenge itself is its foundation. This book offers an immanent account of human rights, developed through engagement with what people do and say in their activism against exploited hierarchies. I will argue that this approach gives us an account of human rights that is universal in the sense of being an account that is engaged with the rights and struggles of all, visible and invisible.68 I will argue that this immanent account of universal human rights is available to all for criticism directed both across and within cultural boundaries. And, in the spirit of critical theory, its claim to universalizability is partially empirically demonstrated in the actions and the insights of activists. Immanent knowledge is knowledge that comes from within – in this case, from within the experiences of human rights violations and the experience of working against human rights violations. An immanent human rights theory is a theory of human rights that comes from contextually specific human rights activism and social criticism. An immanent universal theory of human rights is a theoretical account of human rights whose source of justification is an immanent methodol- ogy and whose application is universal within and across cultures.69 Immanent universal human rights are universal in the sense that underwear is universal. Not everywhere in the world do people wear cotton or linen undergarments, but where they wear wool (which itches the skin of most humans), they wear undergarments.70 Likewise, not everywhere and at all times have people made rights claims and called them ‘‘human rights’’ when doing so, but around the world, when they face oppression they have made claims through their words and actions that can contribute to our understanding of universal human rights.71 68 Human rights from the perspective of the victims, not the humanitarians, and not the political and intellectual elites (see Ishay 2004; Kennedy 2004). 69 Cf. Seyla Benhabib’s ‘‘interactive universalism’’ (1986: 81) and Carol Gould’s ‘‘concrete universality’’ (2004: chapter 2). 70 Barber 1994: 133. 71 Anna Wierzcbicka and colleagues have developed an empirically tested theory of universals in language (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002a; 2002b; Wierzbicka 1996; 2005). Even her critics have identified the value of her approach to identifying universal grammar (Palmer 2001). 22 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 43. In the manner of immanent critique,72 I develop here an account of universal human rights based on these claims and the actions people take to realize them.73 In their critical evaluations of their own contexts, activists show us that what it means to be ‘‘human’’ and what constitute ‘‘rights’’ are socially constructed such that promoting universal human rights requires institu- tional and social change. Changing political, social, and economic con- texts requires not only changing laws and institutions so that the police can be reliable sources of security rather than sources of insecurity, but also changing social practices so that community members exhibit and practice habits of community building. Human rights respecting contexts will differ from each other but they will be sustained through institutions and practices. For example, activists in Turkey asked for laws that change the patterns of practice associated with domestic violence rather than a law that raises the punishment for domestic violence.74 Activists in rural Bangladesh use street theater to change the practices of local informal courts (shalish) by getting the most powerful in a community to role play the circumstances of women and the poor.75 Through their work, women’s human rights activists give us the sketch of a theory of universal human rights: the human rights of all humans are related to those of others, all human rights are indivisible, and all human rights are a function of normative and institutional contexts. 72 Compare my approach to Walzer’s immanent criticism (1987), Gould’s continentally informed analytical philosophical justification (2004), and Benhabib’s Habermasian-informed deliberative justification (2002: chapter 5). 73 Criticisms of the universalizability of human rights based on linguistic claims about the word ‘‘rights’’ include Pollis (and Schwab 1979; see also Bell 2000). By contrast, Brown studies human universals that do not rely on shared language (1991). David Beetham argues that while the institutionalization of legitimacy varies by time and place, each society will have three criteria of legitimacy: following established rules, consistent with shared beliefs, and consistent with the expressed consent of those qualified to give it (1991; 1993). 74 Women for Women’s Human Rights (WWHR) Istanbul 1998. In Bangladesh, India, and Russia, activists continually argue that increasing punishments for crimes against women (particularly crimes in which the assailant and victim are related) is not effective at deterring violence against women. Rather, they argue, governments should focus on preventing that violence by enforcing civil protection or restraining orders and facilitating women’s ability to function in everyday life. 75 Ain o Salish Kendra 1997; 1999; 2000. Universal human rights in a world of difference 23
- 44. Each of these views has been supported by a range of academics and activists. They are in fact foundationally important to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights itself.76 However, securing them in international institutions is insufficient for their global recognition and realization. Some will dismiss them as moral values unsustainable by political institutions.77 Some will see them as institutions condi- tioned by cultural values, that is, where the implications of the institu- tions and values conflict, the cultural values trump.78 If we see human rights as either a system of values or a system of institutions we miss what human rights has in common with law. Human rights is, as Habermas characterizes law, ‘‘two things at once: a system of knowledge and a system of action.’’79 These two systems are importantly interrelated. Human rights are a dynamic system of action because they have been and will continue to be incompletely, and in fact unsystematically, developed. Not only have ‘‘human rights’’ been devel- oping within and between states, in treaties, in national legislatures, in international courts, in United Nations sponsored meetings, and in activists networks, but also, because they have been developing institu- tionally, they have been developing as a system of knowledge and values. Because women’s human rights activists ask more of these systems of institutions and knowledge, because these activists are parti- cularly attentive to marginalization and invisibility, I focus on these activists. However, in many realms in which human rights have become important, the same phenomenon of human rights as an evolving system of knowledge and tool for guiding action has been observed.80 If we appreciate context as characterized by systems of knowledge, values, practices, norms, and institutions, then when we distinguish between social values and political institutions, we construct a false dichotomy. The dichotomy between institutions and values may be rhetorically useful for dismissing the universal aspiration of human rights, but it is not substantively meaningful among people of religious communities where, for many, institutions are the context and the structure of moral value systems.81 Moreover, even secular society is 76 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948. 77 Bentham 1823; cf. Sen 2004: 319. 78 Shea 2003. See also many countries’ reservations to CEDAW. 79 Habermas 1996a: 79. 80 Bellah 1992. 81 Hauerwas [1988] 2001; Niebuhr 1951; Vandenbergh 2001; 2005; cf. Rubin 2005: chapter 8 and 332–333. 24 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 45. filled with institutions whose meaning and substance are realized through practices that affirm espoused values. In families, public school systems, libraries, wage practices, environmental use and man- agement, and housing patterns, institutions enact community values, functioning to affirm or transform them. The attempt to dichotomize institutions and values may be an enlightenment artifact or more specifically a byproduct of the disciplinary norms of law, International Relations, and Political Science, where so much human rights work is done.82 The human rights theory of activists does not practice this dichotomization. Why should political theorists work in ways that take seriously the theoretical insights of women’s human rights activists? Beyond any normative reason why we should think that the views of women’s human rights activists are important, purely on the merits of the account, we should pay attention to activists. The theory of immanent universal human rights to which their insights lead offers us a way of understanding human rights such that the issues that usually curtail the critical ambitions of human rights theorists can be reframed and redressed. They offer a coherent theory in practice.83 The work of women’s human rights activists reveals that principal philosophical objections to universal human rights are best understood as empirical or practical challenges. Political theorists of human rights can interrogate the philosophical masks of their politics. Not to con- front these challenges philosophically is to treat a political challenge as a philosophical justification for inaction. Consider the following objections. (1) Human rights cannot be a legitimate basis of claims because they rely on pre-legal principles.84 (2) Even if we were convinced that pre-legal ethical principles could be the basis of political demands, there can be no universal pre-legal or pre-political principles because there are no culturally universal foundations.85 (3) Even if we could agree that there were universal human rights despite lacking universal moral foundations, we could not agree 82 Dunne and Wheeler 1999. 83 Donnelly is suspicious of whether the cacophony of activists can be read as offering a theory (1989: 44–45). 84 Sen 1999b. 85 Pollis and Schwab 1979. Universal human rights in a world of difference 25
