Social Justice & Human Rights

Sept 19th - The Political Language of Human Rights

• Generalized language/usage of “man” in Declarations to refer to everyone (in modern times)
• Colonial Language used while on colonized land → used to oppress people indigenous to Canada
• History is always a project of the present (i.e. it always is a product of social and political context)
  • Be critical of what points are made
  • Projection of perspective onto social and political contexts
• Human rights require 3 interlocking qualities
  • Natural (inherent in human rights)
  • Equal (the same for everyone)
  • Universal (applicable everywhere)
• Natural rights were easier to except than equality and universality due to social and political context
• European Enlightenment (1650-1800)
  • Before this time it was called the “dark ages”
  • Foreground reasoning, science, law to reason and support understandings or thought (science and reason)
    • This included both technological advances and the rational organization of society
    • Scientific progress (like Galileo’s theories on a heliocentric universe) led to people being worried about the implications it would have on the public’s morals
    • Romanticizing the past due to the progress made by industrialization
  • Individualism (and individual moral autonomy)
    • How is political and moral authority organized?
    • Who had access to the work of God?
    • The church and royalty had the most power because of the access to information/knowledge.
    • Moral power over those who were not literate or positions of privilege
    • When the word of God (the Bible) became more widespread there was a rise in literacy which allowed people to begin to question the traditional basis of religious or royal authority
  • European expansion and colonialism
    • Empire building as a european
    • The start of the modern “world system” in the 15th century
      • International economy, trades routes, capitalism in colonies
    • By the 18th century, a new class of “merchants” were starting to gain political power
      • Going abroad to other countries/continents to take precious resources and sell them in areas where it is harder to acquire
      • Making immense wealth and begin to challenge the monarchy
      • Change in political empire
      • Larger distribution of inequality, change in class systems
      • Moving away from an absolute monarchy, merchants and others acquiring wealth demanding to have their voices heard
• Changes in the foundation of Law and Authority
  • If not religion, is it society?
  • How is it organized? How should it be?
  • Central problem in social and political thought: Changing understandings of what IS rethinking what OUGHT to be
  • Philosophers criticize/comment on current political/social changes
  • Hobbes talked about Social Contract Theory
    • If people are more than just subjects, what are they? And how should they relate to each other?
    • People join together to give up some of their freedom to a sovereign authority (an entity with the right to make and enforce rules)
    • This is beneficial because it brings humans out of a “state of nature”
    • Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan (1651)
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau: a different type of social contract
    • “Discourse on Inequality” (1755)
      • Broader statement on society
      • Things go wrong the moment people start gathering more than they need (i.e. society corrupts)
      • The “noble savage” myth → we strip away of society we go back to being at peace and with nature → infantilizes non-europeans
      • Reason and progress are not necessarily good without moral cultivation
    • The Social Contract (1762)
      • About citizenship, how to be a good citizen, being engaged in politics and the community
      • The road to freedom is through politics
      • Foundations of good decisions is people engaging their will in a civilized way
      • We are better off combining to form a collectivity to make decisions for ourselves
      • This is far better than the traditional sources of authority
• The Rise of the Modern State
  • Morality backed by religion which then supports political movements
  • Depicted in popular media and art to promote a message
• The American Revolution
  • Political context of the American and French revolutions: the modern state as a product of challenges to traditional authority based on these themes
    • Who has the right to rule?
  • Hunt (in chapter. 3): there were two types of rights discussed in the 1760s and 1770s
    • Particular rights of (British) citizens
    • Universal rights of “free men”
      • Deserving of universal rights based on their status (wealthy, white men who were property owners)
    • Colonists facing taxation issues, not as autonomous as they wish, Boston tea party
  • The limitations of the first led to the embrace of the ideas of Universal rights
    • Note the list of grievances against the King of England in the Declaration of Independence
  • New Legal Scholarship on Natural Rights
    • Protestants related to religion and what defines man
    • Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui: “The idea of Right, and even more that of natural law, are manifestly related to man’s nature. It is therefore from this nature itself of man, from his constitution, and from his condition that we must deduce the principles of this science” (Hunt 2007, pg 120)
    • Rights thus reflected the IS and the OUGHT of 18th century American politics
    • Hunt talks about this in terms of the “problem of self-evidence”
    • What is our nature? What are we owed as “men”?
  • The Paradox of Slavery
    • Jefferson had a slave taking care of him when he wrote that all men are created equal
    • The 1619 Project: The 1619 Project is a long-form journalism endeavor developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine focused on subjects of slavery and the founding of the United States.
    • The language of universal rights may have been a practical strategy, but it also opened a door to political action
    • Once you start to pick up the language and concepts of human rights you can come to other conclusions that contradict other/older concepts
  • Return to Particular Rights
    • US Constitution signed in 1791
    • This included the Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments of the Constitution)
    • These rights applied specifically to US citizens (and their relationship to the new US government)
• The French Revolution

Causes of the French Revolution

• Inspired by the Americans and their revolution
• Economic: Financial crisis and increasing poverty
• Social: Growth of the industrial middle class
• Intellectual: New ideas about political autonomy
• Political: Out of touch Monarchy that responded to crisis with force
• Hunt: Additional Factors
  • Rise of literacy allowed social/political messages to be told through media like literature which caused large groups of people to have:
    • Emotion and Empathy: Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse
    • Distaste for Torture: Voltaire: The Calas Affair
      • The preparatory question: torture to get answers about company/details of the crime
• Human Rights as a reflection of social changes
  • Practical concerns about the power of the State
    • American Rev.: Federal v.s. State government
    • French Rev.: Fear of royal backlash
  • Rationalization of public affairs
    • Status and honour v.s. Transparent rules as a basis for law (Max Weber)
  • More focus on individual lives
    • Epistolary novels, access to the everyday experiences of others
  • The struggle for rights was limited by the paradoxes of oppressions
    • Yet resistance to this oppression helped carry forward these rights
• The Paradox of Colonialism
  • Points out the rise of the bourgeoisie in France was boosted by the slave trade
  • Toussaint L’Ouverture lead the slave revolt in 1791 that was partly inspired by the principles of the French Revolution
  • France (Louis Bonaparte) tried to re-establish slavery but was eventually defeated
  • In many ways, the Haitian revolution pushed the principles of the French Revolution further than France

September 26th - Human Rights and Humanitarianism

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October 3rd - Human Rights, Justice and Social Groups

