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| Power Dynamics in the Human Rights Movements - Universalism or Relativism |
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In addition, it is essential to look at the phenomenon of resistance to universalism by cultural relativists. It has been argued that ''women and girls are visible and vulnerable embodiments of practices that designate them as the repositories and guardians of cultural meanings that ironically also imply second-class status'' (Nagengast, 1997). From that perspective, dominant groups appear to be the ones who have the most to lose when current gender norms are challenged, and they may try to justify the institutionalized violations of women's HR by saying it is for their protection. I reject this argument. I have been trained, as a women traveler and karateka, to believe that men try to control women's sexuality because they can not control their own instincts towards the women's body, which they picture as beautiful but passive. I also have learned in Wendo that women are thus socialized to beg, scream or freeze when their human rights are violated, because showing attitude will result in them being called a 'bitch'. I think it is a myth that women can not be empowered to defend themselves.
Through time and by taking this class I was brought to try harder to become more self-reflective and conscious of the ways in which I can be culturally imperialist, a behavior that seem to be taken by some authors and neglected by others. For instance, Howland's principled approach suggest that consent to UN HR treaties automatically implies that states are responsible for changing their national laws (C., 2001). Partington adopts the same universalist point of view, which implies that a women either does what is expected of her or she exits her culture. Gatens goes on to explain that it is likely that one will want to reject only certain parts of one's culture and focus on reforming these. (Gatens, 2004). My critic of these arguments is that, to me, a universal standpoint is very Eurocentric because it seems to take for granted the idea that anybody would want to ''convert'' or ''assimiliate'' to Western culture if they had the chance. Gunning, by point out at the limitations of the legal approach, suggests a World-traveller approach in which one is advised to first know oneself to understand one's own standpoint before making judgements about harmful traditional practices (HTP) elsewhere (Coomaraswamy, 2001). This advice would have been useful to me while in Chad, where I had an argument with my guy friends since they said the way in which a girl dressed excited men, which resulted in the spread of HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancies. They were saying it was the woman's fault if she was raped, while I was saying that a women has to be free from rape and free to maintain physical integrity. Now I realize I was being imperialist by trying to impose my IHR framework onto cultural practices with which I was not so familiar to since I did not know much about youth gender relations at that time. However, the cultural imperialist accusation is not always well-founded. For example, I disagree with the idea that ''activists misunderstand, undervalue, or disparage cultural and traditional practices that reinforce community solidarity at the expense of individual liberty'' (Nagengast, 1997), because, although Westerners often admire ''communitary'' values, they would be wrong to understand the community as a homogeneous set; it is in fact an aggregate of political actors with their own agendas who were sometimes united in the first place principally because of a common geographic location. In that case, criticism of the ''community'' is not cultural imperialism, but political analysis.
It would be dishonest to deny the power issues existing in the CR position. An absolute CR stance based in a post-modernist vision risks seeing the universe as a chaotic system in which invalid claims can be accepted because no universal Truth is said to exist. This is very dangerous, since it can suggest that all viewpoints, be them racist, sexist, heterosexist or fundamentalist, can be justified. Hence, I would argue for partial universalism, which also brings in the problem of which HR have priority over others. In fact, there seem to be a hierarchy of rights in the UDHR; often cultural relativists contest only certain rights as being human rights and they may question the interpretation that attaches to certain human rights (Coomaraswamy, 2001). Also, different types of rights are interpreted differently; economic, social and cultural rights are seen as more relative or subjective than civil and political rights (Nagengast, 1997). A potential solution to that problem is phrased by Sullivan, when she suggests balancing various rights by horizontalizing them and putting them into perspective rather than assume all rights are independent from one another (Coomaraswamy, 2001). This last argument struck me in its usefulness to analyse HTP, because it stresses the importance of context in judging them. I am nevertheless slightly ill-at-ease with the notion of ''universalism''; it has always been a very difficult philosophical challenge to find something that is common to all humankind, a task that may even be impossible since even themes explored in all major religions (i.e. The Golden Rule – Treat others as you want to be treated) are never interpreted literally and out-of-time by anyone.
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Je suis étudiante en économie du développement au Canada, présentement volontaire en prise en charge socioéconomique des personnes vivant avec le VIH SIDA au Burkina Faso. Je m'intéresse particulièment aux mouvements sociaux et aux questions d'équité et d'oppression.
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