Reflections on culture and cultural rights

South Atlantic Quarterly

Volumn 103, Issue 2-3, 2004, Pages 419-434

  Robbins, Bruce ^a   Stamatopoulou, Elsa ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33144468016     PISSN: 00382876     EISSN: 15278026     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00382876-103-2-3-419     Document Type: Review

References (15)

1. Introduction to Jane K. Cowan, Marie-Bénédicte Dembour, and Richard A. Wilson, eds., Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1-26; quotation from 3
2. David Scott, "Culture in Political Theory," Political Theory 31.1 (February 2003): 92-115; quotation from 101. Scott assumes that liberalism - the detachment from one's beliefs-is stronger in the United States than in our opinion it is (110)
3. Scott, "Culture in Political Theory," 106, 107
4. See, however, Susan Hegeman's brilliant critique of the anticulture position in Patterns for America: Modernism and the Concept of Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). Discussing the argument in favor of banishing the culture concept, as presented for example by Virginia Dominguez and Johannes Fabian, Hegeman shows that to banish the word because of the impure Eurocentric baggage of "unfortunate premises and presuppositions" it carries is to remain within the worst of those premises and presuppositions: "Terminological scrupulousness would entail an intensification of our 'cultural' discourse, not its banishment" (201)
5. See James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Scott is summarizing pages 5-6 of Tully's argument
6. Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 10
7. Rachel Sieder and Jessica Witchell, "Advancing Indigenous Claims through the Law: Reflections on the Guatemalan Peace Process," in Cowan, Dembour, and Wilson, Culture and Rights, 201-25; quotation from 205. "The term 'indigenous' is itself conceptually based around the relation of the original population to that of their colonizers. The construction of an indigenous identity can in one sense be understood as a reaction to the historical projection of the Indian as the 'other,' subjected to policies of assimilation or eradication. The distinctive criteria for indigenous populations are therefore primordialism and cultural difference (Saugestad 1993); in order to gain the right to self-determination, indigenous movements evoke the language of historical continuity, on which they stake their claim to collective identity" (205)
8. Jane K. Cowan, "Ambiguities of an Emancipatory Discourse: The Making of a Macedonian Minority in Greece," in Cowan, Dembour, and Wilson, Culture and Rights, 152-76
9. Colin Samson, "Rights as the Reward for Simulated Cultural Sameness: The Innu in the Canadian Colonial Context," in Cowan, Dembour, and Wilson, Culture and Rights, 226-48
10. During the debates at the UN General Assembly, many statements of developing and developed countries alike saw guarantees for cultural pluralism within the context of the overall human rights regime, despite different degrees of emphasis. See UN documents A/56/PV.40, A/56/PV.41, A/56/PV.42, A/56/PV.43. In introducing the item in 1998, Iran spoke of the "necessity and significance of dialogue and the objection of force, the promotion of understanding in the cultural, economic and political fields, and the strengthening of the foundations of liberty, justice and human rights" (UN document A/53/PV.8). For the 2001 UN General Assembly resolution "Global Agenda for Dialogue among Civilizations," see UN document A/RES/56/6
11. Marc Manganaro, Culture, 1922; The Emergence of a Concept (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)
12. Margaret Wilson and Paul Hunt, eds.. Culture, Rights, and Cultural Rights: Perspectives from the South Pacific (Wellington, NZ: Huia, 2000), 13
13. See Walter A. Kemp, ed., Quiet Diplomacy in Action: The OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities (Boston: Kluwer Law International, 2001)
14. For one view of this intellectual property movement, see Michael F. Brown, Who Owns Native Culture? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003)
15. See Wendy Brown, "Suffering Rights as Paradoxes," Constellations 7.2 (2000): 230-41. Though cultural rights like the right to education in one's own language may seem "soft" to the nonexpert eye, they require an important investment in resources. And once translated into (always scarce) resources, they make visible the zero-sum relation between the rights of this group and the rights of that group, a clash of rights that belies the official position that rights are "interdependent and indivisible."