Paul S. Fiddes
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198263470
- eISBN:
- 9780191682568
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263470.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
The belief that God is a suffering God has become compelling for recent theology. Centuries of traditional belief about the impassability and the immutability of God have been overturned in this age. ...
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The belief that God is a suffering God has become compelling for recent theology. Centuries of traditional belief about the impassability and the immutability of God have been overturned in this age. This chapter reviews the ways in which recent theology has come to its convictions about a suffering God, noting four main themes for the change in mind in Christendom. The first section examines the meaning of the love of God. The next section explores the central place of the cross of Jesus within Christian faith. The third section looks into the problem of human suffering. The fourth section looks at the overall modern picture.Less
The belief that God is a suffering God has become compelling for recent theology. Centuries of traditional belief about the impassability and the immutability of God have been overturned in this age. This chapter reviews the ways in which recent theology has come to its convictions about a suffering God, noting four main themes for the change in mind in Christendom. The first section examines the meaning of the love of God. The next section explores the central place of the cross of Jesus within Christian faith. The third section looks into the problem of human suffering. The fourth section looks at the overall modern picture.
Eric J. Cassell
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- November 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195156164
- eISBN:
- 9780199999880
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195156164.003.0003
- Subject:
- Palliative Care, Patient Care and End-of-Life Decision Making, Palliative Medicine and Older People
This chapter discusses suffering and the nature of suffering, which has been given little attention despite the fact that physicians are obligated to relieve human suffering. The majority of the ...
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This chapter discusses suffering and the nature of suffering, which has been given little attention despite the fact that physicians are obligated to relieve human suffering. The majority of the chapter is spent discussing three main points: suffering is experienced by persons, suffering occurs when the impending destruction of a person is perceived, and suffering can occur in relation to any aspect of a person. The author presents a very simple topography of a person that may help in understanding both suffering and the relationship between suffering and the goals of medicine.Less
This chapter discusses suffering and the nature of suffering, which has been given little attention despite the fact that physicians are obligated to relieve human suffering. The majority of the chapter is spent discussing three main points: suffering is experienced by persons, suffering occurs when the impending destruction of a person is perceived, and suffering can occur in relation to any aspect of a person. The author presents a very simple topography of a person that may help in understanding both suffering and the relationship between suffering and the goals of medicine.
Lucy Bending
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187172
- eISBN:
- 9780191674648
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187172.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
If animal pain was discounted by vivisectionists in the face of physiological knowledge, then the pain of particular groups of humans could also be ...
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If animal pain was discounted by vivisectionists in the face of physiological knowledge, then the pain of particular groups of humans could also be discredited and denied. This chapter deals with the ways in which the pain of individual human sufferers was read in accordance with particular preconceptions, rather than in the light of suffering endured in the body. The first section lays the groundwork for such discrediting of suffering as it broadly asks: what do we see when we look at pain? and how do we know that it is real? The second section picks up on the terminology used to phrase the questions of the first by asking what basis the word ‘we’ could have in such a context. It demonstrates the fluidity of pain as a sign, and its openness to conflicting interpretation, as its basis as a shared component of human experience is variously upheld or rejected.Less
If animal pain was discounted by vivisectionists in the face of physiological knowledge, then the pain of particular groups of humans could also be discredited and denied. This chapter deals with the ways in which the pain of individual human sufferers was read in accordance with particular preconceptions, rather than in the light of suffering endured in the body. The first section lays the groundwork for such discrediting of suffering as it broadly asks: what do we see when we look at pain? and how do we know that it is real? The second section picks up on the terminology used to phrase the questions of the first by asking what basis the word ‘we’ could have in such a context. It demonstrates the fluidity of pain as a sign, and its openness to conflicting interpretation, as its basis as a shared component of human experience is variously upheld or rejected.
RAIMO VÄYRYNEN
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198297390
- eISBN:
- 9780191685323
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198297390.003.0002
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
This chapter examines the concepts and issues related to the so-called complex humanitarian emergencies. It explains that complex humanitarian emergencies are the ultimate manifestation of the ...