- 46. on what they were because we cannot agree on what their founda- tions are.86 (4) Even if we could agree on what rights were, in order to realize them, we need to be able to assign correlative duties and obliged agents to each right.87 Of course, these political objections to universal human rights cannot be met with philosophical argument,88 . . . unless such argument begins with the politics at stake in each question. My approach is to treat the politics of human rights as foundational to a theory of human rights. The observed sources of legitimacy outlined by Weber may be normatively illegitimate from Rawls’s or Habermas’s perspective. However, is a Rawlsian or Habermasian normative ideal the best tool for interrogating the existing legal, traditional, and charismatic autho- rities in the world? With attention to the politics of knowledge (to the power of epistemology89 ), the account of immanent universal human rights I present lays bare the politics of any account of human rights. Accepting that all accounts of human rights (especially those that argue that there are no universal human rights) are accounts of power, I offer an account of universal human rights that is the basis of an always ongoing criticism of marginalization, silencing, and exploitable hierarchies. I offer a theory of human rights whose universal justification is based on a dynamic understanding of political legitimacy where the authority of human rights as a tool for criticism is not undermined by a commit- ment to interrogate that authority. Nor is it undermined by its lack of legal, traditional, or charismatic authority at any given time in any given context. If we cannot build this critical architecture on founda- tional authority or principles, on what can we build it? This is political theory in the non-ideal world.90 86 Pollis and Schwab 2000; cf. Appiah 2001; Ignatieff 2001. 87 Dunne and Wheeler 1999. 88 Cf. Goodhart 2005. 89 An epistemology is a philosophy of knowledge, including its methods, validation, scope, and the distinction between belief and opinion. 90 I am referring here to the Rawlsian distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory in his A Theory of Justice discussed in chapter 2. 26 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 47. Critical theory and methodology The key to my identification and articulation of the activists’ argu- ment is methodological. In different ways Foucault, post-modernists, post-colonialists, transgender theorists, and Third World feminists ask us to subject knowledge claims – any claims to have identified any truth or fact – to scrutiny.91 These theorists seek to challenge unre- flective ways of knowing in order to reveal forms of power concealed in institutions and habituated practices. Taking the insights of critical, post-modern, post-colonial, and Third World feminists as having foundationally epistemological importance, I build a methodology of inquiry that seeks out different and even competing accounts of human rights. The methodology requires sustained self-reflection which is facilitated by a destabilizing epistemology, perpetually atten- tive to the power dynamics manifested in any account that is likely to be interpreted as in any way definitive.92 Consequently, with the activists, I build a political account of immanent universal human rights from the perspective of those fighting for their rights. Rather than assumed away prior to the exercise of theory building, the politics of being a source for this account, the politics of non-transcendence, and the politics of argument are all part of this account of universal human rights. Whatever account of universal human rights theorists offer, and whatever their predisposition toward critical theory, by taking up the question of human rights itself, political theorists are somewhat obli- gated to test out their theories in practice as critical theorists inspire us to do.93 Interestingly, in this case, with so much diversity on the ground, the critical theorist is equally challenged. How can she be expected to author a theory coherent with social action when so 91 Ackerly 2000. See Harding, ‘‘Only in this way can we hope to produce understandings and explanations which are free of distortion from the unexamined beliefs of social scientists themselves’’ (1987: 9). Habermas shares the feminist focus on theoretical methodology, and yet feminists find his methodology is not sufficiently critical (Fraser 1991; Habermas 1984; Mies 1983). 92 Talbott calls on human rights theory to be ‘‘epistemically modest’’ (2005). 93 Marx defines the role of criticism as promoting the ‘‘self-understanding of the age concerning its struggles and wishes. This is the task for the world and for us’’ ([1843] 1967). Gramsci writes in a letter to Tatiana, ‘‘thinking ‘disinterestedly’ or study for its own sake is difficult for me . . . I do not like throwing stones in the dark; I like to have a concrete interlocutor or adversary’’ (December 15, 1930) (1971: x). Universal human rights in a world of difference 27
- 48. much of that action is incoherent at a certain level? I have not illu- strated this point yet, but as the argument proceeds, we will see that one of the challenges of a methodological approach inspired by a destabi- lizing epistemology is that we have to confront competing, even irre- concilable, views among activists. Some prioritize redistributive claims, some recognition claims, some sexuality claims, and some political claims. Importantly then, this form of immanent human rights theory requires both immanent sources of insight and immanent processes for revealing and considering conflicting insights. To develop this theory – as either author or reader – we will need to move between many worlds, including the worlds of the philosopher, the activist, the feminist methodologist, and the comparative political theorist. Like literal world-traveling, intellectual world-traveling requires transcription, translation, interpretation, conversation, and orchestration.94 Such traveling is made all the more uncomfortable because the challenges we face are so important and daunting at once. And perhaps most importantly, my repeated attempts to itch our skin with my destabilizing epistemology will make us long for underwear. I am going to argue that immanent universal human rights enables us to consider the most profound and important political questions of the day and to consider them in ways that respect all of the cultural diversity and intra-cultural conflict that make the world such an excit- ing and scary place to be. We don’t avoid our cultural contexts, our ways of life in which we find so much value, but we do need to shield ourselves from the ways in which the habits of our daily lives can threaten us. Human rights is that protective layer. The rights expected by our activists are not offered as an inclusive account of universal values, rather they are offered as a list of prere- quisites to a right of way. One cannot pursue one’s individual or collective objectives if the rights of way of life are not secure. Carol Gould describes the social dimension of human rights in less metapho- rical language: Human rights are always rights of individuals, based on their valid claims to conditions for their activity, but individuals bear these rights only in relation 94 Ackerly 2000; Alexander 2005; Berman 1984; Dallmayr 1999; Euben 2004; Gunning 1992; Lâm 1994; Lugones 1990. 28 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 49. to other individuals and to social institutions. Right is in this sense an intrinsically relational concept. Furthermore, although these rights are in principle claims by each on all the others, yet since most of these rights cannot be satisfied by each human being acting separately, and since the conditions for the self-transformation of any individual are most often social ones that can be met only by a community or society, then it can be said that individuals hold these rights against society in general.95 Gould is describing a notion of human rights based on the ‘‘concrete universality’’ of human rights as a philosophical extension of the uni- versal human experience of positive freedom as the ‘‘self-transforming activity’’ of making choices unconstrained by ‘‘means or access to the conditions necessary for making these choices effective.’’96 Human rights provide the context for the effective exercise of positive freedom. They are not on Gould’s view metaphorically analogous to entitlements. As I have been researching this project I have developed the personal hobby of collecting universals of this sort.97 Not everywhere in the world do people wear pants, but everywhere they ride horses, they wear pants.98 Not everywhere in the world are treats very sweet, but everywhere that they eat spicy food, they have relatively sweet sweets. Not everywhere are the rules of yielding the same, but everywhere in the world, whether on land or sea, whether for bike, boat, or bus, there are rules for yielding. Some are legal; some are rites; they are generally logistical, sometimes quite hierarchical, rarely egalitarian, but univer- sally there are norms of yielding. When looking specifically at women’s human rights violations we see that legal mechanisms for protecting rights vary and are gen- erally insufficient for securing women’s human rights. Changing some of the habits and practices of the daily lives that we value is universally necessary for securing women’s human rights. What the patterns are and what they need to become may vary greatly or not so much depending on the contexts being compared, but the need to 95 Gould 2004: 37. 96 Gould 2004: 32–33. 97 For an anthropologist’s approach to identifying human universals see Brown (1991: esp. chapter 6). Matilal shares my approach of drawing universal principles from the universals of human experience and offers an account of this view of universality by reference to the ‘‘basic values concordant with the value-experiences of the ‘naked man’’’ (1989: 357). 98 Barber 1994. Universal human rights in a world of difference 29
