HUMAN RIGHTS AS MORAL PROGRESS? A Critique
2013; Wiley; Volume: 28; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/cuan.12034
ISSN1548-1360
Autores Tópico(s)Political Conflict and Governance
ResumoCultural AnthropologyVolume 28, Issue 4 p. 716-736 ORIGINAL ARTICLE HUMAN RIGHTS AS MORAL PROGRESS? A Critique JARRETT ZIGON, JARRETT ZIGON University of AmsterdamSearch for more papers by this author JARRETT ZIGON, JARRETT ZIGON University of AmsterdamSearch for more papers by this author First published: 17 October 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/cuan.12034Citations: 17Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat ABSTRACT In this article I critically engage the view that the enactment of human rights is the enactment of moral and political progress. Drawing on my research of international and local harm reductionists in Russia, I focus on these activists' arguments for and suggestions of rights-based legislation. I contend that such arguments are not only made according to the logic of security, prosperity, and normativity, but that the realization of such legislation primarily results in the strengthening of already existing state-government apparatuses. It is argued that such human rights activism is perhaps better understood in terms of post–Cold War democracy building rather than a concern for the health of injecting drug users as such. It is this institution building that the human rights industry calls progress, and it is this notion of progress that is called into question in the article. It will be argued that this human rights practice is best understood in terms of repetition, and such repetition ultimately marks a limit for the political and moral activity possible in the name of human rights. REFERENCES CITED American Anthropological Association 1999 Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights. Available at http://www.aaanet.org/about/Policies/statements/Declaration-on-Anthropology-and-Human-Rights.cfm. Annan, Kofi A. 1999 Foreword to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Fifty Years and Beyond. Yael Danieli, Elsa Stamatopoulou, and Clarence J. Dias, eds. P. v. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc. Arendt, Hannah 1973 The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Asad, Talal 2003 " Redeeming the 'Human' through Human Rights". In Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Pp. 127–158. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Brown, Wendy 2001 Politics Out of History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Brown, Wendy 2004 "'The Most We Can Hope for . . . ': Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism." The South Atlantic Quarterly 103(2): 451–463. Caduff, Carlo 2012 "The Semiotics of Security: Infectious Disease Research and the Biopolitics of Informational Bodies in the United States." Cultural Anthropology 27(2): 333–357. Cohen, Jonathan, and Daniel Wolfe 2008 "Harm Reduction and Human Rights: Finding Common Cause." AIDS 22(Suppl 2): S93–S94. Dias, Clarence J., and David Gillies 1993 Human Rights, Democracy, and Development. Montreal: International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development. Fassin, Didier 2011 Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ilana Feldman, and Miriam Ticktin, eds. 2010 In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Field, Mark G. 2000 " The Health and Demographic Crisis in Post-Soviet Russia: A Two-Phase Development ."In Russia's Torn Safety Nets: Health and Social Welfare during the Transition. Mark G. Field and Judyth L. Twigg, eds. Pp. 11–42. New York: St. Martin's Press. Goldstein, Daniel M. 2007 " Human Rights as Culprit, Human Rights as Victim: Rights and Security in the State of Exception ."In The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law between the Global and the Local. Mark Goodale and Sally Engle Merry, eds. Pp. 49–77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodale, Mark 2009 Surrendering to Utopia: An Anthropology of Human Rights. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Heimer, Robert, Robert E. Booth, Kevin Irwin, and Michael Merson 2006 " HIV and Drug Use in Eurasia ."In HIV/AIDS in Russia and Eurasia, Vol. 1. Judyth L. Twigg, ed. Pp. 141–164. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hunt, Lynn 2007 Inventing Human Rights: A History. New York: W. W. Norton. Ignatieff, Michael 2001 Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ishay, Micheline R. 2008 The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era. Berkeley: University of California Press. Koselleck, Reinhart 1983 Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press. Levinson, Lev 2004 " Russian Drug Policy: Stating the Problem and Revealing the Actual Picture ."In War on Drugs, HIV/AIDS, and Human Rights. Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch and Sarah Gallagher, eds. Pp. 52–59. New York: IDEA. Malinowska-Sempruch, Kasia, Jeff Hoover, and Anna Alexandrova 2004 " Unintended Consequences: Drug Policies Fuel the HIV Epidemic in Russia and Ukraine ."In War on Drugs, HIV/AIDS, and Human Rights. Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch and Sarah Gallagher, eds. Pp. 194–211. New York: IDEA. Mehta, Uday Singh 1999 Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Merry, Sally Engle 2006 Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moyn, Samuel 2010 The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. Nebrenchina, Luba 2009 Drug Policy in Russia: Drug Users' Stories of Repression. Moscow: ARF. Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2011 Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rancière, Jacques 2004 "Who Is the Subject of the Rights of Man?" South Atlantic Quarterly 103(2/3): 297–310. Redfield, Peter 2005 "Doctors, Borders, and Life in Crisis." Cultural Anthropology 20(3): 328–361. Shelley, Louise 2006 "The Drug Trade in Contemporary Russia." China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 4(1): 15–20. Tate, Winifred 2007 Counting the Dead: The Culture and Politics of Human Rights Activism in Colombia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ticktin, Miriam 2008 "Sexual Violence as the Language of Border Control: Where French Feminist and Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Meet." Signs 33(4): 863–889. Transatlantic Partners Against AIDS 2005 HIV/AIDS, Law and Human Rights: A Handbook for Russian Legislators. Moscow: TPAA/UNAIDS. Wilson, Richard Ashby, and Richard D. Brown 2009 Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wodak, Alex 2004 " Health, HIV Infection, Human Rights, and Injection Drug Use ."In War on Drugs, HIV/AIDS, and Human Rights. Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch and Sarah Gallagher, eds. Pp. 140–57. New York: IDEA. Zigon, Jarrett 2011 HIV Is God's Blessing: Rehabilitating Morality in Neoliberal Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Zigon, Jarrett Forthcoming The Politics of the Subject: Human Rights and the Limitations of Being. Berkeley: University of California Press. Žižek, Slavoj 2005 "Against Human Rights." New Left Review 34: 115–131. Citing Literature Volume28, Issue4November 2013Pages 716-736 ReferencesRelatedInformation
Referência(s)