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This chapter examines the concepts and issues related to the so-called complex humanitarian emergencies. It explains that complex humanitarian emergencies are the ultimate manifestation of the economic fragmentation, political turmoil, and human suffering that are spreading in the less developed parts of the world. It analyses various cases of complex humanitarian emergencies during the 1990s, which were mostly in Central Asia, the Horn of Africa, and West Africa.Less
This chapter examines the concepts and issues related to the so-called complex humanitarian emergencies. It explains that complex humanitarian emergencies are the ultimate manifestation of the economic fragmentation, political turmoil, and human suffering that are spreading in the less developed parts of the world. It analyses various cases of complex humanitarian emergencies during the 1990s, which were mostly in Central Asia, the Horn of Africa, and West Africa.
Richard Swinburne
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780199257461
- eISBN:
- 9780191598616
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199257469.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead involved a violation of natural laws, and so could have happened only if natural laws depend for their operation on God, who set them aside on this ...
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The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead involved a violation of natural laws, and so could have happened only if natural laws depend for their operation on God, who set them aside on this occasion. The main reason he would have for setting them aside would be any reason he had himself to become incarnate; the Resurrection would then be the divine signature on his work, showing that he had become incarnate. So any evidence from natural theology that there is a God with a certain nature, and any reason to suppose that having that nature would lead a God to become incarnate, is evidence (background evidence) that some sort of super‐miracle like the Resurrection would occur. Any evidence against the existence of God or against him being such as to become incarnate would be evidence against the Resurrection. I argue that God does have reason to become incarnate—to provide atonement, to identify with human suffering, and to reveal truth. Our evidence about the life of Jesus (the prior historical evidence) is such that it is not too improbable that we would find it if God was incarnate in Jesus for these reasons. Our evidence about what happened after the death of Jesus (the posterior historical evidence) is such that it is not too improbable that we would find it if Jesus had risen from the dead. For no other prophet in human history, is there anything like this combination of prior and posterior historical evidence. Given a moderate amount of positive background evidence, it then becomes very probable that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead.Less
The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead involved a violation of natural laws, and so could have happened only if natural laws depend for their operation on God, who set them aside on this occasion. The main reason he would have for setting them aside would be any reason he had himself to become incarnate; the Resurrection would then be the divine signature on his work, showing that he had become incarnate. So any evidence from natural theology that there is a God with a certain nature, and any reason to suppose that having that nature would lead a God to become incarnate, is evidence (background evidence) that some sort of super‐miracle like the Resurrection would occur. Any evidence against the existence of God or against him being such as to become incarnate would be evidence against the Resurrection. I argue that God does have reason to become incarnate—to provide atonement, to identify with human suffering, and to reveal truth. Our evidence about the life of Jesus (the prior historical evidence) is such that it is not too improbable that we would find it if God was incarnate in Jesus for these reasons. Our evidence about what happened after the death of Jesus (the posterior historical evidence) is such that it is not too improbable that we would find it if Jesus had risen from the dead. For no other prophet in human history, is there anything like this combination of prior and posterior historical evidence. Given a moderate amount of positive background evidence, it then becomes very probable that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead.
David B. Morris
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520208698
- eISBN:
- 9780520926240
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520208698.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
There is no doubt that AIDS has reshaped the postmodern era. No contemporary affliction illustrates better than AIDS how the biology of human illness intersects with cultural practices that ...
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There is no doubt that AIDS has reshaped the postmodern era. No contemporary affliction illustrates better than AIDS how the biology of human illness intersects with cultural practices that increasingly reshape it. While HIV was silently digging into the genetic material of the billions of cells it attacked across the globe, activists with the passion of Larry Kramer, including his critics within the gay community, were generating an unprecedented discourse of protest, analysis, argument, fear, elegy, and denunciation. The role of culture in helping to construct this distinctively postmodern affliction raises an issue that connects AIDS with other forms of traumatic illnesses.Less
There is no doubt that AIDS has reshaped the postmodern era. No contemporary affliction illustrates better than AIDS how the biology of human illness intersects with cultural practices that increasingly reshape it. While HIV was silently digging into the genetic material of the billions of cells it attacked across the globe, activists with the passion of Larry Kramer, including his critics within the gay community, were generating an unprecedented discourse of protest, analysis, argument, fear, elegy, and denunciation. The role of culture in helping to construct this distinctively postmodern affliction raises an issue that connects AIDS with other forms of traumatic illnesses.