• Three Overlapping History
  • Human Rights
    • Principle: protection from state violence
    • Practice: writing/amending legal documents
  • Humanitarianism
    • Principle: West as savior (civilisation → security)
    • Practice: professionalization of international aid
  • Social Justice
    • Principle: liberal values aren’t experienced equally
    • Practice: protesting and advocating for change
• The Roots of (Western) Social Justice
  • Society is the root of injustice
  • Justice is found through the direct expression of the “general will”
    • I.e. through moral reasoning, we can figure out justice for ourselves – no need for priests or kings tell us
    • Rousseau’s pamphlet on “A Discourse on inequality”
      • Very liberal in his thinking but not in practice
      • Didn’t think highly of women despite speaking so intensely on universal human rights
  • Wollstonecraft: How could Rousseau be so right about moral reasoning, but unable to extend his ideas to women?
    • Who is the “we” in a political community?
• Karl Marx: Injustice and Capitalism
  • 1840s-1870s
  • Discussion on class exploitation and unequal distribution of wealth and labour
  • Historical Background of Marx’s Thought:
    • Germany was in a political flux as the Holy Roman Empire transitioned to a unified state
    • There was an open struggle to define the future → revolution felt inevitable
    • Especially as the industrial revolution was changing Germany & Europe (1830s & 40s)
    • These changes were altering the social and political → new social “classes” were emerging as important political players
  • Marx’s Political Engagements
    • Argued the French Revolution was a “bourgeois revolution” and that human rights were “bourgeois rights” and applied to a very small group of people
    • Marx learned from workers’ struggles for political recognition
    • Also learned the power of these ideas when he was forced to leave Germany, and then France (settled in England)
    • His early writing dealt with the plight of workers in capitalist society
    • Theorized historical progress driven by the injustices of capitalism (e.g. The Communist Manifesto)
  • Marx’s Theory of Exploitation
    • Labour is the only thing that can add value to an exchange
    • Yet labourers are rarely compensated based on the amount of value they produce
      • Small wages and bourgeois taking the majority of the amassed wealth and then buying colonial lands to increase their wealth in other ways nd repeating the cycle
    • Despite the expansion of formal rights, and the growth of the industrial economy, the living conditions of labourers deteriorated during the industrial revolution
• Labour Movement as a Social Justice Movement
  • 8 hour day movement → Haymarket Affair: On May 4, 1886, a bomb detonated near Haymarket Square in Chicago after police arrived to break up a rally in support of striking workers. This protest is one of a number of strikes, demonstrations, and other events held by workers and their supporters in Chicago from May 1-4 to advocate for an eight hour workday.
    • Galvanized labour and incentivized more employers to have 8 hour work days
  • The Winnipeg General Strike: labour action about metal and factory workers fighting against inhumane working conditions do to the exploitation of growing numbers of people in need of work
    • Influx of immigrants
    • After WW1
    • General Strike: union and non union members don’t work in order to protest bad working conditions
  • Limitations of the North American Labour Movement
    • Problem: unions are good for workers, but what if they exclude some workers in favour of others?
      • Often anti-immigrant
      • Only occasionally focused women’s labour
        • E.g. the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
    • Racist undercurrent
      • Jim Crow and the Great Migration
      • W.E.B. Du Bois’ study of Philadelphia
  • Progress Era Movements for Social Justice
    • Suffrage movements: Women’s right to vote
    • Prohibition Movement: making alcohol illegal and ending liquor trafficking
      • Seen as one of the first feminist movements
      • (Remember still included anti-immigrant sentiments)
  • Great Depression and the New Deal
    • The New Deal:
      • Series of social welfare policies
      • Assistance programs for employment, housing, old age security, etc..
      • Foundation for post-WW2 reconstruction of Europe and the rise of the Welfare state
    • The Post-War Welfare State
      • US economy emerged from WW2 in good shape
      • 1950s saw the rise of a middle class (aided by government assistance)
      • This economic success was not shared equally (mainly racism)
  • The Rise of “New Social Movements”
    • Primarily associated with the 1960s (but with roots in the 1950s)
    • Social Justice isn’t just about class and labour rights
      • Civil Rights Movement
      • Feminist Movement
      • American Indian Movement
      • Gay/Queer Liberation Movement
      • Peace Movement
    • Addressed multiple forms of oppression
  • Young: A New Definition of Justice
    • Traditional theories of justice are distributive
    • Justice is also about individual and collective capacities
    • Injustice often takes the form of disabling constraints (e.g. oppression)
      • Young: Oppression and Social Structure: “...oppression also refers to systematic constraints on groups that are not necessarily the result of the intentions of a tyrant. Oppression in this sense is structural, rather than the result of a few people’s choices or policies. Its causes are embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences of following those rules” (pg. 41)
    • What is a Social Group?
      • “A social group is defined not primarily by a set of shared attributes, but by a sense of identity” (pg. 44)
      • Why is it problematic to ground a theory of justice in individual experience?
      • Are human rights primarily focused on individuals or groups?
    • Five faces of oppression
      • Exploitation
      • Marginalization
      • Powerlessness
      • Cultural Imperialism
      • Violence

