Towards a Right to Cultural Identity? A review Essay
Roland Pierik2003, J Public Econ
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Abstract
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The Recognition of the Right to Cultural Identity under (and beyond) international Human Rights law in Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development (Special Issue, ‘Cultural Rights and Global Development (ed. Jonathan Vickery), Issue 22, 2018, pp. 15 - 40
After summarising the reflection elaborated by legal scholars on cultural rights, the paper analyses the interpretation elaborated by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Committee on the Rights of the Child on the right to take part in cultural life. Thanks to the evolutive interpretation adopted, these bodies have come to define a right to cultural identity and a right to cultural heritage. Such a recognition can open the door towards the definition of a customary states’ obligation to respect cultural heritage as shown by the decision of the International Criminal Court in Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi case. The importance recognised in this decision to the human dimension of cultural heritage proved that the human perspective of cultural heritage is not a prerogative of human rights bodies, but it is starting to be recognised and valued by other international organs.
A Right to Cultural Identity in a UK Bill of Rights?
European Public Law, Vol 19, 2013, pp. 789-714., 2013
This article considers the possible inclusion of a right to cultural identity in a UK Bill of Rights, highlighting the centrality of culture to debates about the accommodation of diversity in the UK as well as the increased recognition of the importance of cultural rights under international human rights law. The article argues that the inclusion of a minimal minority rights guarantee based on Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 would be an innocuous step that would provide the impetus needed for greater cultural sensitivity in decision-making processes in a way that acknowledges the centrality of culture to people’s identities and everyday lives. It claims that the inclusion of such a right alongside a freestanding right to equality would provide a useful addition to the rights currently recognised as ‘Convention rights’ under the UK Human Rights Act 1998. This is argued on the basis of both international and domestic case law on culture identity, including opinions of the UN Human Rights Committee, developments in European human rights law and experiences in other jurisdictions.
Soderland, Hilary; Biehl, Peter; Comer, Douglas; Prescott, Christopher: Identities and Heritage: Contemporary Challenges in a Globalized World
Soderland, Hilary; Biehl, Peter; Comer, Douglas; Prescott, Christopher: Identities and Heritage: Contemporary Challenges in a Globalized World, 2015
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
Towards a Right to Cultural Identity? Yes, Indeed!
2018
In 2002 I presented my PhD research in the book Towards a Right to Cultural Identity? in which I examined to what extent a right to cultural identity should be further developed as a separate right within the framework of international human rights law. Perhaps rather uncommon for a human rights project, the conclusion was that although the protection of cultural identity as an important value and element of human dignity would fit into the human rights sphere, translating cultural identity into a separate right is neither desirable nor necessary. More than 15 years later, much has happened in relation to this question and conclusion. Academics, experts and States have further elaborated cultural rights and developed the cultural dimension of human rights. There is also new caselaw by international and regional bodies involving a right to cultural identity. Cultural identity is increasingly seen also as a more self-standing or substantive right to be enjoyed by individuals and by co...
Human Rights and Cultural Identity
Baltic Journal of Law & Politics, 2016
Universal human rights and particular cultural identities, which are relativistic by nature, seem to stand in conflict with each other. It is commonly suggested that the relativistic natures of cultural identities undermine universal human rights and that human rights might compromise particular cultural identities in a globalised world. This article examines this supposed clash and suggests that it is possible to frame a human rights approach in such a way that it becomes the starting point and constraining framework for all non-deficient cultural identities. In other words, it is possible to depict human rights in a culturally sensitive way so that universal human rights can meet the demands of a moderate version of meta-ethical relativism which acknowledges a small universal core of objectively true or false moral statements and avers that, beyond that small core, all other moral statements are neither objectively true nor false.