Keith Ward
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198263937
- eISBN:
- 9780191682681
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263937.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology, World Religions
Some views of divine perfection require that God should be unaware of suffering in any experiential sense. For such awareness would lessen the quality or intensity of the divine bliss, and make the ...
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Some views of divine perfection require that God should be unaware of suffering in any experiential sense. For such awareness would lessen the quality or intensity of the divine bliss, and make the divine existence less than wholly desirable. However, this seems to represent the triumph of a wholly a priori theology at the expense of both revelation and common sense. If an omniscient being is experientially aware of good, how could it fail to be experientially aware of evil, in the form of suffering?Less
Some views of divine perfection require that God should be unaware of suffering in any experiential sense. For such awareness would lessen the quality or intensity of the divine bliss, and make the divine existence less than wholly desirable. However, this seems to represent the triumph of a wholly a priori theology at the expense of both revelation and common sense. If an omniscient being is experientially aware of good, how could it fail to be experientially aware of evil, in the form of suffering?
Upendra Baxi
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195690439
- eISBN:
- 9780199081059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195690439.003.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Human Rights and Immigration
Much of the twentieth century of the Christian Era, especially its latter half, is hailed as the Age of Human Rights. In some ways, human rights sociolect emerges, in this era of the end of ideology, ...
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Much of the twentieth century of the Christian Era, especially its latter half, is hailed as the Age of Human Rights. In some ways, human rights sociolect emerges, in this era of the end of ideology, as the only universal ideology in the making, enabling both the legitimation of power and the praxes of emancipatory politics. For the hundreds of millions of the ‘wretched of the earth’, human rights enunciations matter, if at all, as and when they provide, even if contingently, shields against torture and tyranny, deprivation and destitution, pauperization and powerlessness, desexualization and degradation. However, the meta-languages of human rights thus remain problematic on the plane of representation and mediation of human suffering. This chapter examines human rights and some important concepts related to it, including clarity of conviction and communication, ethics, morality, human suffering, governance, logics and paralogics, and radical evil.Less
Much of the twentieth century of the Christian Era, especially its latter half, is hailed as the Age of Human Rights. In some ways, human rights sociolect emerges, in this era of the end of ideology, as the only universal ideology in the making, enabling both the legitimation of power and the praxes of emancipatory politics. For the hundreds of millions of the ‘wretched of the earth’, human rights enunciations matter, if at all, as and when they provide, even if contingently, shields against torture and tyranny, deprivation and destitution, pauperization and powerlessness, desexualization and degradation. However, the meta-languages of human rights thus remain problematic on the plane of representation and mediation of human suffering. This chapter examines human rights and some important concepts related to it, including clarity of conviction and communication, ethics, morality, human suffering, governance, logics and paralogics, and radical evil.
Arvind Sharma
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195679489
- eISBN:
- 9780199081714
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195679489.003.0025
- Subject:
- Law, Human Rights and Immigration
This chapter examines the argument that human rights are Western in the way in which it construes human suffering. The emphasis on civil rights and the neglect of social and economic rights seem ...
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This chapter examines the argument that human rights are Western in the way in which it construes human suffering. The emphasis on civil rights and the neglect of social and economic rights seem capable of being woven into the fabric of this argument. It also influences the perception of whose rights are to be empowered to reduce human suffering. When the theatre of such suffering is outside the West, whose inhabitants are insufficiently human, their suffering was to be ameliorated to those who were sufficiently human. So it was not the victims who were to be empowered but their interests politically. In the theatres of the West the victims were to be empowered by those professionally qualified to do so. Such an analysis enables one to view the tendency to deny the right of self-determination in the Third World on the part of Western powers. Upendra Baxi makes a point where he distinguishes between two reactions to human suffering in terms of human rights discourse. One is the non-recognition of it and the other is the horrified expression of it.Less
This chapter examines the argument that human rights are Western in the way in which it construes human suffering. The emphasis on civil rights and the neglect of social and economic rights seem capable of being woven into the fabric of this argument. It also influences the perception of whose rights are to be empowered to reduce human suffering. When the theatre of such suffering is outside the West, whose inhabitants are insufficiently human, their suffering was to be ameliorated to those who were sufficiently human. So it was not the victims who were to be empowered but their interests politically. In the theatres of the West the victims were to be empowered by those professionally qualified to do so. Such an analysis enables one to view the tendency to deny the right of self-determination in the Third World on the part of Western powers. Upendra Baxi makes a point where he distinguishes between two reactions to human suffering in terms of human rights discourse. One is the non-recognition of it and the other is the horrified expression of it.