October 10th - Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Rights

• On power and historical narratives
  • Western Human Rights: innovative legal framework, or limited political paradox?
  • Western Humanism: universal moral philosophy, or justification for imperialism?
  • Western Social Justice Movements: democratic freedom in action, or proof that much injustice still exists?
    • Important to the modern day (labour movement and the 8 hour work day) but very exclusionary at the time
    • Next section: modern expressions of power and the institutionalization of injustice
      • Institutionalization: the process by which particular ideas, norms, and behaviours turn into the formal rules for how to do things.
• On History and Justice
  • How do you address injustice that has become institutionalized? (e.g. the displacement and mistreatment of indigenous peoples)
  • How does the history of colonial rule shape indigenous experiences in Canada?
  • Example: recent reports suggest that the mortar on Parliament Hill came from the Algonquin burial ground across the river.
• What is Settler Colonialism?
  • “Settler colonialism” is a term used to distinguish phenomenon that are related to, but distinct from the experience of colonial empires
    • Historically, colonial empires exploited native populations (e.g. for labour and goods like the case of the British empire and India)
    • Settlers often worked to expel, assimilate or otherwise “remove” traces of the native population
  • A new area of study and a language for justice
    • Temporally indeterminate: “Settler invasion is a structure and not an event” (Veracini, 2011, in the journal Settler Colonial Studies)
    • Colonialism reproduces itself; Settler Colonialism extinguishes itself
      • Settler colonialism separates itself from the act of colonization and instead becomes the norm
  • Responding to Settler Colonialism
    • The experiences and responses to settler colonialism are different than other postcolonial situations
    • Decolonizing does not mean “putting the past behind us” (that is partly the goal of settler colonialism)
    • Why might the language of decolonizing be useful or important? (e.g. nation to nation relationships)
    • Settler Colonial Studies as a rethinking and retelling of history
• Aboriginal Rights in Modern Canada
  • From the Constitution Act of 1982:
    • 35. (1) The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed.
    • (2) In this Act, “aboriginal peoples of Canada” includes the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada
    • (3) For greater certainty, in subsection (1) “treaty rights” includes rights that now exist by way of land claims agreements or may be so acquired.
    • (4) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the aboriginal and treaty rights referred to in subsection (1) are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.
  • SCC Interpretations of Aboriginal Rights
    • R v. Sparrow (1990) – found that there is an aboriginal right to hunt and fish. The Fisheries Act doesn’t supersede s. 35(1).
    • R. v. Van der Peet (1996) – “To be an aboriginal right an activity must be an element of a practice, custom or tradition integral to the distinctive culture of the aboriginal group claiming the right”
    • R. v. Powley (2003) – Aboriginal rights can have modern iterations AND extend to Métis people. Also introduced the “Powley test”.
  • Effects of the SCC approach to rights
    • The case of Mi’kmaq lobster fishing and settler violence:
      • See this summary of the story from BBC News
      • Fishing rights were guaranteed by the Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1752.
      • These rights were largely ignored until the supreme court of canada affirmed them
        • See R. v. MArshall (1999)
      • Government of Canada has looked to the SCC, while the Court tends to introduce ambiguous language
        • In this case, the definition of a “moderate livelihood”
      • This legal ambiguity creates space for violence (e.g. the RCMP can stand back and wait for order while a lobster pound burns)
      • This can be read as part of a cycle whereby the “rights” of indigenous peoples are affirmed and then violated by the State
        • Which raises the question of whether a rights framework makes sense without a focus on social justice
• UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
  • Adopted by UN General Assembly in 2007
    • Settler Colonial countries voted against (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United States)
  • Rights to self-determination, autonomy, and self-government
  • Right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC)
  • Right to not be subjected to forced assimilation
  • Asserts that States should provide mechanisms to prevent or redress actions of depriving indigenous people of their cultural identities
• UNDRIP and Canada
  • Canadian economy built around extractive industries, which poses a problem for Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC)
  • Canadian state worried about the so-called “Indian Veto”
    • Example: the pipeline controversy on the land of the Wet’suwet’en Nation
  • Legal Concepts RElated to FPIC (Patzer 2019)
    • Fiduciary Duty: Established in Guerin v. The Queen in 1984. Subsequently rolled back as “overshooting” Crown responsibility
    • Justifiable Infringement: R v. Sparrow established Aboriginal rights, but also outline the possibility that these rights could be infringed upon
      • Delgamuukw v. British Columbia (1997) defined Aboriginal Title and suggested that Federal OR Provincial governments could justifiably infringe on it to develop “Agriculture, forestry, mining, and hydro-electric power”
    • Duty to Consult: The SCC, however, has created a legal obligation for the Crown to engage a meaningful process of consultation if it wants to infringe Aboriginal rights or title
      • This is as far as the SCC has gone on FPIC
• Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
  • Product of the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA)
  • Established in 2008 and published its report in 2015
  • Aimed to provide a history of the residential school system as well as the first-hand experiences of residential schools (truth)
  • Also aimed to build a path towards reconciliation between the Canadian gov’t and indigenous peoples
  • Proposed 94 “Calls to Action” to redress the historical harm caused by residential schools and colonial dispossession
• Truth Commissions and Transitional Justice
  • Truth (and Reconciliation) Commissions became popular in the 1980s among “new” democracies (e.g. focused on “disappeared persons” in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile)
  • Following dictatorships, they aimed to move a nation out of a cycle of violence
  • South African TRC is a prominent example of the politics of TRCs
    • Included provisions for Amnesty
    • Didn’t address the inequality created by the Apartheid system (no reparations)
• Expanding the Frame of Justice
  • Patzer (2014) talks about the “therapeutic ethos” as a depoliticized frame for reconciliation. What does this mean?
  • Why might the Canadian TRC represent a limited form of justice?

October 17th – The Holocaust as the Defining Crisis of Western Modernity

• A Brief History of the Holocaust
  • US Holocaust Memorial Museum Film (graphic content warning)
  • How to teach events like the Holocaust?
    • Genocides are not inevitable
    • They have complex histories and causes
    • Don’t compare tragedies
    • Humanize the people involved (victims, perpetrators, collaborators)
    • Don’t exploit emotional responses to the subject
      • E.g. Godwin’s law
• Social and Political Conditions of Facis, in Germany
  • Financial crisis
  • Populist anger against elites
  • Appeals to Nationalism (Treaty of Versailles)
  • Expansion of pseudo-scientific claims about race
  • Critiques of democracy, parliamentarianism and liberal pluralism
    • E.g. Carl Schmitt: all politics is based on the distinction between friend and enemy
• Effects of Industrialization and Urbanization
  • Berlin was very multicultural city at the end of the 19th century
  • As a growing industrial urban centre, Berlin challenged social norms and values
  • Modernism: an artistic and cultural movement that embraced the experiences and values of industrial life
    • E.g. Bauhaus architecture
  • This led to resentment, and movements embraced various types of “returning” to better times
  • Nazi interest in neo-classical architecture is an example
• Cultural Conditions of Pre-War Germany (and the narratives of Anti-Semitism)
  • Simmel on “Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903): people in the city must adopt a “blasé attitude”
  • Simmel on “the Stranger”: “The man who comes today and stays tomorrow… [t]he stranger is an element of the group itself” (1908)
  • Jewish communities in Europe embodied the stranger as a social type: close in proximity, but socially remote
  • Historically, a difficult group for the Christian church to make sense of (related but not the same)
• Modernism and Technological Utopianism
• Modernism and the Dark Side of Technology
• Walter Benjamin on Progress and History
  • A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. (Walter Benjamin, 1940)
• Catastrophic Logic of Technology
• Law and the Holocaust
  • Questions raised by the Holocaust
    • How could a “civilized” country (built on Western “rule-of-law”) carry out such a horrible program?
    • Is justice possible here?
    • How can we prevent genocide in the future?
    • How should we treat people who have been stripped of their rights?
• The Aftermath of the Holocaust
  • Nuremberg Trials 1945-1948
    • International Military Tribunal
    • First trial - 22 Defendants (only German)
    • Charges:
      • Crimes against peace
      • Conspiracy to wage aggressive war
      • War crimes
      • Crimes against humanity
    • Crimes against humanity as a “new” offense
      • Was this retroactive justice?
    • Legal due process or “victors’ justice”?
• Difficult Questions of the Nuremberg Trials
  • Can there be an internationally recognized legal framework?
  • The conventions and treaties cited in this trial mostly dealt with war crimes (Hague Conventions 1899 & 1907; 3rd Geneva Convention 1929)
    • What about the treatment of civilians?
  • Awkwardness of violations by Allied powers (Stalin’s crimes against humanity, US’s atom bombs)
  • Four Allied powers had to work together to agree on a framework for the trial
  • This framework laid the groundwork for later UN conventions
    • Important discursive shift from “civilization” to “humanity”
• Legacy of Nuremberg
  • Trials also covered legal, economic and medical issues
  • Nuremberg Principles: Principles that were the underlying justification of the trials (e.g. the “superior orders” defense is not acceptable)
    • Problem for international law: what if disobeying orders puts one in danger?
  • Nuremberg Code: Research ethics guidelines resulting from the Doctors trials
  • The IG Farben Trial: introduced rules around profiteering and corporate responsibility for crimes against humanity
• Hannah Arendt: Learning from the Holocaust
  • Like many scholars, worked to make sense of the Holocaust
  • Arendt fled Germany in 1933, Paris in 1940. Arrived in New York in 1941
  • Politics is about responsibility and action
  • Germans abdicated their political responsibility and failed to act
• The Trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961)
  • Eichmann was captured in Argentina and extradited to Israel
  • Eichmann trial: a political exercise?
  • Arendt: “Justice… demands seclusion, it permits sorrow rather than anger, and it prescribes the most careful abstention from all the nice pleasures of putting oneself in the limelight” (pg. 6)
  • The Eichmann trial, on the other hand, was set up as if it were a play complete with a stage and an audience
• Narratives that Arendt Dismisses
  • Nazis as evil super-villains
    • This gives figures like Eichmann more credit than they deserve
  • Nazi government as ultra organized and efficient
    • There was constant administrative jockeying an unclear communication of rules and laws
  • Nazi administration as “ruthless and tough”
    • Example of some Western European countries pushing back against final solution measures
• Modernity and the Holocaust
  • The Holocaust was a social tragedy grounded in the logics of modern society
  • In this sense, it’s not just “something that happened to Jewish people” but a product of European “civilization”
  • The difference being the rationalization and scale of the tragedy (spontaneous violence of pogroms vs. the Nazi bureaucracy)
  • Does Capitalist Modernity make us more susceptible to authoritarianism?
    • Adorno: The Authoritarian Personality
    • Bauman: the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments and the problem of responsibility

