International human rights law as power/knowledge

Human Rights Quarterly

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 1046-1068

  Evans, Tony ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GLOBALIZATION; HUMAN RIGHTS; LAW ENFORCEMENT; LEGAL RIGHTS; POLITICAL DISCOURSE;

EID: 27644516813     PISSN: 02750392     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hrq.2005.0035     Document Type: Review

References (123)

1. Bertil Dunér, The Global Human Rights Regime 21 (2002).
2. Michael Freeman, Human Rights: An Interdisciplinary Approach (2002).
3. Tony Evans, Citizenship and Human Rights in the Age of Globalization, 25 Alternatives: Social Transformation & Humane Governance 415 (2000);
4. J.S. Watson, Legal Theory, Efficacy, and Validity in the Development of Human Rights Norms in International Law, 3 Ill. L. F. 609 (1979).
5. Mervyn Frost, Ethics in International Relations: A Constitutive Theory (1996).
6. Raymond Plant, The Justification for Intervention: Needs Before Contexts, in Political Theory, International Relations and the Ethics of Intervention 104 (Ian Forbes & Mark Hoffman eds., 1993).
7. David Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul: Human Rights and International Intervention (2002).
8. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History, Nat'l Int., Summer 1989, at 3.
9. The Oxford English Dictionary defines problematize as to "render problematic; to view or interpret (an issue, etc.) as a problem requiring a solution."
10. Andrew Linklater, What is a Good International Citizen?, in Ethics and Foreign Policy 21 (Paul Keal ed., 1992);
11. Stephen P. Marks, From the "Single confused Page" to the "Decalogue for Six Billion Persons": The Roots of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the French Revolution, 20 Hum. Rts. Q. 459 (1998).
12. B.S. Chimni, Marxism and International Law: A Contemporary Analysis, 34 Econ. & Pol. Wkly. 349 (1999).
13. Chandler, supra note 6 (referencing Alex De Waal).
14. Michel Foucault, What is Critique?, in What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions 383 (James Schmidt ed., 1996).
15. Alan Hunt, Explorations in Law and Society: Towards a constitutive Theory of Law (1993).
16. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977).
17. David Cozens Hoy, Power, Repression, Progress: Foucault, Lukes, and the Frankfurt School, in 5 Michel Foucault (2): Critical Assessments 173 (Barry Smart ed., 1995);
18. Joseph Rouse, Power/Knowledge, in The Cambridge Companion to Foucault 92 (Gary Gutting ed., 1994).
19. The term truth-claims refers to the unproblematic assumptions about the nature of social life upon which discourse is built.
20. Makau Mutua, Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique (2002).
21. Evans, supra note 3.
22. Frost, supra note 4, at 266.
23. Torkel Opsahl, Instruments of Implementation of Human Rights, 10 Hum. Rts. L. J. 13 (1989).
24. Chandler, supra note 6, at 33.
25. Stephan Gill, Market Civilisation and Disciplinary Neoliberalism, 24 Millennium J. Int'l Stud. 399, 404 (1995).
26. R.J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations 32 (1986);
27. Tony Evans, Universal Human Rights: "As Much Round and Round As Ever Forward," 7 Int'l J. Hum. Rts. 155 (2003).
28. See D.D. Raphael, The Liberal Western Tradition of Human Rights, 18 Int'l Soc. Sci. J. 22 (1966).
29. Terrell Carver, The Postmodern Marx (1998).
30. Vincent, supra note 23.
31. Antonio Cassese, Human Rights in a Changing World (1990).
32. Christine Chinkin, International Law and Human Rights, in Human Rights Fifty Years On: A Reappraisal 105, 106 (Tony Evans ed., 1998).
33. Marks, supra note 9;
34. Robert McCorquodale & Richard Fairbrother, Globalization and Human Rights, 21 Hum. Rts. Q. 735 (1999).
35. Tony Evans, US Hegemony and the Project of Universal Human Rights (1996);
36. Neil Stammers, Human Rights and Power, XLI Pol. Stud. 70 (1993).
37. Fukuyama, supra note 7 at 1.
38. Mutua, supra note 17.
39. Id. at 4.
40. Dunér, supra note 1, at 35.
41. See, for example, the critique of John Charvet in Anthony J. Langlois, Human Rights: The Globalization and Fragmentation of Moral Discourse, 28 Rev. Int'l Stud. 479, 484 (2002).
42. Antonio Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (Quintin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith eds., 1971).
43. Michel Foucault, Two Lectures, in Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate 17 (Michael Kelly ed., 1994).
44. Gramsci, supra note 36, at 245-46, 326-32.
45. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, supra note 14, at 222.
46. Carlos Prado, Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy (1995).
47. See Foucault, Discipline and Punish, supra note 14, at 222.
48. Nancy Fraser, Foucault on Modern Power: Empirical Insights and Normative Confusions in 5 Michel Foucault (2): Critical Assessments, supra note 15, at 133.
49. Robert Cox, Democracy in Hard Times: Economic Globalization and the Limits to Liberal Democracy, in The Transformation of Democracy?: Globalization and Territorial Democracy 49, 58 (Anthony McGrew ed., 1997).
50. Duncan Ivison, The Disciplinary Moment: Foucault, Law and the Reincription of Rights, in The Later Foucault: Politics and Philosophy 129 (Jeremy Moss ed., 1998).
51. Gill, Market Civilisation and Disciplinary Neoliberalism, supra note 22, at 412.
52. It is not unusual for defenders of market discipline rights to dismiss the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as "aspirational" and therefore qualitatively different from other claims. See, e.g., House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Report on UK Ethical Foreign Policy, HC100-4 (1997).
53. Karl Marx: Selected Writings 61 (Oxford University Press, 2000).
54. Prado, supra note 40.
55. Kevin Watkins, The Oxfam Poverty Report 250 (1995).
56. Noam Chomsky, World Orders, Old and New 162 (1994).
57. Micheal Cox et al., Introduction to American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies, and Impact 1 (Micheal Cox et al. eds., 2000).
58. Robert W. Cox, Civil Society at the Turn of the Millennium: Prospects for an Alternative World Order, 25 Rev. Int'l Stud. 3 (1999).
59. Leo Panitch, Rethinking the Role of the State, in Globalization: Critical Reflections 83 (James H. Mittelman ed., 1996).
60. World Health Organization, WHO Policy Perspectives on Medicines: Globalization, TRIPS and Access to Pharmaceuticals (Mar. 2001), available at www.who.int/medicines/library/general/PPMedicines/ PPM03ENG.pdf.
61. Susan George, The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century (1999).
62. Joseph A. Camilleri, Rethinking Sovereigny in a Shrinking, Fragmented world, in Contending Sovereignties: Redefining Political Community 13 (R.B.J. Walker & Saul H. Mendlovitz eds., 1990).
63. Tony Evans, The Politics of Human Rights: A Global Perspective 67-69 (2001).
64. Id.
65. Joyce V. Millen et al., Dying for Growth Part II: The Political Influence of National and Transnational Corporations, in Dying For Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor 225 (Jim Yong Kim et al. eds., 2000).
66. Malcolm Waters, Globalization (1995).
67. Evans, The Politics of Human Rights, supra note 57.
68. Smitu Kothari, Global Economic Institutions and Democracy: A View from India, in Beyong Bretton Woods: Alternatives to the Global Economic Order 39 (John Cavanagh et al. eds., 1994);
69. Katarina Tomaševski, Development Aid and Human Rights Revisited (1993).
70. World Trade Organization, WTO Geneva Ministerial Declaration, adopted 20 May 1998, available at www.jus.uio.no/lm/ wto.ministerial.declaration.geneva.1998/doc.
71. James H. Mittelman, The Dynamics of Globalization, in Globalization: Critical Reflections, supra note 53, at 1.
72. Much of the debate on "Asian values" is conducted in the language of tolerance of human rights records. The need to modernize rapidly and the colonial heritage are often cited as the rationale for this plea. See, e.g., Kishmore Mabbubani, The West and the Rest, Nat'l Int., Summer 1992, at 3.
73. For debates on Asian values, see Joanne R. Bauer & Daniel A. Bell, The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights (1999);
74. Diane K. Mauzy, The Human Rights and 'Asian Values' Debate in Southeast Asia: Trying to Clarify the Key Issues, 10 Pac. Rev. 201 (1997).
75. V.T. Tamilmoran, Human Rights in Third World Perspective 69-71 (1992).
76. Kishore Mahbubani, The West and the Rest, Nat'l Int., Summer 1992, at 3.
77. Michael C. Davies, The Price of Rights: Constitution and East Asian Economic Development, 20 Hum. Rts. Q. 303, 312 (1998).
78. Someshwar Singh, Human Rights - A Charade of the Virtuous (21 Mar. 2000), available at www.twnside.org.sg/title/charade.htm.
79. Gill, Market Civilisation and Disciplinary Neoliberalism, supra note 22, at 135-39;
80. Stephen Gill, Constitutionalizing Inequality and the Clash of Civilizations, 4 Int'l Stud. Rev. 47 (2002).
81. V.J. Staples, What are Human Rights?, The Lancet, May 1999.