Matthew Frank
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199233649
- eISBN:
- 9780191716294
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199233649.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This book focuses on how Britain perceived the mass movement of German populations from Poland and Czechoslovakia at the end of the Second World War. Drawing on a wide range of British archival ...
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This book focuses on how Britain perceived the mass movement of German populations from Poland and Czechoslovakia at the end of the Second World War. Drawing on a wide range of British archival material, it examines why the British came to regard the forcible removal of German populations from Poland and Czechoslovakia as a necessity, and evaluates the British response, both in official circles and in the public domain, to developments in central Europe once mass expulsion became a reality in 1945. Central to this study is the concept of ‘population transfer’: the contemporary idea that awkward minority problems could be solved rationally and constructively by removing the population concerned in an orderly and gradual manner, while avoiding unnecessary human suffering and economic disruption. The book demonstrates that while most British observers accepted the principle of population transfer, most were also consistently uneasy with the results of putting that principle into practice. This clash of ‘principle’ with ‘practice’ revealed much not only about the limitations of Britain's role, but also the hierarchy of British priorities in immediate post-war Europe.Less
This book focuses on how Britain perceived the mass movement of German populations from Poland and Czechoslovakia at the end of the Second World War. Drawing on a wide range of British archival material, it examines why the British came to regard the forcible removal of German populations from Poland and Czechoslovakia as a necessity, and evaluates the British response, both in official circles and in the public domain, to developments in central Europe once mass expulsion became a reality in 1945. Central to this study is the concept of ‘population transfer’: the contemporary idea that awkward minority problems could be solved rationally and constructively by removing the population concerned in an orderly and gradual manner, while avoiding unnecessary human suffering and economic disruption. The book demonstrates that while most British observers accepted the principle of population transfer, most were also consistently uneasy with the results of putting that principle into practice. This clash of ‘principle’ with ‘practice’ revealed much not only about the limitations of Britain's role, but also the hierarchy of British priorities in immediate post-war Europe.
Upendra Baxi
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195690439
- eISBN:
- 9780199081059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195690439.003.0006
- Subject:
- Law, Human Rights and Immigration
The assertion that ‘contemporary’ human rights are ‘universal’ has come under attack from the standpoints of relativism, anti-foundationalism, and multiculturalism. The idea of the universal in human ...
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The assertion that ‘contemporary’ human rights are ‘universal’ has come under attack from the standpoints of relativism, anti-foundationalism, and multiculturalism. The idea of the universal in human sciences is typically associated with the project of universalization. The project of ‘universalization’ of human rights, particularly of globalization of human rights, also strains the idea of universality of human rights. Both the forms of advocacy and of the critique of universality remain fraught with fateful implications for the future of human rights. This chapter also explores justifications for human rights, three moments of universality (abstract universality, abstract particularity, and concrete universality), globalization and universality of human rights, the ‘histories’ of universality, human rights authorship, the politics of and for human rights, the confusion between the universality and absoluteness of rights, multiculturalism as postmodern racism, the notion of Westoxification, types of relativism, and the voices of human suffering.Less
The assertion that ‘contemporary’ human rights are ‘universal’ has come under attack from the standpoints of relativism, anti-foundationalism, and multiculturalism. The idea of the universal in human sciences is typically associated with the project of universalization. The project of ‘universalization’ of human rights, particularly of globalization of human rights, also strains the idea of universality of human rights. Both the forms of advocacy and of the critique of universality remain fraught with fateful implications for the future of human rights. This chapter also explores justifications for human rights, three moments of universality (abstract universality, abstract particularity, and concrete universality), globalization and universality of human rights, the ‘histories’ of universality, human rights authorship, the politics of and for human rights, the confusion between the universality and absoluteness of rights, multiculturalism as postmodern racism, the notion of Westoxification, types of relativism, and the voices of human suffering.