October 31st – Rights, Nationalism, and the State

• Human Rights in the Post-War era
  • After WWII, the allied powers aimed to build legal guardrails to ensure that the Holocaust would never happen again. These included:

1. An international human rights regime grounded in international law.
2. A nation-state system that could formally participate in these international law agreements.

• Two related problems that are discussed by this week’s readings
• The Tokyo trial
  • International Military Tribunal for the Far East
    • Charged the Japanese military establishment with “crimes against peace”
    • Without something comparable to the Holocaust, prosecution focused on colonial expansion
    • Super awkward because:
      • The judges represented colonial powers
      • The emerging cold war opened up a “containment” defense
• Key International Agreements
  • Charter of the United Nations (1945)
  • Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Dec. 9, 1948)
  • Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Dec 10, 1948)
  • Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (4th convention, 1949)
• Article II of the UN Genocide Convention (1948)
  • In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  • Drafting Committee led by Eleanor Roosevelt
    • Canadian John Peters Humphry was an important co-author
  • Framed rights outlined in the US Constitution and French Declaration as, explicitly, universal
  • “... whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind…”
  • Questions:
    • Were the articles in this document realistically enforceable or merely ideals?
    • What did the UDHR accomplish?
• Arendt on Totalitarianism
  • Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) is still a key text for understanding what happened in Germany
  • Europe’s totalitarian impulses started with colonial projects
  • Totalitarianism relies on mass movements (not politics)
  • When totalitarianism movements gain, power, the remake facts and reality to fit their aspirations (often through violence)
  • Totalitarianism governs through terror, which “destroys the spaces between people”
  • Based on developing a coherent sense of the “nation”
• Totalitarianism and the Right to Have Rights
  • Totalitarianism renders those outside the movement, or targets of the movement, as superfluous
  • Why have expensive concentration camps?
    • Camps are a logical outcome of totalitarian governance
    • They shape reality through “enforced oblivion” (whether refugee, labor, or extermination camps)
  • For the Nazis, Jewish citizens had to be denaturalized
  • Their “rightlessness” rendered them less than human
  • This is why Arendt sees the “right to have rights” as primary to any specific human right. Rights imply membership in a political community
    • What are the two definitions of “rights” in this formulation (according to Benhabib)?
• Benhabib & Arendt on Nation-States
  • Rights in the “nation-state”
    • States are legal entities that exist in an international system
    • Nations describe the different ways “the people” in political communities identify themselves
  • The nation is pre-political
  • “the nation was an eternal organic body, the product of inevitable growth of inherent qualities; it explains peoples, not in terms of political organizations, but in terms of biological superhuman personalities” (Arendt in Benhabib, pg 62)
• The Origins of Nationalism
  • Three paradoxes of nationalism:
    • Relatively recent to historians, but framed as ancient to nationalists
    • Formally universal (everyone has one), but widely exclusionary
    • Politically powerful, but philosophically incoherent
  • A product of the Enlightenment:
    • Linguistic move away from Latin as the language of political power
    • Separation of religion and political authority

November 7th – The Promise and Perils of Cosmopolitanism

• Rights and Justice Beyond Nationalism
  • The logic of universal rights (including the right to have rights) runs counter to the logic of nationalism
    • Nationalism is about drawing boundaries that exclude people
    • National membership is necessary for basic rights
  • What alternatives to nationalism could guarantee rights?
  • Three options
    • Internationalism: a community of nation-states
    • Globalization: global economic integration
    • Cosmopolitanism: a global civil society
• Empire: the worst option!
  • Empire: territorial, economic and cultural control over multiple nations by a single sovereign power
  • Arendt: colonization/imperialism undermined the legal foundations of European states
  • Empire building caused two world wars
  • Created humanitarian problems rather than “civilized peoples”
  • It was hard to quit: lag time between the end of WWII and decolonization
• Internationalism
  • In terms of human rights, this is the dominant option for much of the post-war 20th century
  • Forms the foundation of international law
  • Assumes system of national legal frameworks that support intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) like the United Nations
  • Supports agencies that focus on vulnerable groups (e.g. refugees)
  • Partly premised on cold war logics (states were important in a “bi-polar” world)
• Globalization: Remember the 1990s!?
  • After the fall of the Soviet Union, a long list of new countries were “open for business”
  • Free trade agreements (e.g. NAFTA) made it easier for global corporations to expand
  • Global shipping and telecommunications expanded
  • Global institutions became important managers of this growth (IMF, World Bank, WTO)
• Is Economic Globalization a New Phenomenon?
• World-Systems Theory
  • Core societies dominate and exploit societies on the periphery
  • Periphery societies provide resources and labour
  • This creates a dynamic social relationship that produces profit in the core and dependency in the periphery
  • The “development of underdevelopment”
• On Global Cultural Hegemony
  • Does global capitalism have a culture?
  • Hegemony: the manipulation of common sense to maintain the status quo
  • How is global capitalism related to “culture”? And is there a global mono-culture?
  • What are the good and bad things that come from a more interconnected world?
• Globalization and Terrorism
  • Most visible backlash against globalization was “global terrorism”
  • Attempts to use the tools of globalization against the forces of global capital
  • A nominally “traditionalist” focus, but built as a global movement
  • How do we move past “Jihad vs. McWorld”?
• Cosmopolitanism
  • (Western) Philosophical foundations
  • Ancient Greek (Stoic) concept of Kosmou polites (or world citizen):
    • All humans have the faculty of reason → reason is a moral virtue → all humans have basic moral worth
• Kant’s cosmopolitan right (1795):
  • Based on a universal obligation to hospitality
  • Recognizes a “communal possession of earth’s surface”
  • This “right” to hospitality will naturally guarantee a “perpetual peace” as interaction with foreigners increases mutual understanding and disseminates reason and enlightenment
  • Implies a form of a natural law applied at a global level (how that is applied is a harder question)
• Liberal Cosmopolitanism
  • How to reconcile cosmopolitanism with pluralism?
    • Concentric value spheres argument:
    • We organize our moral obligations based on proximity (e.g. family, friends, community, culture, nation, globe) → the goal should be to collapse the distance
  • Focus on international institutions that help people make connections
  • These should be grounded in an “overlapping consensus” of principles that everyone can agree on
• Critiques of Liberal Cosmopolitanism
  • Liberal cosmopolitanism often undersells the problems posed by global capitalism
  • How to embrace some universal norms (e.g. human rights) while also challenging the effects of global capitalism and empire? [note: this is the Douzinas critique]
  • Expanding democracy beyond the nation-state?
  • US foreign policy and cultural hegemony is the “elephant in the room” for all discussions of cosmopolitanism
  • Calhoun (2003): the liberal conception often turns into a cosmopolitanism of the airport lounge
• Fine (2009) On Cosmopolitanism
  • Cosmopolitanism was originally framed as a global applications of the Rights of Man
  • After 1989, it experienced a comeback, but…
  • It got bogged down in formalism vs. realism debates
    • Formalism: a type of thinking focused on working through conceptual problems
    • Realism: a type of thinking focused on observable practices, interests, and power
  • Can cosmopolitanism be more than just utopian or ideological?
• Cosmopolitanism From Below?
  • Top-down theories of cosmopolitanism too often require some form of official recognition, followed by institutional responses
  • What about other forms of global solidarity that people build in the margins? (e.g. immigrant communities in global cities)
  • Do we need global institutions to guarantee global rights? (e.g. the problem of the Russian war on Ukraine)
  • Is there an alternative type of global justice that can be based on different types of solidarity? (e.g. justice for indigenous peoples, workers rights, gender justice, racial justice)
  • What could be built from these forms of Global Solidarity?

