E X P OS ITI O N Issue 4, Trinity 2010
SOUND BYTES
Journalism’s digital revolution
WORLD GAMES The U.N.’s unspoken rules
SUSPENDING DISBELIEF
Atheism: a scientific critique
from the editors
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hich is mightier – the proverbial pen or sword? In this issue, we explore the power of ideas and their role – past, present and future – in society and politics. Jennifer Alejandro examines how rapid developments in communication technologies are currently revolutionising the diffusion of ideas. However, the Internet is not the first invention to have changed the face of communications, as Annette Walton acknowledges in an article looking back to the role of print propaganda in the seventeenth century. Advances in communications pose challenges as well as opportunities, not least of which is the question of how to deal with the dissemination of ‘dangerous’ or ‘subversive’ opinions. In this context, Tim StuartButtle explores the pertinence of the concept of free debate extolled by the eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume. Debates about religion are among those which rage most fiercely, and atheism has gained new followers, but Lena Groeger examines an unexpected dimension to this development, namely the criticism directed at the new atheists from the scientific com-
munity. Nicholas Chan looks at the power of ideas as a form of agency in global governance, examining how the ‘rules of the game’ circumscribe nations’ freedom of action to an even greater extent than military might or economics. In this case preconceived ideas serve to constrain rather than to liberate, but Stephanie Malik considers how undefined ideas in international lawmaking can be equally problematic in her discussion of the lack of a clear definition of human rights. With Caroline Taylor, we turn to the medium of fiction as she explores graphic depictions of violence in literature and the extent to which these spark a response that could effect real social change. The world of ideas may seem far removed from the vast expanse of the Sahara that John Cairns presents, but even here the indigenous Berbers face the steady march of modernisation and its attendant political regulations. Alistair Walker & Caroline Gray Editors
work for us The deadline for editorial, design and finance positions for the MT ‘10 team is Friday of 7th week (Friday 11th June). Email editor@ expositionmagazine. com for more details.
E XPOSITION E XPOSITION Issue 4, May 2010 Issue 3, February 2010
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Front Cover Image | Master Sgt. Scott Moorman
MODERN MEDIA Mass participation presents unique challenges and opportunities for the future of journalism
HISTORY WikiLeaks finds parallels in the ‘Paper bullets’ of the English Civil War
PHILOSOPHY Can free speech reasonably be maintained in the modern world?
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS Revealing the secret rules that govern the way the United Nations really works
RELIGION Richard Dawkins has made atheism intellectually fashionable. But how firm is the scientific ground on which he stands?
LITERATURE Why are we so fascinated and repulsed by violence in art?
LEGAL ETHICS Human rights are frequently invoked in standard political, philosophical and legal discourse. But what exactly are they?
PHOTO ESSAY Traditional nomadism clashes with the forces of enforced modernisation in the Sahara image |
Jin Lee
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DIGITAL REVOLUTION MASS MEDIA The wide reach of social media networks is revolutionising the news industry. Jennifer Alejandro discusses how bloggers and tweeters now hold the reins
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n the past, a reporter was given a lead or went out to find a story. Nowadays, stories are more often received thirdhand through Facebook posts or Tweets or Digg, so that the reporter’s job is to find a new angle when he is assigned a story. An abundance of tips or leads these days are taken from the web and based on what’s “trending” on social networks like Twitter and Facebook; on popularity ratings on Digg; or on search volume patterns in search engines like Google or Bing. Such sites are radically changing the industry’s concept of what a scoop or breaking news is. Journalists are forced to accelerate the traditional journalistic process because people now want real time information. No media outlet can afford to wait, or they run the risk of being out-scooped by amateurs such as bloggers, citizen journalists and twitterers. While the current technological landscape presents numerous opportunities for news and its practitioners, there are also potential pitfalls. Social media networks churn out viable leads, but also hearsay and even hoaxes. In October 2008, a CNN iReport poster reported that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had been rushed to the hospital after a severe heart attack, citing an anonymous source. The story turned out to be false, CNN removed the story from the site and referred to it as fraudulent, but it had already impacted the financial markets. Apple’s stock in US trade took a major hit and dived to its lowest that year before bouncing back. Newspapers reported that “the stock recovered around the time the post was removed. Apple’s stock, which opened at US$104 a share, fell by 9% to US$94.65 before rebounding.” More recently, in late April 2010, reports surfaced on the internet that pop star Lady Gaga amputated one of her legs just below the knee in the name of fashion. The story was rapidly tweeted and retweeted, so that eventually news media outlets took notice of the rumour. Upon verification from Lady Gaga’s record label, however, the story was quickly discredited. Social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as web 2.0 applications like blogs and Google, have radically changed the news industry and journalism practices and present hitherto unforeseen challenges. Barriers to entry have been lowered since anyone with a PC, iPhone or Blackberry can be their own publisher. They can blog, tweet or facebook it – anytime, anywhere. What makes social media of particular interest to journalism is how it has become influential as a communication and newsbreaking tool.