82. Charles Jones, Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism (1999);
83. Mahbubani, supra note 67;
84. Mahmood Monshipouri, Islamic Thinking and the Internationalization of Human Rights, LXXXIV Muslim World 217 (1994).
85. Alan Hunt & Gary Wickham, Foucault and Law: Towards a Sociology of Law and Governance 2 (1994).
86. Johan Galtung, Human Rights in Another Key (1994);
87. MUTUA, supra note 17.
88. Foucault, Two Lectures, supra note 37.
89. Mustapha Kamal Pasha & David L. Blaney, Elusive Paradise: The Promise and Perils of Global Civil Society, 23 Alternatives 417, 424 (1998).
90. Id.
91. James Keeley, Towards a Foucauldian Analysis of International Regimes, 44 Int'l Org. 83 (1990).
92. Barry Hindess, Power and Rationality: The Western Conception of Political Community, 17 Alternatives 149 (1992).
93. Millen et al., supra note 59.
94. Id. at 238.
95. Christian Aid, Fair Shares? Transnational Corporations, the WTO and the World's Poorest Communities (1999), available at www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/9911fair/fairshar.htm.
96. Id.
97. Cox, supra note 51;
98. Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (David Held et al. eds., 1999);
99. Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Society (1998);
100. Robert O'Brien et al., Contesting Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements (2000);
101. Pasha & Blaney, supra note 76.
102. Jan Aart Scholte, Towards a Critical Theory of Globalization, in Gobalization: Theory and Practice 43 (Elenore Kofman & Gillian Young eds., 1996);
103. Tony Spybey, Globalization and World Society (1996)
104. Human rights literature often focuses upon the post-World War II achievements in standard setting, including the generation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the major covenants. Optimists tend to focus upon these achievements, leaving questions of sovereignty, legitimacy, the nature and status of international human rights law, and reports of continued violations throughout the world to one side.
105. See Tony Evans, Human Rights Fifty Years On: A Reappraisal (1998) for examples of pessimists.
106. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1997: Human Development to Eradicate Poverty (1997);
107. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1999: Globalization with a Human Face (1999).
108. Robert Hormats, Globalization and Human Rights: Complete Interviews (Public Broadcasting Service, Feb. 1998), available at www.globalvision.org/program/globalization/hormats1.html.
109. Neil Stammers, Social Movements and the Social Construction of Human Rights, 21 Hum. Rts. Q. 980 (1999). Such a conclusion raises questions about the role and status of NGOs that seek to promote human rights through formal means, for example, by gaining the right to a seat during negotiations for a new treaty. Although the answers to these questions cannot be pursued here, some scholars have suggested that the most prominent NGOs do not offer a radical challenge to market disciplinary values but, instead, are co-opted organizations that lend further legitimacy to the existing order. In cases in which NGOs have given some attention to economic and social rights (Amnesty International, for example) this does not imply a challenge to market discipline. Furthermore, high profile NGOs accept that international law provides the most effective means for securing universal human rights but have little to say about the contemporary disciplines that are often the cause of violations.
110. Marshall Conley & Daniel Livermore, Human Rights, Development and Democracy, XIXI Canadian J. Dev. Stud. 19, 19 (1996).
111. Mary Ann Tetrault, Regimes and Liberal World Order, 13 Alternatives 5 (1988).
112. Pasha & Blaney, supra note 76, at 346.
113. Mahbubani, supra note 67.
114. Michael J. Shapiro, Social Science, Geophilosophy and Inequality, 4 Int'l Stud. Rev. 25 (2002).
115. Ankie Hoogvelt, Globalization and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development (2001);
116. O'Brien et al., supra note 84.
117. Scholte, supra note 85;
118. Caroline Thomas, International Financial Institutions and Social and Economic Rights: An Exploration, in Human Rights Fifty Years On: A Reappraisal, supra note 28, at 161.
119. Roy Bhaskar, Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom 76 (1991).
120. Chinkin, supra note 28;
121. Tomaševski, supra note 62.
122. Galtung, supra note 74.
123. Foucault, Two Lectures, supra note 37.