November 14th – Race, Justice and Systemic Racism

• Is this the end of human rights?
  • Arendt/Benhabib: Germany showed the importance of a universal “right to have rights”,
    • Also how fragile universal rights can be
  • Douzinas: The rise of “security” as the primary national concern moves us away from human rights.
    • Human rights is still an important language for grassroots movements
• How does social justice go beyond human rights?
  • Young: Oppression is experienced by people as members of social groups
    • Social justice avoids universalism
  • Patzer: When it comes to indigenous rights, the Canadian State is concerned to limit indigenous right and title
    • Indigenous justice focuses on autonomy and self determination
  • Calhoun: Arguments for cosmopolitanism rights can look like just more freedom for the privileged and elite
    • But social justice could also be a source of global solidarity
• Civil Rights vs. Racial Justice
  • Key differences between rights and justice:
    • Formal legal changes vs. the recognition of social-historical processes
    • Individualistic vs. systemic approach
    • Apolitical (at least in some interpretations) vs. overt politics
• Coates: “The Case for Reparations”
  • Group mini-exercise:

1. Why does Coates see Clyde Ross’s story as emblematic of the bigger problem?
2. Why is redlining an example of institutional racism
3. Why is black poverty in the United States unique?
4. Why reparations and not a TRC?

• Why did reparations work for Germany?
• The Historical Politics of Racial Justice
  • The 1619 Project
  • Historical account that puts Slavery at the heart of the US economy and politics – part of a movement to develop a theory of racial capitalism
  • Black America has, in some ways, the most optimistic view of democracy
  • Huge conservative backlash against “critical race theory”
• On Systemic Inequality
  • It is sometimes difficult to see inequality that is historical and institutionalized
  • It’s easier to see equality in individual terms (e.g. the equality vs. equity meme)
  • This makes inequality a resource question rather than a justice question
• Racism Without Racists (Bonilla-Silva 2022 [2003])
  • Race: socially constructed but effects are real
  • Racial structure: the totality of the social relations and practices that reinforce white privilege
  • Racial ideology: the racially based frameworks used by actors to explain and justify (dominant race0 or challenge (subordinate race or races) the racial status quo
  • “The ruling ideology expresses as “common sense” the interest of the dominant race” (2022, pg. 10)
• Colour-Blind Racism
  • A racial ideology that ignores the structural/institutional foundations of racism and white privilege
  • Generally, ascribes cultural explanations for racial inequality
  • Treats racism as a historical issue (e.g. no more racists)
  • A useful theory because it: (1) challenges common sense notions of race and (2) is based on data from white people themselves
• A New form of Racism
  • Racism after the Jim Crow era
    • Segregation: no longer formal, but still exists through gentrification and housing discrimination
    • Political participation: formal equality but cultural racism against Black candidates
    • Policing and Incarceration: disproportionate targeting of Black communities
    • Economic Inequality: Formal exclusion now illegal, but labour market discrimination persists
• Four Frames of Colour-Blind Racism

1. Abstract Liberalism – things are formally equal so racism can’t exist
2. Naturalization – racial phenomena are naturally (biologically) occurring
3. Cultural racism – inequality is a product of cultural values
4. Minimization of racism – people aren’t racist anymore

• Legacy of Bonilla-Silva’s Theory: Desmond & Emirbayer (2009)
  • Race is socially constructed (not a natural category)
    • Indigenous wasn’t a racial category until non-indigenous people came over
    • Susie Guillory Phipps and the 1/32 rule
    • South Africa - 3 racial categories are only 200 years old
    • The scientific basis of race is thin (more variation among than between “races”), but the social effects of race are vast
• Race, Ethnicity and Nationality
  • Three overlapping symbolic categories
    • The problem of the category “Asian”
    • These categories are fluid (feeling Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, Canadian on Election Day, and Catholic on Easter)
    • People can choose to play up one category over another (African immigrants to the US teaching their Western-born children to speak with an accent)
    • Popular can shape legal classifications (e.g. immigration policy)
• Five Fallacies about Racism

1. Individualistic Fallacy

• Assumes Racism is about ideas, prejudices and intentionality
• Associates racism with crime (one is guilty or not of racism)
• Instead, racism can be normal, institutional, habitual, unintentional, commonplace, polite, implicit, and even well meaning

1. Legalistic Fallacy

• Equates current law with racial progress
• No racist laws = no racism
• Law is not a mirror of society
• Laws don’t determine social behaviour (laws against theft don’t eliminate theft)
• Formal anti-segregation laws didn’t end segregation

1. Tokenistic Fallacy

• Assumes cases of individual success in politics, business or culture
• Racism doesn’t exist because of Obama, Oprah
• The exception proves the rule
• Inequality still functions to exclude people from power (hence ongoing attempts to address the inequality – NFL coaches, Calles for a new VP, etc.)