image | Rich Hardiman
Changing Media Consumption As a growing number of readers, viewers and listeners are going online for their news, television, newspapers and radio are suffering. In its annual report for 2008-2009, BBC reported that its overall television reach among 16 to 34 year olds had fallen by over 7% between 2003 and 2008, from 82.6% to 75.4%. The data provided by the BBC also showed that the amount of BBC television viewing by teenagers had fallen from 39 minutes a day in 2003 to 24 minutes a day in 2008, a decline of nearly 40% in a five year period. Meanwhile in the United States, a 2008 study showed that 40% of those surveyed got most of their international and national news from the Internet, up from 24% in 2007. Future technologies forecaster Paul Saffo recently said: “Blogging, chat groups and adding comments to online articles are obvious examples, but they are just the beginning. In the TV era, it was hard, if not impossible to participate, but now in the new world of personal media, the exact reverse is the case: it is hard to merely be a bystander.” What does this tell us? That the web is perhaps becoming more sociable than searchable, or probably both, and is fulfilling its promise of connecting the world. Power structures are changing, as media organisations do not have the monopoly on journalism anymore. The face of the competition is also changing: in less than a decade, the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter have come to compete with The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN and BBC as the news outlet of choice. Social Media: Word of Mouth on Steroids When Michael Jackson died in 2009, Facebook and Twitter users broke the story ahead of any major news network, the moment the UCLA Medical Center made the death announcement official. Social network sites, search engines and news websites reported heavy traffic volumes in the hour the story broke and some websites even crashed. That single story showed how news is consumed and disseminated in social media, how far it can reach and how fast. In the social media sphere, news is word of mouth on steroids – it knows no boundaries. The ‘death of Michael Jackson’ story is now used by media gurus as a textbook example of how social media has >>
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>> breached the gap between traditional media and the consumers. It proved that the gatekeeper role is no longer exclusive to journalists, as the participatory culture of social media has broken down the wall of journalism which separates the reader from the journalist. News is now people-driven rather than just media outlet-driven; news which was previously disseminated top-down is now bottomup. Citizen journalism On 7 July 2005, within six hours of the London bombings, the BBC received more than 1,000 photographs, 20 pieces of amateur video, 4,000 text messages and 20,000 emails. Former head of global news for the BBC, Richard Sambrook wrote that year: “People were participating in our coverage in a way we had never seen before. By the next day, our main evening TV newscast began with a package edited entirely from video sent in by viewers.” Another event that broke through a social network first was the Sichuan earthquake in China last year, which devastated the city. Tweets came out minutes before the U.S. Geological Survey put up its notice. Today, the BBC has 23 journalists working in a user generated content centre to process information from the general public. Aside from citizen journalism, another trend is developing: networked journalism, a process of utilising public knowledge to create better and more diverse journalism. Charlie Beckett, author of Super Media describes it as follows: “The journalist still reports, edits, packages the news. But the process is continually shared. The networked journalist changes from being a gatekeeper who delivers to a facilitator who connects.” For example, The Guardian asked the British public to help sift through thousands of documents, further exposing the MPs’ expenses scandal in 2009. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post’s ‘Off the Bus’ project collaborated with citizen journalists to cover the 2008 U.S. Presidential elections. This pioneering endeavour showed a new way to combine input from both professional and amateur journalists.
