Human Rights in Translation
Intercultural Pathways
Contributions by Shazia Ahmad, Elizabeth Blake, Marcella Ferri, Hisako Matsuo, Jeffrey A. Redding, Mario Ricca, Michal Jan Rozbicki, Rachel Santon, Tommaso Sbriccoli, Melisa Vasquez, Anders E. Walker Edited by Michal Jan Rozbicki
Not available to order
Publication date:
26 October 2018Length of book:
252 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498581424
This volume reflects on what happens when the idea and practice of universal human rights cross the cultural borders between different communities of knowledge. Although such rights are usually presumed to be founded on certain globally shared beliefs, the norms and values of many cultures are often incommensurable with these "universal" principles, and hence the need to translate and “vernacularize” them. Any law that would successfully institutionalize them must frame human rights in a way that defers to the historically constituted cultural capital of the society in which it is to function. The essays in this book seek to illuminate different cognitive contexts that produce different meanings of rights, identify spaces of intercultural crossings where differences can coexist, and offer usable narratives and metaphors that could help mediate between distinct cultures. They show that the path forward does not lead through a unified theory of human rights that can be applied globally, nor through mere repackaging of rights in a more understandable language. What is needed is a deep understanding of the process of intercultural dialogue, the cultural "grammar" involved in relationships of difference.
Notably since 1945 the discourse of human rights has become global, but what does this mean in the different contexts (conceptual, social, political, legal) in which the idea has been taken up? How do ideas forged in a specific Western—European and transatlantic—tradition ‘translate’ (literally and metaphorically) when crossing cultures? What happens if and when they do? And how should scholars and practitioners think about these phenomena? This valuable interdisciplinary collection, with its wide-ranging theoretical chapters and empirical case studies, draws on contemporary thinking about interculturality and intercultural dialogue, and brings a refreshingly new and illuminating approach to issues which, as the editor says, admit of no easy solution.