Oche Onazi
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748654673
- eISBN:
- 9780748693870
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748654673.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
This chapter singles out and discusses a particular problem – largely overlooked by dominant communitarian critiques of liberalism – with human rights through the writings and insights of Simone ...
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This chapter singles out and discusses a particular problem – largely overlooked by dominant communitarian critiques of liberalism – with human rights through the writings and insights of Simone Weil. The primary theme in this chapter is the conceptual value of human rights as a medium to recognise and respond to human suffering. Through Simone Weil's writings, it discusses why love must be central to the design of any institution, especially human rights institutions and approaches that seek to take human suffering seriously. It concludes by showing how the African moral philosophical outlook on the value of community, among other things, is supportive of this inclination to love. African moral philosophy allows us to understand community itself as something that is constituted or founded upon expressions of love and empathy.Less
This chapter singles out and discusses a particular problem – largely overlooked by dominant communitarian critiques of liberalism – with human rights through the writings and insights of Simone Weil. The primary theme in this chapter is the conceptual value of human rights as a medium to recognise and respond to human suffering. Through Simone Weil's writings, it discusses why love must be central to the design of any institution, especially human rights institutions and approaches that seek to take human suffering seriously. It concludes by showing how the African moral philosophical outlook on the value of community, among other things, is supportive of this inclination to love. African moral philosophy allows us to understand community itself as something that is constituted or founded upon expressions of love and empathy.
Upendra Baxi
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195690439
- eISBN:
- 9780199081059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195690439.003.0007
- Subject:
- Law, Human Rights and Immigration
This chapter examines whether specific forms of collective social action named as practices of human rights activism amount to a ‘social’ movement and, if so, how we may understand the relation ...
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This chapter examines whether specific forms of collective social action named as practices of human rights activism amount to a ‘social’ movement and, if so, how we may understand the relation between human rights activism and social movements. The threshold question raises, in turn, several related questions, such as: What is gained by endeavours aimed at describing practices of human rights activism in terms of social ‘movement?’ How do markets form and inform the practices of human rights activism? How may we understand the conversion of human rights movements into human rights markets? This chapter argues that the growing ‘techniziation’ of the field of human rights, described here in terms of ‘legalization’, impedes any serious exploration by social movement theorists. It also discusses the emancipatory character of human rights movements, legalization and juridicalization, value neutrality, techniques of commodification of human suffering, and the problems of market regulation.Less
This chapter examines whether specific forms of collective social action named as practices of human rights activism amount to a ‘social’ movement and, if so, how we may understand the relation between human rights activism and social movements. The threshold question raises, in turn, several related questions, such as: What is gained by endeavours aimed at describing practices of human rights activism in terms of social ‘movement?’ How do markets form and inform the practices of human rights activism? How may we understand the conversion of human rights movements into human rights markets? This chapter argues that the growing ‘techniziation’ of the field of human rights, described here in terms of ‘legalization’, impedes any serious exploration by social movement theorists. It also discusses the emancipatory character of human rights movements, legalization and juridicalization, value neutrality, techniques of commodification of human suffering, and the problems of market regulation.
Upendra Baxi
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195690439
- eISBN:
- 9780199081059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195690439.003.0002
- Subject:
- Law, Human Rights and Immigration
It is important to identify at the outset the strong and the weak hegemonic claims in the stories of the origin of human rights. The strong claim (the ‘impossibility thesis’) insists that human ...