- 50. redress women’s rights violations with changes in social habits, not just institutional changes, is universal.99 Because all human societies are hierarchical,100 the political attempt to mitigate the abuse of hierarchy is universalizable. Given the power dynamics of some contexts in which these claims arise, an appeal to a transcendental moral justification of such claims is common.101 This observation has empirical and normative implications. A correlated empirically testable hypothesis might be: the more totalitarian (com- plete) the political authority, the more likely a moral claim will be couched in transcendental terms. If the particularity of each context in which such claims are made can likewise be taken as given, then a second, empirically testable hypothesis is that the language and theore- tical resources of transcendental claims will vary quite significantly.102 Mine is not an empirical argument about when, and under what condi- tions, human rights claims will emerge as ‘‘human rights’’ claims. Nor is it an argument about when human rights claims will have political legitimacy in the Weberian sense. Political Science, History, Sociology, and Anthropology can research these observable phenomena. I am interested in a normative argument that can interpret a range of parti- cular claims103 as not particular but rather based on the substance of the claims as immanent and universal. These claims emerge in particular contexts and yet have a political basis for being universalizable. As was suggested at the outset of this chapter, exploring these questions with an epistemological uncertainty means that even the definitions of society, obligations, and rights should be interrogated. The notion of rights as entitlements with corresponding duty-bearers is common in Western social contract framing of rights.104 George 99 After studying 15,000 proverbs originating in 245 languages, Mineke Schipper argues that there are general categories of proverbs, one of which is ‘‘Female power (. . . mentioned in terms of verbal talents, work, knowledge, witchcraft and so forth), and the countermeasures invented to restrict all that female power (such as numerous prescriptions and proscriptions for female behaviour, and, of course the recommendation of violence as a last means of utter helplessness)’’ (Association for Women’s Rights In Development 2005; cf. Schipper 2003). 100 Diamond [1997] 2003. 101 I will discuss examples of these in chapters 2 and 3. 102 This work is being done in linguistics (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002a; 2002b). 103 As we will discuss in chapter 3, many claimants ground their particular claims on a particular interpretation of transcendental authority. 104 See also Ackerly (forthcoming-b). 30 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 51. Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that philosophical ideas have struc- tural forms that make metaphorical use of humans’ physical experience of the world.105 These need not correspond, therefore, to particular cultural or historical contexts. For example: When actions are understood metaphorically as motions along paths, then anything that blocks that motion is a constraint on one’s freedom. Accord- ingly, a right becomes a right-of-way, an area through which one can move freely without interference from other people or institutions.106 The metaphor of physical movement is used to describe the moral idea of freedom. Lakoff and Johnson generally and Edward Slingerland more specifically offer evidence that the metaphor of right-of-way is a universal language.107 This metaphor can be used to describe the poli- tical dimension of human experience, that is, the politics of inequality and hierarchy experienced by humans in human society. The under- standing of ‘‘rights’’ that is revealed in the work and thoughts of the activists I study is well captured by this metaphor. More importantly, the methodology of looking to that which is universal in human experience by looking at the specifics of human experience across contexts and histories describes my approach as well. What you see is what you get I am beginning this book about universal human rights with a family’s everyday struggle in a post-genocidal region, some images, some sta- tistics about health and well-being, and the universality of undergar- ments. Let us consider some other ways of setting the stage for a discussion of universal human rights. Mary Ann Glendon begins with the image of power – the military power of fifth-century Athens and of the post World War II ‘‘Big Three’’ (Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States).108 Michael Perry begins with a vivid image from Mark Danner’s book The Massacre at El Mozote, of a girl singing ‘‘strange evangelical songs’’ while she is raped, shot, and shot again, ceasing to sing only when her throat is cut.109 Micheline Ishay inspires us to think about the history of the victims of conquerors, not that of the 105 Lakoff and Johnson 1999. 106 Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 305. 107 Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Slingerland 2004. 108 Glendon 2001. 109 Perry 1998. Universal human rights in a world of difference 31
- 52. conquering authors of history.110 Michael Ignatieff begins with the image of a man whose fate – the gas chamber or the chemistry lab – is about to be decided.111 Johan Galtung starts off with definitions.112 Seyla Benhabib, Carol Gould, Katerina Dalacoura, and Michael Goodhart begin with theoretical puzzles raised by considering politics as it has been changed by globalization.113 Each of these beginnings signals the central issue of the author: the post World War II political context from which the present human rights institutions evolved, the challenge of being moved to a sense of urgency about human rights, the story of the victims in history, the defining boundaries of humanity, and the present political context in which culture, politics, and economics are not confined by geographic or geopolitical boundaries. Beginnings matter. All of these – power, urgency, history, cultural meanings, and global politics – are important to a theory of universal human rights. Taken together they illustrate both the timelessness and the context-specific dimensions of the exercise of power. In this project on universal human rights I explore these same questions by giving particular attention to the timelessness and particularity of human experience made marginal or invisible by the exercise of power. Beginning as I do, I mean to signal my epistemological assumption that human rights pertain to all of humanity. By beginning with Marie, I mean to signal that human rights promotion is about changing con- texts so that with all of humanity, Marie and her family can enjoy the full range of human capabilities. Marie’s example makes us wonder whether it is appropriate to think of genocidal violence as creating qualitatively different responsibilities than pre- or post-genocidal vio- lence.114 Marie’s case makes us curious about the roles of colonialism, decolonization, nation-building, economic development, poverty, class stratification, gender, race, and disability in human rights violating contexts. Most challenging, Marie’s story signals where the boundaries of responsibility for human rights violations must extend. Importantly, there is no coincidence between those boundaries and our individual abilities to effect change. However, the difficulty in effecting change, 110 Ishay 2004. 111 Ignatieff 2001. 112 Galtung 1994. 113 Benhabib 2004b; Dalacoura 1998; Goodhart 2005; Gould 2004. 114 Adelman and Suhrke 1999; Eltringham 2004; Rusesabagina with Zoellner 2006; Uvin 1998. 32 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
- 53. just like the difficulty in seeing the need for change, does not allow us to dismiss our global social ethical obligations. I aspire to offer a theoretical argument whose politics are transparent and democratic. One long-standing theme in contemporary feminist theory has been the politics of knowledge.115 From this huge body of literature, I understand feminist theoretical inquiry to require (1) a commitment to ongoing interrogation of epistemological assumptions (articulated and masked), (2) a commitment to methodological inno- vation in seeking insights in which we make use of the multiple per- spectives we can know, seek out others, and be aware that there are many more we cannot know, and (3) a commitment to theoretical work that is inspired by and relevant to contemporary political strug- gles.116 I am not confident in the political legitimacy of this argument in the way that Rawls, Habermas, and others are confident in the political legitimacy of theirs,117 but rather I am interested in assessing the political legitimacy of the argument presented in this book. I offer a theory of universal human rights whose political legitimacy, such as it is, comes from the epistemological obligation to challenge the unexamined, the absent, and the silent. Because the theory is attentive to cross-cultural and intra-cultural differences and dynamics, the poli- tical legitimacy of this theory of universal human rights does not come from singular contested cultural resources but rather from intra- cultural and cross-cutural contestations.118 Concerned about margin- alization, I have sought a theory that is informed by (and potentially critical of) political, social, cultural, and economic institutions and practices that provide the contexts of human lives. To the extent that the theory of human rights presented here is a definition of politically legitimate universal human rights, it is not a static definition. In order for us to ‘‘see’’ why this immanent account of universal human rights is necessary, I need to offer the reader illustrative 115 In International Relations see for example Tickner (1992; 1997). In Black Feminist Thought see for example Crenshaw (1989) and Collins ([1990] 1991). In Sociology see for example Reinharz (1992). In Political Theory see for example Benhabib (1987) and Hawkesworth (2006a). 116 Ackerly 2000. 117 See Habermas (1984: especially the last chapter), Rawls (1993), Nussbaum (2001), and my discussion of Rawls in chapters 2 and 4. See also Hampton 1989. 118 On my reading both Weberian traditional authority and Rawls’s account of free and equal citizenship are contested cultural resources as we will see in chapter 3. Universal human rights in a world of difference 33
- 54. examples of people whose rights are violated. However, for the reasons discussed above these violations might be invisible to some or seem appropriately acceptable to others. After setting up the problem of epistemology in chapter 2, in chap- ter 3 I discuss a range of accounts of universal human rights. Each affirms human rights, but does so in a way that conceals a logically prior political decision. The concealed politics may be in the form of either the power to interpret transcendental claims or the power to adjudicate between philosophical claims. Both theological and philo- sophical arguments that claim to be offering an account of universal morality in fact conceal a politics of authority. One response to the revealed mask of such authority is to reject human rights altogether. This approach, also discussed in chapter 3, looms in the background of the entire book. The impetus to reject universal human rights altogether is based on a philosophical claim about the cultural embeddedness of moral values and a political claim about the authority to interpret such values on behalf of a collective. When the contestation over the political claim is itself unmasked, we see that even where moral values are culturally embedded, their meaning is multiple. Therefore, the rejection of human rights on this basis is not philosophical but rather a political rejection of the claims of those lacking political authority in a given context. While responsive to some forms of concealed power, relativist approaches conceal power by other means. The concerns raised in chapter 3 can be addressed by an immanent approach to universal human rights. An immanent approach draws on the normative resources within a given context. An immanent approach to universal human rights compares these immanent norms across differing accounts and finds an account of human rights that is universally justified though perhaps based on different normative resources. In chapter 4 I look closely at four theorists’ accounts of immanent universal human rights. I argue that each illustrates that immanent universal human rights theory is possible but that, as with the two previously considered approaches, immanent human rights theory can mask the power of knowledge claims. Each of these authors is inadequately reflective on her or his epistemological assumptions. Consequently, each masks, rather than exposes, the political challenges of an immanent theory about universal norms. In the heart of the book, the politics of knowledge and of disagree- ment are placed at the center of my account of immanent and universal 34 Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference
