Abstract:This paper addresses three commentaries on Victims Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights. In response to Vittorio Bufacchi, it argues that asking victims to tell their stories neednt be coercive or unjust and that victims are entitled to decide whether and under what conditions to tell their stories. In response to Serene Khader, it argues that empathy with victims stories can contribute to building a culture of human rights provided that measures are taken to overcome the implicit biases and colonialist… Show more
“…Perhaps the most prominent kind of victim considered is someone who suffers a human rights violation. See Meyers (2018). There are also discussions about whether being the victim of crime creates a right to have the culprit punished by the state (Wertheimer 1991), or a right to have one's suffering weighed in deliberations about sentencing.…”
Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a published version is known of, the repository item page linked to above, will contain details on accessing it.
“…Perhaps the most prominent kind of victim considered is someone who suffers a human rights violation. See Meyers (2018). There are also discussions about whether being the victim of crime creates a right to have the culprit punished by the state (Wertheimer 1991), or a right to have one's suffering weighed in deliberations about sentencing.…”
Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a published version is known of, the repository item page linked to above, will contain details on accessing it.
“…It also follows that storytelling and hearing as a practice of solidarity will be demanding in ways not generally recognized. Meyers (2018) proposes a new code of ethics for journalists and others in the collection and dissemination of the stories of victims of human rights abuses. 24 A similar code of ethics might be proposed to govern the solidarity-oriented practices of storytelling engaged in by activists, artists, and community organizations who aim to support refugees.…”
Section: Who Owns Stories?mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The pressures on journalists to get a story, inadequate training and supervision for researchers, resource constraints in NGOs, or similar factors, may lead to practices of collecting stories, however well‐intentioned, having a damaging effect on refugees. Here is an example recounted in Meyers (2018, 180):They asked us to lead them to women who had been raped so they could record our stories. “Tell us what happened—how did you feel?” Women were so upset after the interviews, we did not know what to do.…”
Section: Refugees' Storiesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Further to Fricker's conception of the human as an agent with the capacity to transmit knowledge, the picture of the refugee‐as‐storyteller, which I am proposing, ultimately implies an image of the refugee as an agent with a sense of self deeply connected to their own story. This is not just instrumentally the case in that the refugees' story is an important piece of evidence in asylum hearings, but also in view of the “the vital part that autobiographical narration plays in individuals' self‐understanding and engagement with the world” (Meyers 2018, 44). If this is right, then respecting refugees as agents (which the putative solidary partner should want to do) will entail respecting their story in certain ways.…”
Section: Refugees' Storiesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Indeed, Jesse Prinz (2011) argues that empathetic distress is likely to be de‐motivating, although the studies on which this claim rests seem to rely on participants' reactions to one‐off situations rather than political campaigns pursued by diverse agents in various media over time. Moreover, as Meyers (2018, 108–10) notes, epistemic failures and disengagement are not unique to the reception of distressing stories; for example, I could equally get lost in the figures around migration flows and fail to discern the human experiences behind them.…”
By implication, it is the absence or failure of solidarity that allows xenophobia to speak louder than reason. If we are to solve the crisis, that is, if we are to respond adequately to the human need that is urgently manifest, we need not just political institutions and agreements about burden sharing, but also more solidarity. 2 Thus, as well as asking what practical actions must be taken, and by whom, we must also ask how we can foster and sustain solidaristic attitudes. One answer is to tell stories, or better, to facilitate the means and the space for refugees to tell their own stories, and to amplify their voices. As Diana T. Meyers (2018, 23) argues, "By dispelling ignorance of or confusion about victims' moral claims, empathy with victims' stories can erode indifference to them." Activists deploy refugees' stories to engage the wider public and garner support for their cause. Mainstream news reports focus on specific stories to illustrate widespread injustices. Scholars use refugees' stories (some fact, some fiction) in academic writing on refugee or migration issues (e.g., Miller 2016). This suggests some consensus around the thought that through the telling of refugees' stories, understanding is enlarged, and empathy is engaged. I do not claim that hearing stories is, on its own, sufficient to generate solidarity, only that it has a valuable role to play. While this role is assumed in everyday practice by media editors, activists, and others, and is invoked by some theorists of solidarity and cosmopolitan norms, 3 it is currently undertheorized. There has been some recent philosophical discussion of the ethics of storytelling (
Drawing on empirical research, this article explores the possible sociopolitical effects of database infrastructures on the shaping and construction of human rights narratives. While it has become commonplace to theorise human rights through the lens of narrative, academic debates have largely ignored the technical infrastructures through which human rights narratives are constructed. The article responds to this gap by deploying and developing theoretical tools from software and infrastructure studies to consider database infrastructures as complex sociotechnical devices that engender sociopolitical consequences for narrative possibilities. Focusing on two key examples drawn from the empirical research, the article demonstrates the necessity of developing a critical attentiveness to the ways that human rights narratives are shaped by digital infrastructure. In doing so, the article develops and complicates infrastructure and software studies approaches whilst also demonstrating their value for other fields of research which do not ordinarily come within their purview.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