1. Ahistorical Fallacy

• Assumes history doesn’t matter since things are better today
• Present circumstances are unconnected to distant or even recent past
• The present is a direct product of history
• Everything, from the physical distribution of people in cities to family wealth to current opportunities are defined by history

1. Fixed Fallacy

• Assumes racism is fixed over time
• Lynching doesn’t happen anymore so racism doesn’t exist
• Equates racism with worst possible practices
• Questions about whether “things are better today” have to account for how racism has changed
• Maybe the sentiments behind lynching have just been reframed and rechanneled into a law enforcement narrative?
• On Mass Incarceration
  • The historical myth of black criminality
    • Coates’ follow-up article on mass incarceration
  • Overall context of mass incarceration in the United States
    • 1970s - 150 per 100,000 were incarcerated
    • 2007 - 767 per 100,000 were incarcerated
    • (Russia - 450 per 100,000)
  • Impact on black communities (in 2021)
    • 1,240 per 100,000 Black residents incarcerated
    • 261 per 100,000 White residents incarcerated
• Politics of Mass Incarceration
  • Willie Horton ad I
    • The Presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush brought “dog-whistle” racism to national political advertising
    • The “tough on crime” political strategy was popular for the next two decades
  • Willie Horton ad II
    • Fed into the “broken windows” strategy
    • For-profit prisons exploited this market
    • Racialized prisoners were, in many states, stripped of basic citizenship rights
• On Police Brutality
  • The US Dept. of Justice does not collect data on people killed by police
  • Since 2015, multiple groups have started databases of people shot and killed by police (Fatal Force project)
• Reflecting on Summer 2020
  • What progress towards racial justice has been made since George Floyd was murdered?
  • What has been the backlash?
  • Are we closer to racial justice now?

November 21st – Justice and Systemic Racism + Global Rights, Local Justice and Gender-Based Violence

Justice and Systemic Racism

• Is this the end of human rights?
  • Arendt/Benhabib: Germany showed the importance of a universal “right to have rights”, also how fragile universal rights can be
  • Douzinas: The rise of “security” as the primary national concern moves us away from human rights.
  • Human rights is still an important language for grassroots movements
• How does social justice go beyond human rights?
  • Young: Oppression is experienced by people as members of social groups
    • Social justice avoids universalism
  • Patzer: When it comes to indigenous rights, the Canadian state is concerned to limit indigenous right and title
    • Indigenous justice focuses on autonomy and self-determination
  • Calhoun: Arguments for cosmopolitan rights can look like just more freedom for the privileged and elite
    • But social justice could also be a source of global solidarity
• Civil Rights vs. Racial Justice
  • Key differences between rights and justice:
    • Formal legal changes vs. the recognition of social-historical processes
    • Individualistic vs. systemic approach
    • Apolitical (at least in some interpretations) vs. overt politics
• Coates: “The Case for Reparations”
  • What is redlining?
    • People who work in cityscaping would create a city plan that outlines areas where there were a large amounts of marginalized communities/immigrants and made it so people from those areas had less resources in those areas and had difficulty leaving
• The Historical Politics of Racial Justice
  • The 1619 Project
    • Historical account that puts Slavery at the heat of the US economy and politics – part of a movement to develop a theory of racial capitalism
    • Black America has, in some ways, the most optimistic view of democracy
    • Huge conservative backlash against “critical race theory”
• On Systemic Inequality
  • It is sometimes difficult to see inequality that is historical and institutionalized
  • It’s easier to see equality in individual terms (e.g. the equality vs. equity meme)
  • This makes inequality a resource question rather than a justice question
• Racism Without Racists (Bonilla-Silva 2022 [2003])
  • Race: socially constructed but effects are real
  • Racial structure: the totality of the social relations and practices that reinforce white privilege
  • Racial ideology: the racially based frameworks used by actors to explain and justify (dominant race) or challenge (subordinate race or races) the racial status quo
  • “The ruling ideology expresses as “common sense” the interest of the dominant race” (2022, pg. 10)
• Colour-Blind Racism
  • A racial ideology that ignores the structural/institutional foundations of racism and white privilege
  • Generally, ascribes cultural explanations for racial inequality
  • Treats racism as a historical issue (e.g. no more racists)
  • A useful theory because it: (1) challenges common sense notions of race and (2) is based on data from white people themselves
• A New form of Racism
  • Racism after the Jim Crow era
    • Segregation: no longer formal, but still exists through gentrification and housing discrimination
    • Political participation: formal equality but cultural racism against Black candidates
    • Policing and Incarceration: disproportionate targeting of Black communities
    • Economic Inequality: Formal exclusion now illegal, but labour market discrimination persists
• Four Frames of Colour-Blind Racism

1. Abstract Liberalism – things are formally equal so racism can’t exist
2. Naturalization – racial phenomena are naturally (biologically) occurring
3. Cultural racism – inequality is a product of cultural values
4. Minimization of racism – people aren’t racist anymore

• Legacy of Bonilla-Silva’s Theory: Desmond & Emirbayer (2009)
  • Race is socially constructed (not natural category)
    • Indigenous wasn’t a racial category until non-indigenous people came over
    • Susie Guillory Phipps and the 1/32 rule
    • South Africa - 3 racial categories; Brazil - at least 10 categories
    • Our contemporary categories are only 200 years old
    • The scientific basis of race is thin (more variation among than between “races”), but the social effects of race are vast
• Race, Ethnicity and Nationality
  • Three overlapping symbolic categories
    • The problem of the category “Asian”
    • These categories are fluid (feeling Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, Canadian on Election Day, and Catholic on Easter)
    • People can choose to play up one category over another (African immigrants to the US teaching their Western-born children to speak with an accent)
    • Popular opinion can shape legal classifications (e.g. immigration policy)
• Five Fallacies about Racism

1. Individualistic Fallacy

• Assumes Racism is about ideas, prejudices and intentionality
• Associates racism with crime (one is guilty or not of racism)
• Instead, racism can be normal, institutional, habitual, unintentional, commonplace, polite, implicit, and even well meaning

1. Legalistic Fallacy

• Equates current law with racial progress
• No racist laws = no racism
• Law is not a mirror of society
• Laws don’t determine social behavior (laws against theft don’t eliminate theft)
• Formal anti-segregation laws didn’t end segregation

1. Tokenistic Fallacy

• Assumes cases of individual success in politics, business or culture
• Racism doesn’t exist because of Obama, Oprah
• The exception proves the rule
• Inequality still functions to exclude people from power (hence ongoing attempts to address the inequality – NFL coaches, Calls for a new VP, etc.)

