Brooke A. Ackerly. Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xiii + 373 pp. $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-88126-5; $34.99 (paper), ISBN 978-0-521-70755-8.
Reviewed by Jean Quataert (Professor of History at Binghamton University, SUNY)
Published on H-Human-Rights (May, 2009)
Commissioned by Rebecca K. Root (Ramapo College of New Jersey)
Theory and Activism in Partnership
Drawing on feminist commitments and epistemology, Brooke A. Ackerly develops a critical theory and method to affirm the universality of human rights in our complex and diverse world. The book, thus, confronts one of the most critical questions that surround human rights activism: the contestations over the legitimacy of human rights work on the ground. It is a question that we all--whether NGO activists, human rights lawyers, international decision makers, or academics--confront as we seek to translate human rights norms into effective and immediate tools for social change. Ackerly asks us to think about the big picture and conceive of human rights struggles in the broadest contexts of the inequalities of the global order of social, political, and economic life. All human rights norms are interrelated and interdependent. Yet she begins from the perspective of the local, the marginal, and the silenced to make her theoretical case.
Ackerly is a political scientist determined to advance a new theoretical approach to human rights activism. The book carefully unpacks many of the existing theoretical and methodological debates that currently ground universal claims, only to point to their inherent shortcomings. As she acknowledges, only the unrepentant relativist (the term is mine; she refers to them as those committed to “transcendental beliefs against the possibility of universal human rights”) could not be persuaded by her arguments(p. 37). The book in some sense, then, is addressed to those groups of philosophers, ethicists,and social science theorists engaged in this question of the universal and the particular.
But that is only half of her purpose. In an approach that is particularly appealing to this reader (who is ahistorian), Ackerly privileges the normative values and experiences of human rights activists on the ground and, in particular, the many women activists throughout the globe engaged in the day-to-day work for gender justice, broadly conceived. Her own theory is based on a structural analysis of the larger global forces that sustain and hide human rights violations (also reflecting insights drawn from postcolonial and postmodern perspectives) and the normative perspectives and insights of activists themselves seeking to make visible human rights violations in every sphere of life. Theorizing in “partnership with activists,” she combines and bridges these too often separated perspectives(p. 19). Particularly rich for her purposes are women activists’ own views on confronting existing power structures; these activists, she believes, have faced the systematic marginalization of women’s issues, needs, and perspectives in global societies. Her sources include interviews with local and NGO activists she met in human rights fora, which range from UN world conferences to the World Social Forum to international meetings promoting feminist dialogues. It is women’s experiences and theoretical insights from their activism that hold the key to her approach, which she calls an “activist-informed immanent theory of universal human rights” (p. 36). As she notes, “To philosophers, [her approach] offers an opportunity to consider the normative questions that get tabled when we bracket the politics of knowledge. To activists, it offers not only a guide for strategizing ... [but also] for engaging with people outside of familiar contexts” (p. 36). She privileges neither philosophy nor practice, but argues that human rights must be understood sociologically.
The organization of the book reflects the many steps necessary to construct her theory, which are carefully and methodically demonstrated. Part1 begins by approaching the pursuit of justice through nonideal theorizing, which begins with the confrontation of wrongs in society (and notsolely a description of the ideal, just society as the end point of the inquiry). Here, readers are introduced to a measured and useful examination of the views of such familiar philosophers as John Rawls; and overall she dismisses the philosophers who rely on transcendental claims about justice as having “undemocratic bases for the authority to define the norms of the argument” (p. 70). This sets the stage for her turn to “immanent theorizing” through close readings of Charles Taylor, Martha Nussbaum, and Joshua Cohen, whom she sees in different ways as being insufficiently reflective of the political assumptions of their own epistemology (p. 125). These sections are the most theoretical and abstract parts of the study.
Part2 proposes a method for imminent theory, which is fluid and in flux and constantly questioning its own biases and limitations. If this sounds somewhat forbidding, it is actually original and exciting, and drawn from her interactions with, and subsequent reflections on, the views and experiences of her interviewees (subsumed under the rubric of praxeological inquiry). This inquiry has three stages, which are spelled out in detail beginning with the intriguing notion of “feminist curb-cutting,” a notion derived from the broad effects of the U.S. disabilities act, which opened new access for a whole host of people in society: those in wheelchairs, those pushing baby strollers and delivery dollies,andpeople carrying heavy loads, among others. For Ackerly, this notion captures the need, reflected in feminist theory, to make visible the oppression of those “differently” oppressed than the inquirer or theorist, a difference that opens new possibilities for theorizing. Indeed, it is precisely in confronting and working through the differences that the universal is apparent--that universal rights find their legitimacy. Reflecting the multiple differences in women’s rights agendas, Ackerly expounds on a methodological path for gathering and interpreting data that takes fully into account diversity and difference--one that “means finding a theoretical account that coheres with that diversity, one that is universal not universalizing, one that is theoretically respectful of that diversity, not in search of an epistemological justification for ignoring it” (p. 155). The title of this study captures the author’s full meaning. She draws a number of conclusions from the theorizing of activism, in part in consultation with some of her interviewees, who read sections of the manuscript. From activists on the ground, Ackerly acknowledges no agreement on the content of rights, although disagreement, she later notes, is a “sign” that people take rights talk seriously; she sees more agreement on the political legitimacy of rights per se, not captured in an enumerated “list” but understood in their fundamental interrelatedness. She warns against a language of rights that speak of “new,”and “competing,” or “priorities.” She also concedes an inherent skepticism of universal claims, which is, however, part of the process of theoretical self-reflection.
In part3, Ackerly suggests how to put this theory into practice, providing guidelines for both philosophers and activists and returning to the interdependency of thought and action. Hers is a highly theoretical book with practical purposes: to help activists and academics adjudicate the ethical tensions surrounding which rights are to be defended and for whom and to bring into clear focus the larger structural impediments that must continuously be challenged in the name of justice. Her theory, then, serves as a practical guide to continuing social criticism as a foundation for human rights activism.
Ackerly has written a dense and complex book, which at times is unnecessarily repetitive. While not an easy read, it is very rewarding. She brings the central insights of feminist epistemology to human rights debates and convincingly shows how academic theorists must benefit from the insights, experiences, and understandings of human rights activists in their daily struggles. In this sense, she complements other authors who show the serious limitations of international interventions (i.e., the UN “humanitarian” missions)that fail to take into account in organizing the missions the views of the people most at risk. Other authors show the weaknesses of transitional justice models that similarly do not accommodate local understandings and practices of social reconciliation and peacemaking.[1] Ackerly’s perspective, however, is fully rooted in the present, in this sense duplicating much of the political science literaturethat she criticizes for its limited understanding of rights. It offers very little historical reflection. Not only would the arguments benefit from examining the emerging structures of global inequalities, which serve as major impediments to social change; but she also underplays the historical unfolding of human rights discourses themselves, which indeed prioritized and privileged rights claims. This is not to say that her commitment to the essential unity of human rights visions is not laudatory; but it is to say that post-1945 activists inventing new networks of transnational advocacy in the inequalities of global society made strategic choices that limited their visions. Impediments to holistic thought and action lie within this very history itself.
Note
[1]. Béatrice Pouligny, Peace Operations Seen from Below: UN Missions and Local People (Bloomfield: Kumarian Press, 2006); and Simon Chesterman, ed., Civilian in War (Boulder: Lynne Rienner 2001).
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Citation:
Jean Quataert. Review of Ackerly, Brooke A., Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference.
H-Human-Rights, H-Net Reviews.
May, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23631
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