Reconciling Universality and Particularity through a Cosmopolitan Outlook on Human Rights

Abstract

Human rights are today criticized as not compatible with different cultural values and the debate has circulated around Asian values and Islamic values as in dichotomy with human rights as universal ethics (Ignatieff, 2003). The theoretical dichotomy between universality and particularity is questioned pragmatically in this paper through a historical study. The working process of drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1946-48, which included thousands of people, is explored as a cosmopolitan space in which individuals from different cultural contexts met to negotiate human rights through cultural narratives. The process where particular values were negotiated with universal notion on human rights resulted in a common proclamation (UDHR) without a common philosophical or ideological ground. This paper puts forth a thesis that human rights discourse can work as a cosmopolitan space, in which particular value systems meet in processes characterized by conflict and cohesion. Hence human rights can be understood as a master narrative compatible with different conflicting cultural narratives (Gibson & Somers, 1994).

Intersectional Dialogue - A Cosmopolitical Dialogue of Ethics

“…The UNESCO Committee conducted parallel work to the UN Commission, which resulted in a \ list of universal human rights principles similar to the UDHR. This fact has not received much attention in earlier research (Adami, 2012). The workings of the UN Commission and the UNESCO Committee were different, the UN Commission being a political arena for individual delegates giving lengthy speeches in order to influence each other's opinions, whereas the UNESCO Committee handled their work through written reports from various parts of the world.…”

“…Looking at the primary sources from the UN and the UNESCO archives and building on earlier research on the drafting of the UDHR (eg Morsink, 1999;Lauren, 2011, Glendon, 2001, Adami, 2012, a different picture than a consensus oriented process emerges, which cannot be captured adequately in its complexity by a model of dialogue in the absence of power and conflict. Rather, the drafting process of the UDHR in 1948 was a power struggle The "fathers" of the UDHR have been referred to as René Cassin (Lauren, 2011) and John Humphrey (Morsink, 1999) although it is questionable if this can be taken for granted, since their initial drafts that emphasized the rights of Man were reworked in more than seven versions of the UDHR.…”

“…Intersectional dialogue hence refers to the way in which power intersects when individuals position themselves in dialogue by drawing on different cultural narratives (Adami 2012). The importance of keeping dialogue open is reached in this sense by putting conflict and agonism at the heart of political dialogue.…”

Struggles over human rights in local government – the case of access to education for undocumented youth in Malmö, Sweden

“…Nussbaum 2003;Benhabib 2008;Charvet 1998, Adami 2012. Rebecca Adami (2012) in this context puts forth a thesis that human rights discourse can work as a cosmopolitan space, in which particular value systems meet in processes characterized by conflict and cohesion. She concludes that understandings of human rights originate from our locality and through our particular value systems, with which we identify.…”

“…Drawing on Langlois (2001), Adami takes the understanding of 'universality' beyond theoretical struggles of human rights legitimacy, towards reconciling 'universal' and 'particular' values in the cosmopolitan space that human rights offer as discourse. This is done by taking the universal through the particular, and by acknowledging the tensions that may arise (Adami 2012).…”