1. Ahistorical Fallacy

• Assumes history doesn’t matter since things are better today
• Present circumstances are unconnected to distant or even recent past
• The present is a direct product of history
• Everything, from the physical distribution of people in cities to family wealth to current opportunities are defined by history

1. Fixed Fallacy

• Assumes racism is fixed over time
• Lynching doesn’t happen anymore so racism doesn’t exist
• Equates racism with worst possible practices
• Questions about whether “things are better today” have to account for how racism has changed
• Maybe the sentiments behind lynching have just been reframed and rechanneled into a law enforcement narrative?
• On Mass Incarceration
  • The historical myth of black criminality
    • Coates’ follow-up article on mass incarceration
  • Overall context of mass incarceration in the United States
    • 1970s - 150 per 100,000 were incarcerated
    • 2007 - 767 per 100,000 were incarcerated
    • (Russia - 450 per 100,000)
  • Impact on black communities (in 2021)
    • 1,240 per 100,000 Black residents incarcerated
    • 261 per 100,000 White residents incarcerated
  • Politics of Mass Incarceration
    • Willie Horton ad I
    • The Presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush brought “dog-whistle” racism to national political advertising
    • The “tough on crime” political strategy was popular for the next two decades
    • Willie Horton ad II
      • Fed into the “broken windows” strategy
      • For-profit prisons exploited this market
      • Racialized prisoners were, in many states, stripped of basic citizenship rights
  • On Police Brutality
    • The US Dept. of Justice does not collect data on people killed by police
    • Since 2015, multiple groups have started databases of people shot and killed by police (Fatal Force Project)
  • Reflecting on Summer 2020
    • What progress towards racial justice has been made since George Floyd was murdered? What has been the backlash?
    • Are we closer to racial justice now?

Global Rights, Local Justice and Gender-Based Violence

• Gender, Justice and Culture
  • What is gender?
  • Why is “culture” so important when thinking about gender based violence?
  • Local culture vs. universal rights?
• Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
  • Gender is a product of “Bodily Inscriptions”
  • Bodily inscription = something written onto the body
  • In post-structuralist thinking, the body is a text
  • We “read” each other and in, turn, label each other
  • Social interaction is coded, and those codes “signify” our understanding of the world
• The Body and Culture
  • Butler cites Mary Douglas’ book Purity and Danger (example of structuralist anthropology)
  • Douglas: societies organize themselves around moral ideas of order/disorder, purity/impurity, normal/taboo
  • Lots of taboos around bodily functions (the body as chaotic, impure and taboo)
    • The body can’t be trusted (desire and pain)
    • The body as a site of moral judgement: food prohibitions in Leviticus, sodomy laws
    • The body as profane
  • Butler: this suggests a divide between the “interior” soul and the body – but which one represents the “real person”?
  • In many societies, bodies must be disciplined to clarify the moral order
• From Interiority to Gender Performances
  • The rules governing the interior self and the body are often gendered
  • We create cultural narratives/frameworks that link the self and the body to provide order in society (e.g. hegemonic ideals of gender and sexuality)
  • This set-up assumes we have an interior gender that naturally corresponds to bodily sex
  • E.g. Being a “man” is defined by looking a certain way and acting/feeling a certain way (manly)
• Performing Gender
  • Since biology doesn’t do strict binaries, we feel social pressure to continually “perform”, or express gender.
  • Many people get comfortable with strict binary versions of this performance because it provides order (*key point*)
• Undermining Gender Binaries
  • The example of Drag shows how unstable such performances can be; it’s a parody of “normal” gender
  • Does the makeup reveal or contradict the “real” interior identity?
  • Is the ability to parody gender a form of privilege? (e.g. Trans people aren’t merely “performing”)
• Political Backlash
  • Anti-Trans legislation as an attempt to make “traditional” notions of gender a political issue
  • Why is this a popular political strategy?
  • Is this just a product of the culture of Texas?
• Questioning Culture (Merry 2006)
  • “Cultural” conceptions of gender help to reproduce negative outcomes such as gender-based violence
  • This can be wrapped up in conceptions of family, marriage, community, inheritance and child custody
  • Does the “right” to live free of violence contradict the “right” to express one’s own cultural difference?
• Gender and “Civilized” Culture
  • Early Anthropologists (previously “orientalists”) measured civilization in relation to Western norms
  • This approach still exists in the background of organizations working for human rights
  • Globalization has reinvigorated this approach (in some ways)
  • How do anthropologists define culture today?
  • Culture as a repertoire of ideas and actions
• Theories of Culture and Human Rights
  • Culture as tradition (or values)
  • Culture as national essence
  • Culture as contentious
    • Ways of doing things in particular circumstances
    • Always evolving and incorporating difference
  • Culture is everywhere
    • “Human rights law is itself primarily a cultural system. Its limited enforcement mechanisms mean that the impact of human rights law is a matter of persuasion rather than force” (pg 16)
• International Rights and Local Culture
  • International NGOs have to balance universal definitions and power relations in the international system
  • Laws need to be legitimate in national contexts
  • Often family laws aim to follow existing practices, but otherwise treat family life as “private”
  • Challenging harmful practices like GBV often means connecting with activists working to change cultural practices
• Limits of Western Feminism(s)
  • French protests against “gender theory” (as a threat to the French Republic)
  • 2nd wave feminists privileging the category of “woman”
  • Imperialist feminism’s (colonial feminism) focus on “cultural practices”
  • Carceral feminism targeting racialized men as a threat

November 28th – The Limits of Rights

• What have major (non-COVID) protests been about?
• Can human rights address these concerns?
  • 2008 Global financial crisis had its roots in the expansion of neoliberalism
  • Rise in populism (e.g. 2016) was a lasting effect of anti-globalization sentiment
  • This sentiment has been exploited by authoritarian governments and nationalist movements
  • …but is a return to international norms about human rights a satisfactory answer?
• The Rise of Neoliberalism
  • After economic crises of the 1970s, the 1980s saw a constriction of the welfare state
    • Margaret Thatcher, UK, 1979
    • Ronald Reagan, US, 1980
  • This accelerated with globalization in the 1990s
• The Crisis of Neoliberalism?
  • Cutback the intervention of the state so that the markets can govern/reflect the rest of society
  • David Harvey The Crisis of Capitalism
    • Human frailty = “human nature”, human predation
    • Institutional failures = failing banking system
    • Obsessed with a false theory
    • Cultural origins
    • Failure of policy
    • Systemic risk → international contradictions of capital accumulation
    • The excessive finance capital → excessive power of capital
    • Overcome the problem of effective demand with credit cards
    • More debt than ever
  • With the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Occupy movement of 2010, some asked whether neoliberal theories would bring down capitalism
  • What do we mean when we talk about neoliberalism?
    • An intellectual movement concerned with economic policy?
    • A justification for stricter spending?
    • A social/cultural movement towards individualism?
• Human Rights after the Global Recession
  • Wealth inequality is now acknowledged as a serious problem
  • Can the language of human rights address this problem?
    • In legal terms?
    • Through global civil society?
    • Through geopolitics?
• Spade: The limitations of legal frameworks
  • The example of Trans rights:
    • Anti-discrimination laws are hard to define
    • Anti-hate crime laws are not a deterrent
  • Injustice is practiced through “administrative violence” (or, the way institutionalized rules are interpreted and enforced)
  • Neoliberalism + Administrative violence: The underfunding of necessary public institutions makes them LESS flexible and adaptive.
• Williams: Rights are still important
  • To those who have traditionally been disempowered, rights confer “equal status
  • Williams’ housing example: for Black people in New York, informal agreements were more dangerous than formal paperwork
• Optional Group Exercise: Working with the readings

1. In groups, find two passages in each of the readings that demonstrate the author’s argument about the value of rights.
2. Discuss how you might summarize these points in your notes.

