Although there appears to be a growing interest in exploring the crossroads between spirituality ... more Although there appears to be a growing interest in exploring the crossroads between spirituality and social change, spirituality remains a relatively obscure topic within mainstream international human rights. This article will explore what a more spiritual grounding for human rights might look like and how it might change perspectives and practices from the comparatively conventional and mainstream. Viewing conventional human rights thinking, policy, and practice through the lens of spirituality can facilitate a better and more balanced reading of the human rights corpus and, ultimately, better and more sustainable human rights practice. Although no panacea, spiritual perspectives that enhance a sense of interconnectedness and inclusionary identity may be one way of reinvigorating the human rights project at a time when it is said to be in a state of crisis. During his public lectures in the 1960s and early 1970s, philosopher Alan Watts (2006) drew a contrast between two different personality types: "prickly" individuals, who favor analytical rigor, the hard, the precise, and the clearly defined straight line; and "gooey" people, who embrace the vague, the soft, the romantic, the mystical, and the wiggly. If prickly people represent "the head," gooey types are "the heart." In their mutual disdain, Watts suggested, both sides tend to forget that successfully navigating the world requires an embrace of both perspectives, for real life is neither purely prickly nor completely gooey. Extending Watts's metaphor to human rights thinking, policy, and practice, it would seem that what Makau Mutua once called the "conventional" school of human rights (1995-1996: 607) has tended to foreground the prickly dimensions of rights-secularism, individualism, rationalism, and positivism-among other classic enlightenment virtues. Although the concept of human rights is fundamentally multidimensional, bristling with competing and contradictory impulses, the conventional approach to human rights advocacy often foregrounds the legal dimensions of rights (Sharp 2018a). Exemplifying this perspective, large, mainstream NGOs of the Global North (INGOs) often seem to assume the role of a global legal referee whose job it is to hand out red cards to players engaging in violations within the often-brutal scrum of politics. Their advocacy is based on meticulously documented facts, scrupulously anchored in the four squares of international treaty law, and carefully framed in terms of clearly delineated victims, violators, and remedies (Roth 2004: 64). Rigorous documentation is followed by practices of public denunciation-that is, "naming and shaming"-as perpetrators are called to account for their legal
... Habré, currently living in exile in Senegal, has for the last decade been the subject of pote... more ... Habré, currently living in exile in Senegal, has for the last decade been the subject of potential criminal prosecution by Senegalese and other courts for crimes committed in Chad. See DustinSharp, Prosecutions, Development and Justice: The Trial of Hissein Habré, 16 HARV. ...
Although there appears to be a growing interest in exploring the crossroads between spirituality ... more Although there appears to be a growing interest in exploring the crossroads between spirituality and social change, spirituality remains a relatively obscure topic within mainstream international human rights. This article will explore what a more spiritual grounding for human rights might look like and how it might change perspectives and practices from the comparatively conventional and mainstream. Viewing conventional human rights thinking, policy, and practice through the lens of spirituality can facilitate a better and more balanced reading of the human rights corpus and, ultimately, better and more sustainable human rights practice. Although no panacea, spiritual perspectives that enhance a sense of interconnectedness and inclusionary identity may be one way of reinvigorating the human rights project at a time when it is said to be in a state of crisis. During his public lectures in the 1960s and early 1970s, philosopher Alan Watts (2006) drew a contrast between two different personality types: "prickly" individuals, who favor analytical rigor, the hard, the precise, and the clearly defined straight line; and "gooey" people, who embrace the vague, the soft, the romantic, the mystical, and the wiggly. If prickly people represent "the head," gooey types are "the heart." In their mutual disdain, Watts suggested, both sides tend to forget that successfully navigating the world requires an embrace of both perspectives, for real life is neither purely prickly nor completely gooey. Extending Watts's metaphor to human rights thinking, policy, and practice, it would seem that what Makau Mutua once called the "conventional" school of human rights (1995-1996: 607) has tended to foreground the prickly dimensions of rights-secularism, individualism, rationalism, and positivism-among other classic enlightenment virtues. Although the concept of human rights is fundamentally multidimensional, bristling with competing and contradictory impulses, the conventional approach to human rights advocacy often foregrounds the legal dimensions of rights (Sharp 2018a). Exemplifying this perspective, large, mainstream NGOs of the Global North (INGOs) often seem to assume the role of a global legal referee whose job it is to hand out red cards to players engaging in violations within the often-brutal scrum of politics. Their advocacy is based on meticulously documented facts, scrupulously anchored in the four squares of international treaty law, and carefully framed in terms of clearly delineated victims, violators, and remedies (Roth 2004: 64). Rigorous documentation is followed by practices of public denunciation-that is, "naming and shaming"-as perpetrators are called to account for their legal
... Habré, currently living in exile in Senegal, has for the last decade been the subject of pote... more ... Habré, currently living in exile in Senegal, has for the last decade been the subject of potential criminal prosecution by Senegalese and other courts for crimes committed in Chad. See DustinSharp, Prosecutions, Development and Justice: The Trial of Hissein Habré, 16 HARV. ...
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