Reflections on Culture and Cultural Rights
South Atlantic Quarterly, 2004
especially of the more essentialist interpretations of the [culture] concept, to the point of querying its usefulness at all, they found themselves witnessing, often during fieldwork, the increasing prevalence of 'culture' as a rhetorical object-often in a highly essentialized form-in contemporary political talk" (3). 1 Just as "we" discover that culture is constructed, fluid, and ever-inventive, "they" begin to articulate demands for rights in terms of a cultural identity asserted to be primordial and fixed. This historical non-coincidence has been noticed by various parties and has been interpreted in various ways. According to David Scott, the so-called "natives" have every reason to suspect these newfangled anti-essentialist ideas, indispensable though such ideas may seem to Western academic theorists, himself included: "For whom is culture partial, unbounded, heterogeneous, hybrid, and so on, the anthropologist or the native?" (101). 2 The new concept of culture as hybrid, heterogeneous, and processual is "merely the most recent way of conceiving and explaining otherness, of putting otherness in its place" (106). It suits "post-cold war North Atlantic liberalism" (107), for it offers a way of playing down "ideological conflicts" (107). 3 As
CULTURAL IDENTITIES: ROOTS OR ROUTES
The issue that the identities are acquired congenitally or created in the collective past has been opened to debate in the last century. The challenge made to the fact that the identities have fixed " selves " , has argued that the identity is not a given structure. According to this view, identity is a constructed structure and this construction process is always in the construction phase. No identity can ever be completed. There is an endless transformation. The past, which was given reference by the identity, has a variable structure just like the identity itself. The accumulation of what has happened in the past, changes in accordance with the viewpoints of both those who narrate the past and those who try to conceive the past. Moreover, in the reconstruction of the identity and the past, man is not the sole authority. People are constantly open to the external influences during the construction of their identities. Thus, the identity is constructed in an individual and collective way. The emphasis in this study is on the fact that the identity is constructed with the effects created by the future expectations rather than the effects from the past. Since, both the identity and the past can be reconstructed today, the identity has no self and the identity is a variable. Future expectations decide on how the identity shall be reconstructed as much as the past. The identity is in the roots as well as towards the routes. The uncertainty of the identity is caused by the fact that it carries in itself the uncertainty of the future. Due to this reason, in identity policies and studies future plans of the people or the groups forming the identity should be examined as much as the past.
Cultural Identity and Human Rights: Minority Claims, Ethnic Identity and Group Rights
Open Journal of Political Science, 2016
This paper explores the relationship between cultural identity and human rights in the light of the dynamics of identity formation, based on the immediate external culture of any multicultural society. The objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between culture, identity and rights, which broadens the parameter of the existing dimension of human rights, using secondary sources to review the literature. It argues that these dynamics are marked by a number of factors and components featuring the group, community and individual rights. This prepares grounds for a wider, inclusionary and horizontal understanding of the Human Rights dimension and paradigms, not only in a multicultural society but also in a democratic nationstate which is significantly marked by minority rights and ethnic identity claims. Thus through a critical approach and a post-colonial perspective, this paper shows how this specific and particular dynamics of cultural identity casts an effect on the theory and practice of normative political theory and trajectories. The paper concludes that the Human Rights inherently invoke a challenge in the analysis of identity-formation and cultural heterogeneity dynamics, which are significant in the contemporary global democratic politics.
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The Right to Culture
The issue of cultural belonging confronts us because cultural minorities, whether immigrants or conquered minorities, despite having the civic, political and social rights of citizenship, feel harmed if the state does not recognise their particular cultural identity and does not make certain provisions or exemptions in or from the operation of general laws on this basis. This paper tries to locate the political claims grounded in culture within a liberal-democratic political setup. It attempts to address three questions. First, how did a 'right to culture' come into being? Second, what is the subject matter of a 'right to culture'? This includes an enquiry into the nature of cultural rights. And lastly, how viable is the multicultural approach towards ensuring a meaningful co-existence of different cultural communities within the larger political community? A bigger role for the state to preserve and protect minority cultures is argued for, considering that there is a positive dimension to cultural rights due to which such rights cannot be realised without some involvement of the state.
Equality of Cultural Identity
2010
I address claims of offence of feelings, religious freedom and language rights, which are all justified by the intrinsic interest individuals attach to their culture. I call them ‘claims from cultural identity’. I develop a conception of substantive equality, understood as distributive justice and underpinned by dignity, for regulating claims from cultural identity in the legal system of multicultural states. I call it Equality of Cultural Identity. It is a ‘complex equality’ model, which takes cultural identity to be a sphere in peoples’ lives. Unlike majority members, cultural minority members are usually under constant pressure to compromise their cultural identity and assimilate in the majority culture to succeed in other spheres of their lives like education and career. In accordance with Walzer’s theory of Spheres of Justice, I propose a regulative principle to determine the extent of cultural protection minority members deserve, according to which the influence of other spher...