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- 56. commonwealth. And besides, that I may know what is acceptable to Thee alone, vouchsafe that I wish, dare, and can perform it without paying respect to any earthly persons or things. So that when Thou Thyself, the just Judge, who askest many and great things from those to whom many and great things are entrusted, when Thou requirest an exact accounting, charge me not with badly administering my commonwealth and kingdom. But if by human thoughtlessness or infirmity Thy handmaid strays from the right in some thing, absolve me of it by Thy mercy, most high King and most mild Father, for the sake of Thy Son Jesus Christ; and at the same time grant that after this worldly kingdom has been exacted of me, I may enjoy with Thee an eternity in Thy heavenly and unending kingdom, through the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son and the Assessor of Thy kingdom, our Lord and Mediator. To whom with Thee and with the Holy Spirit, one everlasting King, immortal, invisible, only- wise God, be all honor and glory forever and ever, amen. Elizabeth promoted commercial speculations, which diffused a vast increase of wealth among her people. The Elizabethan era was one of general prosperity. Her good spirits and gayness created a happy mood in the nation. She loved dancing and madrigal music was popular. She came to dress elaborately and fancifully. Her dresses were fitted not only at the waist, but along the torso by a long and pointed bodice stiffened with wood, steel, or whalebone. Her skirt was held out with a petticoat with progressively larger hoops. There were two layers of skirt with the top one parted to show the bottom one. The materials used were silks, satins, velvets, and brocades. On her dress were quiltings, slashings, and embroidery. It was covered with gold ornaments, pearls, gems, and unusual stones from America. She wore decorated gloves. Ladies copied her and discarded their simple over-tunics for elaborate dresses. The under-
- 57. tunic became a petticoat and the over-tunic a dress. Often they also wore a fan with a mirror, a ball of scent, a miniature portrait of someone dear to them, and sometimes a watch. Single ladies did not wear hats, but had long, flowing hair and low cut dresses showing their bosoms. Married ladies curled their hair and wore it in high masses on their heads with jewels interwoven into it. Both gentlemen and ladies wore hats both indoors and outside and large, pleated collars around their necks (with the newly discovered starch), perfume, rings with stones or pearls, and high-heeled shoes. Gentlemen's' tight sleeves, stiffened and fitted doublet with short skirt, and short cloak were ornamented and their silk or velvet hats flamboyant, with feathers. At their leather belts they hung pouches and perhaps a watch. They wore both rapiers [swords with cutting edges] and daggers daily as there were many quarrels. There were various artistic beard cuts and various lengths of hair, which was often curled and worn in ringlets. Barbers sought to give a man a haircut that would favor his appearance, for instance a long slender beard for a round face to make it seem narrower and a broad and large cut for a lean and straight face. Men now wore stuffed breeches and stockings instead of long hosen. Some wore a jeweled and embroidered codpiece between their legs to emphasize their virility. Both gentlemen and ladies wore silk stockings and socks over them and then boots. Coats dipped in boiled linseed oil with resin served as raincoats. Both men and women wore velvet or wool full length nightgowns with long sleeves and fur lining and trimming to bed, which was the custom for the next 150 years. Fashions changed every year due to the introduction of cheaper, lighter, and less durable cloths by immigrant craftsmen. When Elizabeth became old, she had a wig made to match her youthful long red hair. Other ladies then began wearing wigs.
- 58. Every few years, Elizabeth issued a proclamation reminding people of the apparel laws and reiterating certain provisions which had been disregarded. For instance, only the royal family and dukes and marquises in mantles [cloaks] of the garter could wear the color purple. One had to be at least an earl to wear gold or silver or sable. Only dukes, marquises, earls and their children, barons, and knights of the order could wear imported wool, velvet, crimson, scarlet, or blue, or certain furs., except that barons' sons, knights, or men who could dispend at least 200 pounds yearly could wear velvet in gowns or coats, embroidery, and furs of leopards. Spurs, swords, rapiers, daggers, and woodknives were restricted to knights and barons' sons or higher. A man who could dispend at least 100 pounds per year could wear taffeta, satin, damask, or cloth made of camels' hair and silk, in his outer garments. One had to be the son and heir or the daughter of a knight or wife of said son or a man who could dispend 20 pounds yearly or had 200 pounds worth in goods to wear silk in one's hat, bonnet, nightcap, girdle, scabbard, or hose. Yeomen, husbandmen, serving men, and craftsmen were very restricted in what they could wear. Poor men wore skirted fustian tunics, loose breeches, and coarse stockings or canvas leggings. Children wore the same type of apparel as their elders. They were given milk at meals for good growth. It was recognized that sickness could be influenced by diet and herbs. Sickness was still viewed as an imperfect balance of the four humors. Women spent much of their time doing needlework and embroidery. Since so many of the women who spent their days spinning were single, unmarried women became known as spinsters.
- 59. There were many lifestyle possibilities in the nation: gentleman, that is one who owned land or was in a profession such as a attorney, physician, priest or who was a university graduate, government official, or a military officer; employment in agriculture, arts, sciences; employment in households and offices of noblemen and gentlemen; self-sufficient farmers with their own farm; fisherman or mariner on the sea or apprentice of such; employment by carriers of grain into cities, by market towns, or for digging, seeking, finding, getting, melting, fining, working, trying, making of any silver, tin, lead, iron, copper, stone, coal; glassmaker. Typical wages in the country were: field-workers 2-3d. a day, ploughmen 1s. a week with board, shepherd 6d. a week and board, his boy 2 1/2 d., hedgers 6d. a day, threshers 3-7d. depending on the grain, thatching for five days 2d., master mason or carpenter or joiner 4d. a day and food or 8d. without food, a smith 2d. a day with food, a bricklayer 2 1/2 d. a day with food, a shoemaker 2d. a day with food. These people lived primarily on food from their own ground. There was typical work for each month of the year in the country: January - ditching and hedging after the frost broke, February - catch moles in the meadows, March - protect the sheep from prowling dogs, April - put up hop poles, sell bark to the tanner before the timber is felled, fell elm and ash for carts and ploughs, fell hazel for forks, fell sallow for rakes, fell horn for flails, May - weed and hire children to pick up stones from the fallow land, June - wash and shear the sheep, July - hay harvest, August - wheat harvest, September and October - gather the fruit, sell the wool from the summer shearing, stack logs for winter, buy salt fish for Lent in the town and lay it up to dry, November - have the chimneys
- 60. swept before winter, thresh grain in the barn, December - grind tools, repair yokes, forks, and farm implements, cover strawberry and flower beds with straw to protect them from the cold, split kindling wood with beetle and wedge, tan their leather, make leather jugs, make baskets for catching fish, and carve wood spoons, plates, and bowls. There was a wave of building and renovation activity in town and country. Housing is now, for the first time, purely for dwelling and not for defense. Houses were designed symmetrically with decorative features instead of a haphazard addition of rooms. Windows were large and put on the outer walls instead of just inside the courtyard. A scarcity of timber caused proportionally more stone to be used for dwelling houses and proportionately more brick to be used for royal palaces and mansions. The rest of the house was plaster painted white interspersed with vertical, horizontal, and sloping timber, usually oak, painted black. There were locks and bolts for protection from intruders. The hall was still the main room, and usually extended up to the roof. Richly carved screens separated the hall from the kitchen. The floors were stone or wood, and sometimes tile. They were often covered with rushes or plaited rush mats, on which incomers could remove the mud from their boots. Some private rooms had carpets on the floor. Walls were smoothly plastered or had carved wood paneling to control drafts. Painted cloths replaced tapestries on walls. Family portraits decorated some walls, usually in the dining room. Iron stands with candles were hung from the ceiling and used on tables. Plastered ceilings and a lavish use of glass made rooms lighter and cozy. Broad and gracious open stairways with carved wood banisters replaced the narrow winding stone steps of a circular stairwell. Most houses had several ornamented brick chimneys and clear, but uneven, glass in the
