POLS2603 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Female Genital Mutilation, System On A Chip, Essentialism
Lecture 10 - Gender, Culture, Difference and Human Rights
•Key Questions:
◦Where and how is the rel between gender and cult difference negotiated in glob
pols?
◦through what discursive frameworks is this rel considered?
◦by what formations of power is this rel structured?
◦how might we approach/respond to debates about gender/cult difference?
•Two Overlapping Debates
◦group/cultural rights v individual/women’s rights
▪claim that there is a tension between two different sets of human rights
▪rights of individuals to be free from violence/coercion vs rights of groups to identity +
free expression
▪e.g. women wearing the burqa in France
▪proponents of group rights: important forms of expressions + markers of identity
•take on significance
•cannot be reduced to categorisation of rights violation using framework that comes
from other cultures
•human rights are prod of lib individualism + reflect this tradition + do not
acknowledge alternative world-views + ideas about mutual obligation and
individuals
▪proponents of women’s rights: violate certain rights - movement, expression etc
•argue human rights are gender biased + gender blind and did not reflect women’s
issues
•argue it furthered public/private distinction
◦does not attend to violence in private sphere
▪Both proponents arose as critiques of abstract universalism of human rights
▪human rights instruments support both proponents in some ways
▪both arguments have legitimacy
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