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Social media and the practice of journalism The news industry is continuously changing and trying to keep up with Web 2.0 technologies. These offer new opportunities, but they also raise the possibility of a professional crisis for journalists and media organisations. For the journalist, the new equation is about doing a lot more with a lot less. Journalists in today’s media landscape have to be multi-skilled as they are required to submit stories for multiple platforms – television, radio, print and online. In the editorial field, new posts like ‘social media editors’ or ‘community editors’ are being created. In May last year, The New York Times hired its first social media editor to expand the paper’s use of social media networks and publishing platforms. In the same year, Sky News in the UK also appointed a Twitter correspondent whose main responsibility is to cover breaking news, while the BBC appointed its first social media editor in late 2009. For media organisations, convergence is the common strategy. There is a growing realisation that one media outlet cannot service all the rivers of information in the social media sphere, hence partnerships abound. To provide one example, Facebook and CNN teamed up for ‘Live Tweeting’ during US President Barack Obama’s inauguration, and BBC partnered with Adobe to stream the entire ceremony. Exciting times ahead Journalism has always been in the vanguard of informing the community, listening to people and giving a platform to a broad range of voices and representing public interest; social media networks are therefore a natural platform for journalism to gravitate to. Journalists are supposed to go where the audience is and participate in community conversations; that place is currently the social media sphere. These are challenging but exciting times, as both social media and journalism practices are undergoing a revolutionary phase. While new web innovations may currently be disruptive, as most innovations are, the upheaval is a much needed one – a cathartic change from which a better news media industry will emerge and new or hybrid forms of journalism will surface. J e n n i f e r A l e ja n d r o is a fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. She has worked as a journalist for 15 years and is a business news anchor at Channel News Asia.
SPEAK NO EVIL PHILOSOPHY Why should free speech be maintained in the face of a resurgent farright and politicians who call others ‘bigots’?
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e have, so we are told, just experienced the first ‘digital’ election, with new technologies encouraging unprecedented levels of mass participation and voter interac-
tion. The substance as well as the style of political discussion has been shaped by new forces, the result of technological innovation as well as the groundswell of support for a new politics. In this regard, David Cameron’s call for a ‘Big Society’ represents not just a proactive vision. It is also a response to new realities, as the ‘public’, broadly conceived, plays a larger role in the shaping of political life in practice as well as in theory. This dissemination of cultural and political authority to a broader cross-section of society is, however, attended with apparent dangers. How well informed are those now wielding an influence over political discussion? To what degree do the margins of public debate still need to be policed to prevent dangerous, subversive or prejudiced opinions being expressed? Who is to decide? Questions such as these are not new or unique to this election, although their perceived significance and implications may be. This was perhaps best exemplified by Gordon Brown’s dismissal of Gillian Duffy as “a sort of bigoted woman”, possessed of apparently anachronistic and prejudiced opinions concerning immigration. Many would no doubt agree with the judgement implicit in Brown’s statement – that Duffy’s opinions are uninformed and prejudiced. However, it is clear that Duffy is far from alone in wanting the three main political parties to engage with the issue in greater depth than they seem willing to do. Still, by deeming her opinions, as well as those of the far right UKIP or BNP, to be ‘beyond the pale’ of reasonable political debate or mere anachronisms founded on prejudice, such opinions – and those espousing them – are marginalised from the mainstream. Intricately connected to the authoritative dismissal of marginalised political opinions is the conviction that such views, if given public expression, gain further attention and become even more dangerous and popular than would otherwise be the case. There is, then, an important distinction to be made between free speech and free debate. The implications of the former might depend on the relative willingness of cultural and political leaders to engage in the latter. Although contemporary political discourse is predominantly secular in tone, and indeed its secularity is seen to be intricately linked to its ‘reasonableness’ when confronted with religious fundamentalism, the intellectual heritage on which we draw when discussing the
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relative danger of ideas deemed subversive is inherently religious. The question of the influence of publicly expressed opinions on the behaviour and beliefs of the common man and woman was one that preoccupied both opponents and defenders of the authority of the Anglican clergy from the later seventeenth century. It was technological innovation in the form of mass printing, combined with increasing literacy, that made these ecclesiastical debates more pressing and broadened their implications. Would the writings of those challenging the ecclesiology as well as the authority of the Church, deeply embedded in British political life given the monarch’s position at its head, subvert the morality and good behaviour of those who encountered them?