Janne Mende (author), Jochen Gahrau (trans.), A Human Right to Culture and Identity? The Ambivalence of Group Rights. London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2016, ISBN: 978-1-78348-678-6 (HB)
Hypatia Reviews Online, 2019
Cultural identity as a key dimension of human security in Western Europe
2006
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A Focus on (Cultural) Identity: From Instrument to Object of Research
in V. Cicolani, G. Florea (edd.), Autoreprésentations et représentations culturelles en Europe : symbolisme et expression de l’idéologie dans les sociétés de l’âge du Fer de l’Europe tempérée, Pessac, Ausonius Éditions, collection NEMESIS 2, 2024, 9-16, [en ligne] https://una-editions.fr/a-focus-..., 2024
Now more than ever, the term and the notion of identity are central to historical research. However, their use, which is widely accepted, is not without problems: as cultural anthropology studies have clearly shown, the word often proves to be ineffective in terms of the development of research and therefore of historical interpretation. In the brief notes that follow, I will take stock of the situation, retracing the major problems posed by the identitarian logic and attempting to assign identity itself the correct position and function with regard to historical investigations, taking account of its original values and meanings.
Cultural Rights as Collective Rights
Andrzej Jakubowski (ed.), Cultural Rights as Collective Rights - An International Law Perspective (Leiden and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2016), 2016
legal sense, as collective rights, in the next section the chapter provides a sketch of the defensible legal-theoretical foundations of such an approach. In doing so, I argue that collective rights primarily have to be differentiated from rights 'exercised in community with others' , since this 'exercising criterion' cannot be definitional of a collective right. Furthermore, they have to be distinguished from the individual rights accorded to a particular subset of persons, such as, for example, 'students' or 'law professors' , because these categories of persons cannot be equated with collective entities such as peoples, minorities, or indigenous peoples. Finally, I try to determine which cultural rights, if any, could qualify for the status of collective rights. This legal-philosophical treatment of the subject matter will not only help in the elucidation of the inconsistent practice in the relevant fields of law, but will also, ideally, provide useful guidelines for both policy makers and adjudicators. 2 'Cultural Rights'-Revisiting Terminological and Conceptual Indeterminacies Talk of 'cultural rights' has gained currency in recent years, but often with the negative side-effect that participants in the debate use the same words to denote quite different phenomena. Part of the explanation lies in the contentious meaning of both composite elements of the phrase 'cultural rights'. Yet, while it is true that a great deal of ink has been spilt in attempts to define 'culture' and 'rights' , it seems that, when put in conjunction, these two words generate even more terminological and conceptual indeterminacies. The main reason for this state of affairs can be found in the distinctive disciplinary usages of the conjunction(s). Hence, in contemporary political philosophy, which deals with the politics of recognition and multiculturalism, it is a custom to use the phrase 'cultural rights' to denote various policies aimed at accommodating ethno-cultural pluralism. Jacob Levy, for instance, in his highly influential article 'Classifying Cultural Rights' , argues that one may distinguish between eight categories of cultural rights-claims and special policies for accommodating ethnic and linguistic pluralism. They include: exemptions, assistance, self-government, external rules, internal rules, recognition/enforcement, representation, and symbolic claims.4 4 The eight categories can be explained in more detail and exemplified in the following way: exemptions from laws which penalize or burden cultural practices (e.g. Sikhs/motorcycle helmet laws); assistance to practices which a majority can undertake unassisted (e.g. multilingual ballots); self-government for ethno-cultural minorities (which might range from federalism to secession); external rules restricting non-members' liberty to protect members' culture (e.g. Quebec/restrictions on English language); internal rules for members' conduct enforced by excommunication (e.g. disowning children who marry outside the group);
’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs Introduction : rights cultures , subjects , citizens Other
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Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. University of Oslo. Her research has focused on gender and social relatedness, moral economies, modernity and peasant subjectivities, legal knowledge, notions of justice, social and political rights, and local responses to global capitalism. Recent publications include embodiment and new genetic and information technologies. Migration and Identities programme and works on gender race and diversity at the ESRC funded Centre for Research into Socio-Cultural Change (CReSC).
Culture and identity: Concepts not easily grasped in theory and research (2013).
In N. Chaudhary, S. Anandalakshmy, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Cultural Realities of Being: Abstract Ideas within Everyday Lives. Oxford: Routledge. Cultural Realities of Being offers a dialogue between academic activity and everyday lives by providing an interface between several perspectives on human conduct. Very often, academic pursuits are arcane and obscure for ordinary people, this book will attempt to disentangle these dialogues, lifting everyday discourse and providing a forum for advancing discussion and dialogue.
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