- 61. windows. There were fireplaces in living rooms, dining rooms, kitchen, and bedrooms, as well as in the hall and great chamber. Parlors were used for eating and sitting only, but not for sleeping. Closets were rooms off bedrooms in which one could read and write on a writing table, and store one's books, papers, maps, calendar, medals, collections, rarities, and oddities. Sometimes there was a study room or breakfast room as well. A gentleman used his study not only to read and to write, but to hold collections of early chronicles, charters, deeds, copied manuscripts, and coins that reflected the budding interest in antiquarianism; and to study his family genealogy, for which he had hired someone to make an elaborate diagram. He was inclined to have a few classical, religious, medical, legal, and political books there. Rooms were more spacious than before and contained oak furniture such as enclosed cupboards; cabinets; buffets from which food could be served; tables, chairs and benches with backs and cushions, and sometimes with arms; lidded chests for storing clothes and linens, and occasionally chests of drawers or wardrobes, either hanging or with shelves, for clothes. Chests of drawers developed from a drawer at the bottom of a wardrobe. Carpeting covered tables, chests, and beds. Great houses had a wardrobe chamber with a fireplace in front of which the yeoman of the wardrobe and his assistants could repair clothes and hangings. Separate bedchambers replaced bed-sitting rooms. Bedrooms all led out of each other. The lady's chamber was next to her lord's chamber, and her ladies' chambers were close to her chamber. But curtains on the four-poster beds with tops provided privacy and warmth. Beds had elaborately carved bedsteads, sheets, and a feather cover as well as a feather mattress. Often family members, servants, and friends shared the same bed for warmth or convenience. Each bedroom typically had a cabinet
- 62. with a mirror, e.g. of burnished metal or crystal, and comb on top. One brushed his teeth with tooth soap and a linen cloth, as physicians advised. Each bedroom had a pitcher and water bowl, usually silver or pewter, for washing in the morning, and a chamber pot or a stool with a hole over a bucket for nighttime use, and also fragrant flowers to override the unpleasant odors. The chamber pots and buckets were emptied into cesspits. A large set of lodgings had attached to it latrines consisting of a small cell in which a seat with a hole was placed over a shaft which connected to a pit or a drain. The servants slept in turrets or attics. Elizabeth had a room just for her bath. Breakfast was substantial, with meat, and usually eaten in one's bedroom. The great hall, often hung around with bows, pikes, swords, and guns, was not abandoned, but the family took meals there only on rare occasions. Instead they withdrew to a parlor, for domestic use, or the great chamber, for entertaining. Parlors were situated on the ground floor: the family lived and relaxed there, and had informal meals in a dining parlor. More than medieval castles and manor houses, mansions were designed with privacy in mind. The formal or state rooms were on the first floor above the ground floor, usually comprising a great chamber, a withdrawing chamber, one or more bedchambers, and a long gallery. Each room had carved chairs and cabinets. Taking a meal in the great chamber involved the same ceremonial ritual as in the manorial great chamber dating from the 1400s. The table was covered with a linen cloth. The lady of the house sat in a chair at the upper end of the table and was served first. People of high rank sat at her end of the table above the fancy silver salt cellar and pepper. People of low rank sat below it near the other end of the
- 63. table. Grace was said before the meal. Noon dinner and supper were served by cupbearer, sewer, carver, and assistants. Fine clear Italian glass drinking vessels replaced even gold and silver goblets. Food was eaten from silver dishes with silver spoons. Some gentry used two-pronged forks. Meats were plentiful and varied: e.g. beef, mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, hare, capon, red deer, fish and wild fowl as well as the traditional venison and brawn [boar]. Kitchen gardens and orchards supplied apricots, almonds, gooseberries, raspberries, melons, currants, oranges, and lemons as well as the traditional apples, pears, plums, mulberries, quinces, pomegranates, figs, cherries, walnuts, chestnuts, hazel nuts, filberts, almonds, strawberries, blackberries, dewberries, blueberries, and peaches. Also grown were sweet potatoes, artichokes, cabbages, turnips, broad beans, peas, pumpkins, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, celery, parsnips, onions, garlic, leeks, endive, capers, spinach, sorrel, lettuce, parsley, mustard, cress, sage, tarragon, fennel, thyme, mint, savory, rhubarb, and medicinal herbs. The well-to-do started to grow apricots, peaches, and oranges under glass. Sugar was used to make sweet dishes. Toothpicks made of brass or silver or merely a stiff quill were used. After the meal, some men and women were invited for conversation in a withdrawing or drawing chamber. Some might take a walk in the gardens. After the upper table was served, the food was sent to the great hall to the steward and high household officers at the high table and other servants: serving men and women, bakers, brewers, cooks, pot cleaners, laundresses, shepherds, hogherds, dairy maids, falconers, huntsmen, and stable men. What was left was given to the poor at the gates of the house. Great chambers were used primarily for meals, but also for music; dancing; plays; masques; playing cards, dice, backgammon, or chess; and daily prayers if there was no chapel.
- 64. Without the necessity of fortifications, the estate of a noble or gentleman could spread out to include not only a garden for the kitchen, but extensive orchards and beautiful formal gardens of flowers and scrubs, sometimes with fountains and maybe a maze of hedges. Trees were planted, pruned, and grafted onto each other. Householders had the responsibility to teach their family and servants religion and morals, and often read from the Bible to them. Many thought that the writers of the Bible wrote down the exact words of God, so the passages of the Bible should be taken literally. A noble lord made written rules with penalties for his country household, which numbered about a hundred, including family, retainers, and servants. He enforced them by fines, flogging, and threats of dismissal. The lady of the house saw that the household held together as an economic and social unit. The noble's family, retainers, guests, and the head servants, such as chaplain and children's tutor, and possibly a musician, dined together at one table. The family included step children and married sons and daughters with their spouses. Young couples often lived with the parents of one of them. Chandeliers of candles lit rooms. There were sandglass clocks. Popular home activities included reading, conversation, gardening, and music-making. Smoking tobacco from a clay pipe and taking snuff became popular with men. For amusement, one of the lord's household would take his place in managing the estate for twelve days. He was called the lord of misrule, and mimicked his lord, and issued comic orders. Clothes were washed in rivers and wells. At spring cleanings, windows were opened, every washable surface washed, and feather beds and pillows exposed to the sun. Most dwellings were of brick and stone. Only a few were of wood or mud and straw. The average house was now four rooms instead
- 65. of three. Yeomen might have six rooms. A weaver's house had a hall, two bedrooms, and a kitchen besides the shop. Farmers might have two instead of one room. A joiner had a one-room house with a feather bed and bolster. Even craftsmen, artificers and simple farmers slept on feather beds on bed frames with pillows, sheets, blankets, and coverlets. Loom tapestry and painted cloth was hung to keep out the cold in their single story homes. They also had pewter spoons and plates, instead of just wood or earthenware ones. Even the poorer class had glass drinking vessels, though of a coarse grade. The poor still used wooden plates and spoons. Laborers had canvas sheets. Richer farmers would build a chamber above the hall, replacing the open hearth with a fireplace and chimney at a wall. Poorer people favored ground floor extensions, adding a kitchen or second bedchamber to their cottages. Kitchens were often separate buildings to reduce the risk of fire. Roasting was done on a spit and baking in irons boxes placed in the fire or in a brick oven at the side of the fireplace. Sometimes dogs were used to turn a spit by continual running in a treadmill. Some people lived in hovels due to the custom in many places that a person could live in a home he built on village waste land if he could build it in one night. Yeomen farmers still worked from dawn to dusk. Mixed farming began. In this, some of the arable land produced food for man and the rest produced food for sheep, cattle, pigs, and poultry. This was made possible by the introduction of clover, artificial grasses, and turnip and other root crops for the animals. Since the sheep ate these crops in the field, they provided manure to maintain the fertility of the soil. This meant that many animals could be maintained throughout the winter instead of being slaughtered and salted. So salted meat and salted fish were no longer the staple food
- 66. of the poorer people during the winter. Farm laborers ate soup, porridge, milk, cheese, bacon, and beer or mead (depending on the district), and dark barley or rye bread, which often served as his plate. Gentlemen ate wheat bread. There was a scarcity of fruits and vegetables that adversely affected the health of the affluent as well as of the poor due to the overall decline in farming. During winter, there were many red noses and coughing. Farmers' wives used looms as well as spinning wheels with foot treadles. The value of grain and meat rose compared to wool. Grain became six times its value in the previous reign. Wool fell from 20s.8d. per tod to 16s. So sheep farming, which had taken about 5% of the arable land, was supplanted somewhat by crop raising, and the rural population could be employed for agriculture. In some places, the threefold system of rotation was replaced by alternating land used for crops with that used for pasture. The necessity of manuring and the rotation of crops and grasses such as clover for enrichment of the soil were recognized. Wheat, rye, barley, peas, and beans were raised. There was much appropriation of common land by individual owners by sale or force. Many farms were enclosed by fences or hedges so that each holder could be independent of his neighbors. Red and black currants, rhubarb, apricots, and oranges were now grown. These independent farmers could sell wool to clothiers, and butter, cheese, and meat to the towns. They also often did smithwork and ironwork, making nails, horseshoes, keys, locks, and agricultural implements to sell. A laborer could earn 6d. a day in winter and 7d. a day in summer. Unfree villeinage ceased on the royal estates. But most land was still farmed in common and worked in strips without enclosure. Elizabeth made several proclamations ordering the enclosure of certain enclosed land to be destroyed and the land returned to tillage.