• Social Justice as the driver of human rights?
  • Example: Housing Rights
    • Is housing broken?
    • Do people have a right to housing?

Reading Quizzes – Questions and Answers

According to the author, the claim of _________ is crucial to the history of human rights.

Answer: self-evidence

For the author, a human right becomes most relevant when…?

Answer: we feel horrified by its violation

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson lists a series of "facts" that detail…?

Answer: Injuries committed by the King of England

In the years just before the American Revolution, the American colonists started embracing the ideals of universal rights as a foundation for declaring independence. This had a great advantage over simply expanding the existing "rights of Englishmen," which would have merely led to what political outcome?

Answer: Minor reforms

The author argues that human rights emerged in the late 18th century, partly due to the rise of a political ideal of moral autonomy. Moral autonomy in this sense included what?

Answer: Reason and Independence

According to Douzinas, human rights have become an ideological justification for Western capitalism. True or False?

Answer: True

When discussing the "end of human rights" Douzinas suggests that in the post-9/11 era, even some liberal commentators have admitted that ______ trumps human rights.

Answer: Security

The author outlines 6 of the common and sometimes contradictory uses of the term "human rights." Which of the following is NOT listed among these uses?

Answer: Human rights are a clear and self-evident set of rules

In the text, the author describes negative rights as "blue" and positive rights as "red." What are negative, or "blue," rights?

Answer: Civil and political rights

What approach does Douzinas use to complicate and question the traditional linear history of human rights?

Answer: A genealogical approach

According to the author, oppression has two meanings in its traditional usage?

Answer: Tyranny and colonial domination

The Marxist idea of class is important because it helps reveal the structure of which of the five forms of oppression?

Answer: Exploitation

Defining groups as aggregates or associations are examples of what the author calls…

Answer: Methodological individualism

According to the author, theories of justice often leave out acts of violence because such theories often incorrectly assume that violence is…?

Answer: An individual act

Which of the five forms of oppression creates what W.E.B. Du Bois called "double consciousness"?

Answer: Cultural Imperialism

The Holocaust was different from historical forms of mass violence because it replaced rage and mob violence with what?

Answer: bureaucracy and obedience to authority

For Bauman (1989), without ____________ there would be no Holocaust

Answer: modern civilization

Bauman claims that, within the German bureaucracy, moral responsibility was replaced with what?

Answer: technical responsibility

According to Bauman (1989), in 1941 the Holocaust was…?

Answer: unimaginable

What occupational metaphor does Bauman use to describe the logic of "modern genocide"?

Answer: The gardener

According to Chapter 1 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are distinct from other countries in the former British empire because they are..?

Answer: settler colonies

What doctrine, which gave European powers right to indigenous lands, was partly based on the assumption that these lands were terra nullius?

Answer: The Doctrine of Discovery

According to Patzer (2014), the Supreme Court of Canada has been reluctant to characterize the residential school system as whole as wrong, and has instead focused on what?

Answer: Legally actionable cases of abuse

1. In his chapter on "Residential Harm and Colonial Dispossession," Patzer (2014) argues that we need to retrace the contours of what the colonizer called the _________, which encompassed residential schools, disempowerment, and land dispossession.

Answer: The Indian problem

Patzer (2014) argues that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Canada is similar to the South African TRC in that it shares a ___________ ethos that may, in fact, depoliticize the process of reconciliation.

Answer: therapeutic

According to Jensen (2016), the history of human rights is defined by the coexistence of what?

Answer: Proclamation and denial

Which of the following was NOT mentioned by Jensen as a difficult issue that arose in 1948 as the language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was debated?

Answer: Cuba's restriction of religious freedom

According to the "juridico-civil usage" of the term "rights," rights claims generate reciprocal obligations and therefore require a what?

Answer: Community

According to the author (Benhabib), one of the important points of Arendt's writing is that she draws a connection between an undermined conception of rights and the rule-of-law under totalitarianism, and what?

Answer: European colonial projects in Africa

According to the author (Benhabib), both Kant and Arendt saw that the conflict between universal human rights and _________ was the "root paradox at the heart of the territorially bounded state-centric international order."

Answer: Sovereignty claims

According to Calhoun (2003), cosmopolitanism is too often presented as simply ____________, which is free of determinate social bases and consistent with the outlooks found in global intellectual spaces such as Brussels, Davos, or even in elite universities.

Answer: Global citizenship

In response to scholars who have criticized the practicality of universal human rights, the author (Fine 2009) suggests that cosmopolitans should endeavor to create a what?

Answer: A global human rights culture

For Calhoun (2003), social solidarity is not just produced by common cultural identities resulting from racial, ethnic, or gender categories. Solidarity and the expression of shared interests also requires what?

Answer: Public discourse

According to the author (Fine 2009), the human rights revolution has suffered major reversals since what event?

Answer: The Anglo-American war on terror

Which of the following is NOT one of the four elements of Kant's "cosmopolitan point of view"

Answer: Affirming the legality of national boundaries

An essentialized understanding of culture contributed to what 1990s debate that assumed global standards of social justice were incompatible with local cultural practices?

Answer: The universalism-relativism debate

According to Merry, labeling culture as ___________ evokes an evolutionary vision of change from a primitive form to something like civilization.

Answer: Traditional

In her book Human Rights and Gender Violence, Merry (2006) warns that while human rights tend to promote ideas of individual autonomy, equality, choice and secularism, they might also contribute to what?

Answer: Cultural homogenization

The common interpretation of culture as national essence or identity comes from what historical European intellectual movement?

Answer: German romanticism

One reason violence against women is difficult to define as a human rights violation is because..?

Answer: it is often perpetrated by private citizens

Spade (2015) points out that legal efforts to ensure Trans rights have focused on anti-discrimination laws and what?

Answer: Hate crime laws

For Williams (1989), the Black desire for rights is defined by knowledge of a world without what?

Answer: Meaningful boundaries

For historically disempowered people, the conferring of rights elevates one's status to a(n) __________, according to Williams (1989)

Answer: social being

When it comes to Trans rights, discrimination law tends to take a _________ perspective that individualizes oppression and ignores systemic forms of discriminations.

Answer: Perpetrator

Williams (1989) argues that one's relationship to law is defined by one's sense of what?

Answer: Empowerment

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