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It is important to identify at the outset the strong and the weak hegemonic claims in the stories of the origin of human rights. The strong claim (the ‘impossibility thesis’) insists that human rights traditions ‘could only have originated in the West’. The weak claim comprises two ideas: first, human rights traditions ‘originated historically in the West’ (the historic claim) and, second, human rights ‘have been propagated from the West’ (the evangelical claim). This chapter discusses the ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’ views of human rights, as well as the logics of social exclusion and social inclusion, human rights languages and powers of governance, human suffering and human rights, fragmented universality of ‘contemporary’ human rights, the Cold War naturalization of human rights violations, outlawry of racism, the Marxian critique of bourgeois human rights formation, new forms of global solidarity, and the emergence of the politics ‘of’ and ‘for’ human rights.Less
It is important to identify at the outset the strong and the weak hegemonic claims in the stories of the origin of human rights. The strong claim (the ‘impossibility thesis’) insists that human rights traditions ‘could only have originated in the West’. The weak claim comprises two ideas: first, human rights traditions ‘originated historically in the West’ (the historic claim) and, second, human rights ‘have been propagated from the West’ (the evangelical claim). This chapter discusses the ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’ views of human rights, as well as the logics of social exclusion and social inclusion, human rights languages and powers of governance, human suffering and human rights, fragmented universality of ‘contemporary’ human rights, the Cold War naturalization of human rights violations, outlawry of racism, the Marxian critique of bourgeois human rights formation, new forms of global solidarity, and the emergence of the politics ‘of’ and ‘for’ human rights.
E. Wayne Nafziger, Frances Stewart, and Raimo Väyrynen (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198297390
- eISBN:
- 9780191685323
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198297390.001.0001
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
Civil wars in developing countries are amongst the most significant sources of human suffering in the world today. Although there are many political analyses of these emergencies, this text studies ...
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Civil wars in developing countries are amongst the most significant sources of human suffering in the world today. Although there are many political analyses of these emergencies, this text studies the economic, social, and political roots of humanitarian emergencies, identifying early measures to prevent such disasters. The chapters draw on a wide range of specialities on the political economy of war and on major conflicts to show the causes of conflict. This text here is the first of two volumes and it provides a general overview of the nature and causes of the emergencies, including economic, political, and environmental factors. Both volumes emphasize the significance of protracted economic stagnation and decline, government exclusion of distinct social groups, state failure, predatory rule, and high and increasing inequality, especially horizontal inequalities, or inequality among groups in access to political, economic, and social resources. They criticize beliefs recurrent in the literature that emergencies are the result of deteriorating environmental conditions or structural adjustment, or arise from ethnic animosities alone. Violent conflicts and state violence arise from the interaction of cultural, economic, and political factors. Following this analysis of the causes of war and genocide, the work points to policies that would help to prevent humanitarian emergencies in developing countries, which would be much less costly than the present strategy of the world community of spending millions of dollars annually to provide mediation, relief, and rehabilitation after the conflict occurs.Less
Civil wars in developing countries are amongst the most significant sources of human suffering in the world today. Although there are many political analyses of these emergencies, this text studies the economic, social, and political roots of humanitarian emergencies, identifying early measures to prevent such disasters. The chapters draw on a wide range of specialities on the political economy of war and on major conflicts to show the causes of conflict. This text here is the first of two volumes and it provides a general overview of the nature and causes of the emergencies, including economic, political, and environmental factors. Both volumes emphasize the significance of protracted economic stagnation and decline, government exclusion of distinct social groups, state failure, predatory rule, and high and increasing inequality, especially horizontal inequalities, or inequality among groups in access to political, economic, and social resources. They criticize beliefs recurrent in the literature that emergencies are the result of deteriorating environmental conditions or structural adjustment, or arise from ethnic animosities alone. Violent conflicts and state violence arise from the interaction of cultural, economic, and political factors. Following this analysis of the causes of war and genocide, the work points to policies that would help to prevent humanitarian emergencies in developing countries, which would be much less costly than the present strategy of the world community of spending millions of dollars annually to provide mediation, relief, and rehabilitation after the conflict occurs.
Upendra Baxi
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195690439
- eISBN:
- 9780199081059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195690439.003.0004
- Subject:
- Law, Human Rights and Immigration
Do we have too many human rights enunciations, resulting in overproduction of human rights standards and norms? What ‘politics of production’ and ‘production of politics’ informs human rights ...