- 67. Windmills now had vanes replacing manual labor to change the position of their sails when the wind direction changed. Prosperous traders and farmers who owned their own land assumed local offices as established members of the community. The population of the nation was about five million. Population expansion had allowed landlords to insist on shorter leases and higher rents, instead of having to choose between accepting a long lease and good rent or allowing their estates to pass out of cultivation. Over 50% of the population were on the margin of subsistence. 90% of the population lived in the countryside and 5% in the London and 5% in the other towns. Life expectancy was about 40 years of age. Over 50% were under the age of 23, while only about 9% were over 60. Fluctuations in rates of population growth were traceable back to bad harvests and to epidemics and the two were still closely related to each other: first dirth and then plague. Most of London was confined within the city wall. There were orchards and gardens both inside and outside the walls, and fields outside. Flower gardens and nurseries came into existence. No part of the city was more than a ten minute walk to the fields. Some wealthy merchants had four story mansions or country houses outside the city walls. The suburbs of the City of London grew in a long line along the river; on the west side were noblemen's houses on both sides of the Strand. East of the Tower was a seafaring and industrial population. Goldsmiths' Row was replete with four story houses. A few wealthy merchants became money- lenders for interest, despite the law against usury. The mayor of London was typically a rich merchant prince. Each trade occupied its own section of the town and every shop had its own signboard, for instance, hat and cap sellers, cloth sellers, grocers, butchers, cooks, taverns, and
- 68. booksellers. Many of the London wards were associated with a craft, such as Candlewick Ward, Bread St. Ward, Vintry Ward, and Cordwainer Ward. Some wards were associated with their location in the city, such as Bridge Ward, Tower Ward, Aldgate Ward, Queenhithe Ward, and Billingsgate Ward. People lived at the back or on the second floor of their shops. In the back yard, they grew vegetables such as melons, carrots, turnips, cabbages, pumpkins, parsnips, and cucumbers; herbs; and kept a pig. The pigs could still wander through the streets. Hyde Park was the Queen's hunting ground. London had a small zoo of ten animals, including a lion, tiger, lynx, and wolf. London was England's greatest manufacturing city. By 1600 the greatest trading companies in London ceased to be associated only with their traditional goods and were dominated by merchants whose main interest was in the cloth trade. Ambitious merchants joined a livery company to become freemen of the city and for the status and social benefits of membership. The companies still made charitable endowments, had funeral feasts, cared for the welfare of guild members, and made lavish displays of pageantry. They were intimately involved with the government of the city. They supplied members for the Court of Aldermen, which relied on the companies to maintain the City's emergency grain stores, to assess and collect taxes, to provide loans to the Crown, to control prices and markets, to provide armed men when trouble was expected, and to raise armies for the Crown at times of rebellion, war, or visits from foreign monarchs. From about 1540 to 1700, there were 23% involved in cloth or clothing industries such as weavers, tailors, hosiers, haberdashers, and cappers. 9% were leatherworkers such as skinners; tanners; those in the heavy leather crafts such as shoemakers, saddlers, and cobblers; and those in the light leather
- 69. crafts such as glovers and pursers. Another 9% worked in metals, such as the armorers, smiths, cutlers, locksmiths, and coppersmiths. 8% worked in the building trades. The victualing trades, such as bakers, brewers, butchers, costermongers [sold fruit and vegetables from a cart or street stand], millers, fishmongers, oystermen, and tapsters [bartender], grew from 9% before 1600 to 16% by 1700. Of London's workforce, 60% were involved in production; 13% were merchants before 1600; 7% were merchants by 1700; 7% were transport workers such as watermen, sailors, porters, coachmen, and shipwrights; and 5-9% were professionals and officials (this number declining). Life in London was lived in the open air in the streets. The merchant transacted business agreements and the attorney saw his clients in the street or at certain pillars at St. Paul's Church, where there was a market for all kinds of goods and services, including gentlemen's valets, groceries, spirits, books, and loans, which continued even during the daily service. Some gentlemen had offices distant from their dwelling houses such as attorneys, who had a good income from trade disputes and claims to land, which often changed hands. Plays and recreation also occurred in the streets, such as performances by dancers, musicians, jugglers, clowns, tumblers, magicians, and men who swallowed fire. The churches were continuously open and used by trades and peddlers, including tailors and letter-writers. Water carriers carried water in wood vessels on their shoulders from the Thames River or its conduits to the inhabitants three gallons at a time. A gentleman concocted an engine to convey Thames water by lead pipes up into men's houses in a certain section of the city. In 1581, a man took out a lease on one of the arches of London Bridge. There he built a waterwheel from which he pumped water to residents who lived beside the bridge. Soldiers, adventurers, physicians, apprentices,
- 70. prostitutes, and cooks were all distinguishable by their appearances. An ordinance required apprentices to wear long blue gowns and white breeches with stockings, with no ornamentation of silk, lace, gold or silver and no jewelry. They could wear a meat knife, but not a sword or dagger. Apprentices lived with their masters and worked from 6 or 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Some people knitted wool caps as they walked to later sell. There were sections of town for booksellers, butchers, brewers, hosiers, shoemakers, curriers, cooks, poulters, bow makers, textwriters, pattenmakers, and horse and oxen sellers. Large merchant companies had great halls for trade, such as the mercers, grocers, drapers, fishmongers, and goldsmiths. The other great guilds were the skinners, merchant tailers, salters, haberdashers, ironmongers, vintners, and clothworkers. Smaller guilds were those of the bakers, weavers, fruiterers, dyers, Thames watermen and lightermen, carpenters, joiners, turners, and parish clerks. The guilds insured quality by inspecting goods for a fee. About 1571, mercer and Merchant Adventurer Thomas Gresham established the Royal Exchange as a place for merchants and brokers to meet for business purposes. It became the center of London's business life. Its great bell rang at midday and at 6 p.m. Its courtyard was lined with shops that rented at 50s. yearly and became a popular social and recreational area. Gresham formulated his law that when two kinds of money of equal denomination but unequal intrinsic value are in circulation at the same time, the one of greater value will tend to be hoarded or exported, i.e. bad money will drive good money out of circulation. The work-saving knitting frame was invented in 1589 by minister William Lee; it knit crosswise loops using one continuous yarn and was operated by hand. The stocking knitters, who knitted by hand,
- 71. put up a bitter struggle against its use and chased Lee out of the country. But it did come into use. Some framework stocking knitters paid frame rent for the use of their knitting frames. Frame knitting became a scattered industry. By 1600 basement services were frequently found in town houses built on restricted sites in London. Lastly, provision of water supplies and improved sanitary arrangements reflected concern with private and public health. There was virtually no drainage. In the case of town houses, some owners would go to considerable effort to solve drainage problems, often paying cash to the civic authorities, but sometimes performing some service for the town at Court or at Westminster, in return for unlimited water or some drainage. Most affluent households, including the Queen's, moved from house to house, so their cesspits could be cleaned out and the vacated buildings aired after use. A few cesspits were made air tight. Otherwise, there was extensive burning of incense. Refuse was emptied out of front doors and shoveled into heaps on street corners. It was then dumped into the Thames or along the highways leading out of town. People put on perfume to avoid the stench. By 1600, the first toilet and water closet, where water flushed away the waste, was built. This provided a clean toilet area all year round. But these toilets were not much used because of sewer smells coming from them. The sky above London was darkened somewhat by the burning of coal in houses. Taverns served meals as well as ale. They were popular meeting places for both men and women of all backgrounds to met their friends. Men went to taverns for camaraderie and to conduct business. Women usually went to taverns with each other. Two taverns in particular were popular with the intelligentsia. Music was
- 72. usually played in the background and games were sometimes played. Beer made with hops and malt was introduced and soon there were beer drinking contests. Drunkenness became a problem. At night, the gates of the city were closed and citizens were expected to hang out lanterns. The constable and his watchmen carried lanterns and patrolled the streets asking anyone they saw why they were out so late at night. Crime was rampant in the streets and criminals were executed near to the crime scene. There were a few horse-drawn coaches with leather flaps or curtains in the unglazed windows to keep out the weather. The main thoroughfare in London was still the Thames River. Nobles, peers, and dignitaries living on the Thames had their own boats and landings. Also at the banks, merchants of all nations had landing places where ships unloaded, warehouses, and cellars for goods and merchandise. Swans swam in the clear bright water. Watermen rowed people across the Thames for a fee. In Southwark were theaters, outlaws, cutpurses, prostitutes, and prisons. In 1550 Southwark became the 26th and last ward of London. In the summer, people ate supper outside in public. As of old times, brokers approved by the Mayor and aldermen made contracts with merchants concerning their wares. Some contracts included holding wares as security. Some craftsmen and manual workers extended this idea to used garments and household articles, which they took as pawns, or security for money loaned. This began pawn brokerage, which was lucrative. The problem was that many of the items pawned had been stolen. Elizabeth had good judgment in selecting her ministers and advisors for her Privy Council, which was organized like Henry VIII's
