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Universal human rights, cultural relativism and the Asian values debate

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In Brief

The issue of implementing universal human rights (specifically Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which articulates the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion) continues to be a sensitive and ongoing issue between various Western and Asian governments. While most of these issues have been concerned with empirical developments regarding human rights abuses, the conceptual underpinnings that inform this debate are less often analysed. In particular, how do cultural relativism and Asian values, as posited against universal values, help legitimise repressive policies and actions through various conceptual manoeuvres.

Cultural relativism is the position to which local cultural traditions (religious, political and legal practices included) properly determine the existence and scope of civil and political rights enjoyed by individuals in a given society. It is premised on the idea that all cultures are equally valid and that standards of evaluation are internal to traditions.

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It sees that values emerge in the context of particular social, cultural, economic and political conditions and therefore vary enormously between different communities. However, the language of cultural relativism is often exploited by various state leaders and high officials to justify and rationalise repressive policies, despite such policies having no philosophical or cultural justification. The paradox of cultural relativism is that participation is necessary to understand what values are legitimate within a society, but that the rhetoric associated with cultural relativism helps effectively hinder any participation or freedom of thought within a given society. This lies at the heart of the problem of effectively implementing universal human rights.

A paradigm for understanding how this occurs is the idea of Asian values, which is posited against Western values. Within this construct, values such as privileging the community over the individual, respect for authority and filial duty are dichotomised against Western values such as individualism and materialism. By extension, Lee Kuan Yew argues that such Western values have led to the proliferation of ‘guns, drugs, violent crimes and vagrancy…in sum the breakdown of civil society.’ The dichotomy between Asian values and Western values therefore frames Asian values in a positive light and perpetuates the idea that a distinct set of Asian values is important. By implication, this means that Asian societies have their own way of doing things and that Western ideas are invalid and illegitimate within Asian societies. Moreover, because a binary logic exists where Asia is dichotomised against the West, many of the values associated with the West are also demonised. This establishes a precedent for legitimising repressive policies and actions that can be passed off under the guise of Asian values.

Community values are also consistently highlighted as a typical Asian value and are posited against the Western value of individualism. However, there are ambiguities about the definition of community. As has been explained by others previously, in political discourses, one often sees the community collapse into the state and the state collapse into the regime. When equations are drawn between the community, state and the regime, criticisms of the regime become crimes against the nation-state, the community and the people. This conceptual manoeuvre allows the dismissal of individual rights that conflict with the regime’s interests. At the same time, this view denies the existence of conflicting interests between the state and communities in an Asian nation or society. Thus, what begins as an endorsement of the community and society in harmony ends in an assertion of the supreme status of the regime and its leaders. Draconian and repressive policies are therefore concealed in the name of the community interest.

The concept of self-Orientalism can also be used as a defence against implementing universal human rights. Self-Orientalism can be defined as the uncritical acceptance of a foreign negative description of oneself or one’s people. By framing Asian people and societies within this pejorative light, one can understand Western values as a repressive strategy or elitist notion that considers values as inappropriate for Asian people at this point in time. Moreover, self-Orientalism and ‘Right side up’ Orientalism are not contradictory ideas, but rather complementary as they both present Asian values as distinct from Western values. Whether they are framed in a positive or negative light is less important than the fact that they serve to distance Asian values from Western values. Once this distance is created, it legitimises certain values based on the notion that they are suited to Asian societies.

The language of cultural relativism therefore can construct false dichotomies that posit Western and Asian values as irreconcilable opposites. By critically analysing the conceptual underpinnings of such discourses, it is hoped that the premise for many policies will be removed, and thus gradually change.

Patrick Chin-Dahler is currently studying a Bachelor of Asia-Pacific Studies (Honours) at the Australian National University.

This article was shortlisted for the 2010 EAF Emerging Scholars competition.

4 responses to “Universal human rights, cultural relativism and the Asian values debate”

  1. Excellent assessment of Lee Kuan Yew’s reign of terror, whereby he has successfully brainwashed millions during the past few decades.

  2. I feel academic integrity requires I bring attention to this issue:

    While doing research for a report I am writing, I read a paper presented at the 2007 International Development Studies Conference on Mainstreaming Human Security: The Asian Contribution. It was authored by Hossain Shanawez, a P.H.D candidate at the Waseda University in Tokyp. It was written three years prior to this article by Patrick Chin-Dahler.

    I quote:

    “However, this Asian view creates confusions by collapsing `community` into the state and the state into the regime. When equations are drawn between community, the state and the regime, any criticisms of the regime become crimes against the nation-state, the community, and the people. This Asian view relies on such a conceptual maneuver to dismiss individual rights that conflict with regime`s interest, allowing the condemnation of individual rights as anti-communal, destructive of social harmony, and seditionist against the sovereign state.”

    Now read the third last paragraph of this article. I make no accusations, but rather hope some investigation is carried out.

    • This particular reference was included in the original essay from which this article was drawn. I am very sorry that the link to that work was omitted from the article published above and it has now been included

  3. I believe that your criticism of the idea of implementing a universal human rights is valid and the cultural relativism of the Asian and Western countries supports your argument. Asian and Western countries are indeed much different as far as determining what rights to give their people. As you said, we on the West believe that the individual has the right to do what they want, and Asian countries typically side with their leaders in the same cases. This means that we tend to believe more in individual ethical relativism, rather than ethical cultural relativism as Asian countries might. This tendency to believe that we determine what we should do leads others to believe that we only care about ourselves. This is true for many people in this country, while in Asian countries, the majority of people believe in respecting others and caring about the community instead. This is a big reason why universal human rights could not work. If everyone tried to change their ways and believe in universal ethical relativism, there would be much conflict. On an individual basis, there would be much conflict between what individual households believe is right to do in certain social situations, but even more importantly, it would be impossible for countries to agree on what the universal human rights could even be. There would obviously be the countries that would never comply, such as North Korea and Russia, but besides that, there are still a couple hundred countries where almost no two human rights outlines are the same. This would mean that getting any combination of countries to agree on universal human rights would be nearly impossible.

    Besides the obvious disagreements countries have with each other, there is also, as this article brought up, the issue of self-orientalism is also a road block in the pursuit of universal human rights. Since those in Asian countries believe that there are many people who have this negative opinion on Asians, they will never want to agree to some form of universal human rights with people they believe dislike them. Their belief in cultural ethical relativism would make them believe that this orientalism is something ingrained in our culture, so they would be much less willing to accept any sort of of ethics proposed in a universal human rights plan.

    As highlighted in the article, there isn’t much conflict between communities and the government in Asian countries, while on the flip-side, there is much conflict between communities and the government in our country. We have plenty of laws, such as the legality of marijuana, that differ between state and federal governments, and sometimes even local governments. There are also millions of people who express their disgust with the government online and in-person everyday. This is not seen nearly as much in Asian countries, as they are much more strict against this type of behavior. This strictness enforces the cultural ethical relativism that is much more prevalent in Asian countries.

    These are just a few reasons why I agree with your stance on the fact that universal human rights is an impossible thing to decide upon, as there is too much conflict in the ethical beliefs of the east and the west.

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