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Do we have too many human rights enunciations, resulting in overproduction of human rights standards and norms? What ‘politics of production’ and ‘production of politics’ informs human rights overproduction? The notion of ‘overproduction’ rests on many assumptions concerning the arenas, sites, actors, resources, and reflexivity. Micropolitics, occurring at various sites —some invisible even to a global public view —offers a different perspective concerning the relative autonomy of human rights production. Macro/meso/micro sites of the production of human rights enunciations result in both production and seduction. The narratives of both the production of politics and the politics of production, however, remain inadequate without a grasp of the historical and lived experience of human suffering caused by human violation, which do not quite live in public memory. This chapter also explores human rights markets, quality control in international human rights production, and the costs of human rights inflation.Less
Do we have too many human rights enunciations, resulting in overproduction of human rights standards and norms? What ‘politics of production’ and ‘production of politics’ informs human rights overproduction? The notion of ‘overproduction’ rests on many assumptions concerning the arenas, sites, actors, resources, and reflexivity. Micropolitics, occurring at various sites —some invisible even to a global public view —offers a different perspective concerning the relative autonomy of human rights production. Macro/meso/micro sites of the production of human rights enunciations result in both production and seduction. The narratives of both the production of politics and the politics of production, however, remain inadequate without a grasp of the historical and lived experience of human suffering caused by human violation, which do not quite live in public memory. This chapter also explores human rights markets, quality control in international human rights production, and the costs of human rights inflation.
Madeline Li and Gary Rodin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199738571
- eISBN:
- 9780199918669
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199738571.003.0107
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
Altruism is most often defined as unselfish concern for others. This can be considered pathological when it is judged to be excessive and self-damaging, although such judgments are inevitably ...
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Altruism is most often defined as unselfish concern for others. This can be considered pathological when it is judged to be excessive and self-damaging, although such judgments are inevitably arbitrary and value-laden. They are particularly difficult to apply to individuals who provide caregiving to intimate family members who are in states of extraordinary human suffering and need. This is of great relevance in the context of cancer because of the profound relational needs and burden of care that are produced by the illness. No norms exist for the boundaries of “appropriate” provision of care in such a circumstance. Further, current views of the relational self highlight the inextricably intertwined motivations of self-interest and altruism. A new terminology, which discards assumptions about psychopathology or about the distinction between self-interest and the interests of others may be required to describe problematic caregiving in the context of an illness such as cancer.Less
Altruism is most often defined as unselfish concern for others. This can be considered pathological when it is judged to be excessive and self-damaging, although such judgments are inevitably arbitrary and value-laden. They are particularly difficult to apply to individuals who provide caregiving to intimate family members who are in states of extraordinary human suffering and need. This is of great relevance in the context of cancer because of the profound relational needs and burden of care that are produced by the illness. No norms exist for the boundaries of “appropriate” provision of care in such a circumstance. Further, current views of the relational self highlight the inextricably intertwined motivations of self-interest and altruism. A new terminology, which discards assumptions about psychopathology or about the distinction between self-interest and the interests of others may be required to describe problematic caregiving in the context of an illness such as cancer.
Jonathan Lamb
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182641
- eISBN:
- 9780191673849
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182641.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This book draws on the book of Job as a touchstone for the contradictions and polemics that infect various 18th century works — poetry, philosophy, political oratory, accounts of exploration, ...
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This book draws on the book of Job as a touchstone for the contradictions and polemics that infect various 18th century works — poetry, philosophy, political oratory, accounts of exploration, commentaries on criminal law — which tried to account for the relations between human suffering and systems of secular and divine justice. Deliberately eschewing questions of chronology or discursive coherence, genre or topic, the author offers considerations of Richardson and Fielding, Hawkesworth and the South Pacific, Goldsmith and Godwin, Hume and Walpole, Blackstone and Bentham, Burke and Longinus, and Blackmore and Wright of Derby. Asking why it was that standard consolations, which had worked for centuries, suddenly stopped working, or were treated as insults by people who felt peculiarly isolated by misery, this wide-ranging account of the improbability of complaint in the eighteenth century offers an answer. Far from crystallising or objectifying the issue of complaint, the book of Job seems to restore its limitless and unprecedented urgency. This book examines complaints that fall into this dissident and singular category, and relates their improbability to the aesthetics of the sublime, and to current theories of practice and communication. The author focuses on William Warburton's contentious interpretation of Job, contained in his Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated (1738–1741), a prime example of the debate that emerges when Job is used as an unequivocal justification of providence.Less
This book draws on the book of Job as a touchstone for the contradictions and polemics that infect various 18th century works — poetry, philosophy, political oratory, accounts of exploration, commentaries on criminal law — which tried to account for the relations between human suffering and systems of secular and divine justice. Deliberately eschewing questions of chronology or discursive coherence, genre or topic, the author offers considerations of Richardson and Fielding, Hawkesworth and the South Pacific, Goldsmith and Godwin, Hume and Walpole, Blackstone and Bentham, Burke and Longinus, and Blackmore and Wright of Derby. Asking why it was that standard consolations, which had worked for centuries, suddenly stopped working, or were treated as insults by people who felt peculiarly isolated by misery, this wide-ranging account of the improbability of complaint in the eighteenth century offers an answer. Far from crystallising or objectifying the issue of complaint, the book of Job seems to restore its limitless and unprecedented urgency. This book examines complaints that fall into this dissident and singular category, and relates their improbability to the aesthetics of the sublime, and to current theories of practice and communication. The author focuses on William Warburton's contentious interpretation of Job, contained in his Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated (1738–1741), a prime example of the debate that emerges when Job is used as an unequivocal justification of providence.