- 73. Privy Council. The Queen's Privy Council of about twelve ministers handled foreign affairs, drafted official communiques, issued proclamations, supervised the county offices: the 1500 Justices of the Peace, chief constables, sheriffs, lord lieutenants, and the county militias. It fixed wages and prices in London, advised Justices of the Peace on wages elsewhere, and controlled exports of grain to keep prices down and supplies ample. It banned the eating of meat two days a week so that the fishing industry and port towns would prosper. When grain was scarce in 1596, Elizabeth made a proclamation against those ingrossers, forestallers, and ingraters of grain who increased its price by spreading false rumors that it was scarce because much of it was being exported, which was forbidden. There were labor strikes in some towns for higher wages after periods of inflation. In 1591, London authorities rounded up the sturdy vagabonds and set them to work cleaning out the city ditches for 4d. per day. During the Tudor period, the office of Secretary of State was established. Elizabeth did not allow any gentleman to live in London purely for pleasure, but sent those not employed by the Court back to their country manors to take care of and feed the poor of their parishes. Her proclamation stated that sundry persons of ability that had intended to save their charges by living privately in London or towns corporate, thereby leaving their hospitality and the relief of their poor neighbors, are charged not to break up their households; and all others that have of late time broken up their households to return to their houses again without delay. She never issued a license for more than 100 retainers. She was partially successful in stopping Justices of the Peace and sheriffs from wearing the liveries of great men. She continued the policy of Henry VII to replace the rule of force by the rule of law. Service of the crown and influence at court
- 74. became a better route to power and fortune than individual factions based on local power structures. At the lowest level, bribery became more effective than bullying. The qualities of the courtier, such as wit, and the lawyer became more fashionable than the qualities of the soldier. Most of the men in Elizabeth's court had attended a university, such as Francis Bacon, son of the Lord Keeper, who became a writer, attorney, member of the Commons, and experimental philosopher; and Walter Ralegh, the writer and sea fighter, who had a humble origin. Many wives and daughters of Privy Councilors attended the Queen in her privy chamber. Most of the knights or gentlemen of the royal household were also members of Parliament or Justices of the Peace for certain districts in the counties. Instead of the office of Chancellor, which was the highest legal office, Elizabeth appointed a man of common birth to be Lord Keeper of the Great Seal; she never made a Lord Keeper a peer. Elizabeth encouraged her lords to frankly make known their views to her, in public or in private, before she decided on a course of action. She had affectionate nicknames for her closest courtiers, and liked to make puns. The rooms of the Queen were arranged as they had been under Henry VIII: the great hall was the main dining room where the servants ate and which Elizabeth attended on high days and holidays; the great chamber was the main reception room, where her gentlemen and yeomen of the guard waited; the presence chamber was where she received important visitors; beyond lay her privy chamber and her bedchamber. She ate her meals in the privy chamber attended only by her ladies. She believed that a light supper was conducive to good health. The Lord Chamberlain attended the Queen's person and managed her privy chamber and her well-born grooms and yeomen and ladies-in-waiting. The Lord Steward managed the
- 75. domestic servants below the stairs, from the Lord Treasurer to the cooks and grooms of the stable. The court did not travel as much as in the past, but became associated with London. Elizabeth took her entire court on summer visits to the country houses of leading nobility and gentry. Courtiers adopted symbolic devices as statements of their reaction to life or events, e.g. a cupid firing arrows at a unicorn signified chastity under attack by sexual desire. They carried them enameled on jewels, had them painted in the background of their portraits, and sometimes had them expressed on furniture, plate, buildings, or food. The authority of the Queen was the authority of the state. Elizabeth's experience led her to believe that it was most important for a monarch to have justice, temperance, magnanimity, and judgment. She claimed that she never set one person before another, but upon just cause, and had never preferred anyone to office for the preferrer's sake, but only when she believed the person worthy and fit for the office. She never blamed those who did their best and never discharged anyone form office except for cause. Further, she had never been partial or prejudiced nor had listened to any person contrary to law to pervert her verdicts. She never credited a tale that was first told to her and never corrupted her judgment with a censure before she had heard the cause. She did not think that the glory of the title of monarch made all she did lawful. To her, clemency was as eminent in supreme authority as justice and severity. Secular education and especially the profession of law was now the route for an able but poor person to rise to power, rather than as formerly through military service or through the church.
- 76. The first stage of education was primary education, which was devoted to learning to read and write in English. This was carried out at endowed schools or at home by one's mother or a tutor. The children of the gentry were usually taught in their homes by private teachers of small classes. Many of the poor became literate enough to read the Bible and to write letters. However, most agricultural workers and laborers remained illiterate. They signed with an x, which represented the Christian cross and signified its solemnity. Children of the poor were expected to work from the age of 6 or 7. The next stage of education was grammar [secondary] school or a private tutor. A student was taught rhetoric (e.g. poetry, history, precepts of rhetoric, and classical oratory), some logic, and Latin and Greek grammar. English grammar was learned through Latin grammar and English style through translation from Latin. As a result, they wrote English in a Latin style. Literary criticism was learned through rhetoric. There were disputations on philosophical questions such as how many angels could sit on a pin's point, and at some schools, orations. The students sat in groups around the hall for their lessons. The boys and some girls were also taught hawking, hunting and archery. There were no playgrounds. The grammar student and the undergraduate were tested for proficiency by written themes and oral disputations, both in Latin. The middle classes from the squire to the petty tradesman were brought into contact with the works of the best Greek and Roman writers. The best schools and many others had the students read Cicero - the De Officiis, the epistles and orations; and some of Ovid, Terence, Sallust, Virgil, some medieval Latin works, the Distichs of Cato, and sometimes Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. The students also had to repeat prayers, recite the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, and to memorize catechisms. Because the students came from the
- 77. various social classes such as gentlemen, parsons, yeomen, mercers, and masons, they learned to be on friendly and natural terms with other classes. A typical school-day lasted from 7:00 AM -to 5:00 PM. There were so many grammar schools founded and financed by merchants and guilds such as the Mercers and Fishmongers that every incorporated town had at least one. Grammar schools were headed by schoolmasters, who were licensed by the bishop and paid by the town. Flogging with a birch rod was used for discipline. However, the grammar schools did not become the breeding grounds for humanist ideas because the sovereigns were faced with religious atomism and political unrest, so used the grammar schools to maintain public order and achieve political and religious conformity. Many grammar schools had preparatory classes called petties for boys and girls who could not read and write to learn to do so. The girls did not usually stay beyond the age of nine. This was done by a schoolmaster's assistant, a parish clerk, or some older boys. Some founders of grammar schools linked their schools with particular colleges in the universities following the example of Winchester being associated with New College, Oxford; and Eton with King's College, Cambridge. The new charter of Westminster in 1560 associated the school with Christ Church, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge. The government of Oxford University, which had been Catholic, was taken from the resident teachers and put into the hands of the Vice-Chancellor, Doctors, Heads of Colleges, and Proctors. Cambridge already had a strong reformed element from Erasmus' influence. Oxford University and Cambridge University were incorporated to have a perpetual existence for the virtuous