F. Bailey Norwood and Jayson L. Lusk
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199551163
- eISBN:
- 9780191808593
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199551163.003.0006
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Microeconomics
This chapter explains the opinions of philosophers on farm animal welfare. Many philosophers use ethical reasoning in their arguments, arguing that there are inconsistencies in how people perceive ...
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This chapter explains the opinions of philosophers on farm animal welfare. Many philosophers use ethical reasoning in their arguments, arguing that there are inconsistencies in how people perceive the suffering of humans, and suffering among different kinds of animals. Animal activists point out that often humans treat animal suffering as significantly less important than that of humans. This perception has been confirmed by several research studies which conclude that animal welfare is of little concern to the average American consumer. In short, Americans either do not care about the lives of farm animals. However, they seek to ensure that farm animals do not undergo excess torment. Thus, the issue is not whether hens and hogs are happier in one system or another but whether they suffer in one system or another.Less
This chapter explains the opinions of philosophers on farm animal welfare. Many philosophers use ethical reasoning in their arguments, arguing that there are inconsistencies in how people perceive the suffering of humans, and suffering among different kinds of animals. Animal activists point out that often humans treat animal suffering as significantly less important than that of humans. This perception has been confirmed by several research studies which conclude that animal welfare is of little concern to the average American consumer. In short, Americans either do not care about the lives of farm animals. However, they seek to ensure that farm animals do not undergo excess torment. Thus, the issue is not whether hens and hogs are happier in one system or another but whether they suffer in one system or another.
Valpy FitzGerald
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199241866
- eISBN:
- 9780191696961
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199241866.003.0002
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
Macroeconomic policy in wartime is concerned with reducing human suffering, particularly in poor countries where a large proportion of the population is near or below the poverty line. This chapter ...
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Macroeconomic policy in wartime is concerned with reducing human suffering, particularly in poor countries where a large proportion of the population is near or below the poverty line. This chapter examines a ‘conflict economy’, which distinguishes ‘war shocks’ from other shocks familiar from modern development macroeconomics, and outlines the main fiscal and external-sector disequilibria that tend to emerge in wartime. It turns to the way in which civil society, firms, and households respond to the shocks and uncertainties of war, and what the consequences are for the macroeconomic behaviour. In addition, the chapter discusses macroeconomic policy in low-income countries affected by armed conflict. It sets out the basis for an alternative approach to macroeconomic stabilisation, which takes into account explicitly the disequilibrium nature of the low-income economy in conflict.Less
Macroeconomic policy in wartime is concerned with reducing human suffering, particularly in poor countries where a large proportion of the population is near or below the poverty line. This chapter examines a ‘conflict economy’, which distinguishes ‘war shocks’ from other shocks familiar from modern development macroeconomics, and outlines the main fiscal and external-sector disequilibria that tend to emerge in wartime. It turns to the way in which civil society, firms, and households respond to the shocks and uncertainties of war, and what the consequences are for the macroeconomic behaviour. In addition, the chapter discusses macroeconomic policy in low-income countries affected by armed conflict. It sets out the basis for an alternative approach to macroeconomic stabilisation, which takes into account explicitly the disequilibrium nature of the low-income economy in conflict.