- 78. education of youth and maintenance of good literature. The Chancellors, masters, and scholars had a common seal. Oxford was authorized to and did acquire its own printing press. Undergraduate students entered about age 16 and resided in rooms in colleges rather than in scattered lodgings. The graduate fellows of the college who were M.A.s of under three years standing had the responsibility, instead of the university, for teaching the undergraduates. This led many to regard their fellowship as a position for life rather than until they completed their post-graduate studies. But they were still required to resign on marrying or taking up an ecclesiastical benefice. The undergraduates were fee-paying members of the college or poor scholars. Some of the fee-paying members or gentlemen-commoners or fellow-commoners were the sons of the nobility and gentry and even shared the fellows' table. The undergraduate students were required to have a particular tutors, who were responsible for their moral behavior as well as their academic studies. It was through the tutors that modern studies fit for the education of a Renaissance gentleman became the norm. Those students not seeking a degree could devise their own courses of study with their tutors' permission. Less than about 40% stayed long enough to get a degree. Many students who were working on the seven year program for a Master's Degree went out of residence at college after the four year's bachelor course. Students had text books to read rather than simply listening to a teacher read books to them. In addition to the lecturing of the M.A.s and the endowed university lectureships, the university held exercises every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in which the student was meant through disputation, to apply the formal precepts in logic and rhetoric to the practical business of public speaking and debate. Final examinations
- 79. were still by disputation. The students came to learn to read Latin easily. Students acted in Latin plays. If a student went to a tavern, he could be flogged. For too elaborate clothing, he could be fined. Fines for absence from class were imposed. However, from this time until 1945, a young man's university days were regarded as a period for the sowing of wild oats. All students had to reside in a college or hall, subscribe to the 39 articles of the university, the Queen's supremacy, and the prayer book. Meals were taken together in the college halls. The universities were divided into three tables: a fellows' table of earls, barons, gentlemen, and doctors; a second table of masters of arts, bachelors, and eminent citizens, and a third table of people of low condition. Professors, doctors, masters of arts and students were all distinguishable by their gowns. Undergraduate education was considered to be for the purpose of good living as well as good learning. It was to affect the body, mind, manners, sentiment, and business, instead of just leading to becoming a better disputant. The emphasis on manners came mostly from an Italian influence. The university curriculum included Latin and Greek languages and was for four years. The student spent at least one year on logic (syllogizing, induction, deduction, fallacies, and the application of logic to other studies), at least one year on rhetoric, and at least one year on philosophy. The latter included physics, metaphysics, history, law, moral and political philosophy, modern languages, and ethics (domestic principles of government, military history, diplomatic history, and public principles of government), and mathematics (arithmetic, geometry, algebra, music, optics, astronomy). The astronomy taught was that of Ptolemy, whose view was that the celestial bodies revolved around a
- 80. spherical earth, on which he had laid out lines of longitude and latitude. There were lectures on Greek and Latin literature, including Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero. There were no courses on English history in the universities. About 1564, the curriculum was changed to two terms of grammar, four terms of rhetoric, five terms of dialectic (examining ideas and opinions logically, e.g. ascertaining truth by analyzing words in their context and equivocations), three terms of arithmetic, and two terms of music. There were now negative numbers, irrational numbers such as square roots of non-integers, and imaginary numbers such as square roots of negative numbers. The circumference and area of a circle could be computed from its radius, and the Pythagorean theorem related the three sides of a right triangle. Also available were astrology, alchemy (making various substances such as acids and alcohols), cultivation of gardens, and breeding of stock, especially dogs and horses. Astronomy, geometry, natural and moral philosophy, and metaphysics were necessary for a master's degree. The university libraries of theological manuscripts in Latin were supplemented with many non-religious books. There were graduate studies in theology, medicine, music, and law, which was a merging of civil and canon law together with preparatory work for studying common law at the Inns of Court in London. In London, legal training was given at the four Inns of Court. Students were called to dinner by a horn. Only young gentry were admitted there. A year's residence there after university gave a gentleman's son enough law to decide disputes of tenants on family estates or to act as Justice of the Peace in his home county. A full
- 81. legal education gave him the ability to handle all family legal matters, including property matters. Many later became Justices of the Peace or members of Parliament. Students spent two years in the clerks' commons, and two in the masters' commons. Besides reading textbooks in Latin, the students observed at court and did work for practicing attorneys. After about four more years' apprenticeship, a student could be called to the outer bar. There was a real bar of iron or wood separating the justices from the attorneys and litigants. As Utter Barrister or attorney, he would swear to do no falsehood in the court, increase no fees but be contented with the old fees accustomed, delay no man for lucre or malice, but use myself in the office of an Attorney within the Court according to my learning and discretion, so help me God, Amen. Students often also studied and attended lectures on astronomy, geography, history, mathematics, theology, music, navigation, foreign languages, and lectures on anatomy and medicine sponsored by the College of Physicians. A tour of the continent became a part of every gentleman's education. After about eight years' experience, attorneys could become Readers, who gave lecturess; or Benchers, who made the rules. Benchers, who were elected by other Benchers, were entrusted with the government of their Inn of Court, and usually were King's counsel. Five to ten years later, a few of these were picked by the Queen for Serjeant at Law, and therefore eligible to plead at the bar of common pleas. Justices were chosen from the Serjeants at Law. Gresham left the Royal exchange to the city and the Mercer's Company on condition that they use some of its profits to appoint and pay seven lecturers in law, rhetoric, divinity, music, physics, geometry, and astronomy to teach at his mansion, which was called Gresham College. They were installed in 1598 according to his Will.
- 82. Their lectures were free, open to all, and often in English. They embraced mathematics and new scientific ideas and emphasized their practical applications. A tradition of research and teaching was established in mathematics and astronomy. There were language schools teaching French, Italian, and Spanish to the aspiring merchant and to gentlemen's sons and daughters. Many people kept diaries. Letter writing was frequent at court. Most forms of English literature were now available in print. Many ladies read aloud to each other in reading circles and to their households. Some wrote poetry and did translations. Correctness of spelling was beginning to be developed. Printers tended to standardize it. There was much reading of romances, jest books, histories, plays, prayer collections, and encyclopedias, as well as the Bible. In schools and gentry households, favorite reading was Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queen about moral virtues and the faults and errors which beset them; Erasmus' New Testament, Paraphrases, Colloquies, and Adages; Sir Thomas North's edition of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans; Elyot's The Book Named the Governor; and Hoby's translation of The Courtier. Gentlemen read books on the ideals of gentlemanly conduct, such as Institucion of a Gentleman (1555), and Laurence Humphrey's The Nobles: or of Nobilites. Francis Bacon's Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral were popular for their wisdom. In them he commented on many subjects from marriage to atheism. He cautioned against unworthy authority, mass opinion, custom, and ostentation of apparent wisdom. He urged the use of words with their correct meaning.
- 83. At a more popular level were Caxton's The Golden Legend, Baldwin's Mirror for Magistrates, Foxe's Book of Martyrs about English Protestant who suffered at the stake, sensational stories and pamphlets, printed sermons (including those of Switzerland's Calvin), chronicles, travel books, almanacs, herbals, and medical works. English fiction began and was read. There were some books for children. Books were copyrighted, although non-gentlemen writers needed a patron. At the lowest level of literacy were ballads. Next to sermons, the printing press was kept busiest with rhymed ballads about current events. Printed broadsheets on political issues could be distributed quickly. In London, news was brought to the Governor of the News Staple, who classified it as authentic, apocryphal, barber's news, tailor's news, etc. and stamped it. Books were also censored for matter against the state church. This was carried out through the Stationers' Company. This company was now, by charter, the official authority over the entire book trade, with almost sole rights of printing. (Schools had rights of printing). It could burn other books and imprison their printers. Italian business techniques were set forth in textbooks for merchants, using Italian terms of business: debit (debito), credit (credito), inventory (inventorio), journal (giornal), and cash (cassa). The arithmetic of accounting operations, including multiplication, was described in An Introduction for to Lerne to Reckonwith the Penne or Counters in 1537. Accounting advice was extended to farmers as well as merchants in the 1569 The Pathway to Perfectness in the Accomptes of Debitor and Creditor by James Peele, a salter of London. It repeated the age-old maxim: …receive before you write, and write before you pay, So shall no part of your accompt in any wise decay. The 1589 Marchants Avizo by Johne Browne, merchant of Bristol, gave information on foreign currencies
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