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t was predominantly the question of authority that eighteenth century ‘Freethinkers’ such as Anthony Collins and John Toland addressed, as they sought to challenge the clergy’s hegemonic position in dictating opinions in public as well as private life. They argued that it was through free debate that truth would emerge, and those seeking to prevent such open intellectualism did so for their own self-interested purposes to protect an authority founded upon public ignorance. As Collins wrote in 1724, men have no reason to apprehend any ill consequence to truth from free debate; but on the contrary to “apprehend ill consequence to truth from free debate being disallow’d”. The ‘truth’ to which Collins referred was that concerning Christianity, which had supposedly been concealed by the artifices of a clergy eager to retain its hold over the opinions of its congregation. The warnings by orthodox Anglican clergymen of the deleterious consequences of the Freethinkers’ writings failed to recognise that free speech could never be harmful, or so the Freethinkers claimed. If their controversial contentions were incorrect, they could be exposed as such and ridiculed through free debate. Freedom to express opinions, however controversial or questionable, was only deemed to be dangerous by those who rejected free debate for selfinterested purposes – the concealment of truth. In his Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume provided a philosophical foundation for the defence of free speech made by English Freethinkers. In this, and his later works, its relationship to free debate was explored in considerable detail. Hume refuted all suggestions that morality was dependent upon religion. To question aspects of the latter could not, as a consequence, imperil the former. Hume explained that individuals are driven by their passions and desires, but that these become moderated in society as men learn to live together. Through custom and utility, self-interest is moulded in a manner that prevents it from impinging on the desires of others or on the greater interest of society more broadly conceived. Precisely because his actions and ideas of good and bad conduct are directed by passions moderated through negotiation and compromise, appeals to man’s reason could have negligible influence over his comportment or sense of morality. Hume argued that philosophy, “if just... can present us only with mild and moderate sentiments; and if false and extravagant, its opinions are merely the objects of cold and general speculation, and seldom go so far as to interrupt the course of our natural propensities”. Following from this, Hume argued that the opinions of others only exercise an influence over the minds of men if they are congruent with our experience and sentiments which, given that all knowledge is based on experience, means that their power is roughly equal to the probability that they are true. Hume >>
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images | Making their voices heard at Speakers’ Corner / Chris Dorney (left), Brian Krijgsman (right)
>> nonetheless recognised that free debate was required in order for men to be able to develop their understanding of all manner of issues. The most obvious obstacle to this improvement of understanding was man’s propensity to place too much trust in ‘received opinions’, the opinions given legitimacy by self-appointed authorities in social, religious and political life. It was those same authorities who compounded the problem of ignorance by arguing against free debate on the grounds that the public were easily misled by subversive ideas. Hume, however, argued that “the people are no such dangerous monster... and it is in every respect better to guide them, like rational creatures, than to lead or drive them, like brute beasts”. Bigotry – a term employed repeatedly by Hume – consisted of the slavish and superstitious adherence to particular opinions, and was particularly dangerous when shared by the majority of a political nation. As Hume contended in Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences, it was only through open critical intercourse that prejudice might be avoided and apparent ‘truths’ discerned. Hume nonetheless recognised that there were near intractable problems when it came to the question of how to develop intellectual maturity among a public used to respecting authority. Education was the prime issue: views inculcated in the young were nigh on impossible to challenge, regardless of their incongruence with truths
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discernible from personal experience. Moreover, those who would seek to argue against them were invariably assailed as possessing an agenda that could only be antithetical the philosophical foundations of a society whose self-identity was based upon conceptions of itself as being ‘civilised’. In this regard, arguments in favour of free debate could be turned squarely against those advocating it. In this formulation, it was the public’s lack of intellectual maturity that made people unable to make informed judgements on the relative merit of alternative opinions. The implicit reservations that can be discerned in Hume’s argument for free debate, and the way in which it ensured that freedom of speech could never be harmful, are more complex today than was the case in the eighteenth century. Despite the marked changes to British society in the past two centuries, however, the arguments refuting the belief that all should be free to make their opinions heard remain pretty constant. Hume was reproached for the same reasons. Those receiving a broad education and with access to information might be able to discern truth from calumny; the less fortunate require guidance and instruction, rather than being abandoned to an unmediated economy of ideas. The fundamental question, on which concerns regarding the influence of controversial ideas on men’s opinions and behaviour are based, remains philosophical. If prejudice is founded in ignorance, are we
not better to encourage an open intellectual culture that encourages the free exchange of opinions, howsoever incorrect or controversial? It is the refusal to allow open and free debate, rather than labelling particular ideas ‘subversive’, that is the source of all danger and bigotry. The question is one of authority in public debate and whether it ought to be based purely on the merit of arguments propounded, as opposed to the institutional affiliations and personal prestige of those presenting them. This question acquires increasing urgency given the abilities new media technologies provide to all who wish to play a role in shaping the tenor of public debate. Indeed, as abortive legislative attempts to police the online world have revealed, it would seem that the dissemination of knowledge, and shape and style of public debate, cannot in practice be policed. As their authority to determine the nature of political debate seems to be dwindling, the challenge facing politicians is to convince through coherent reasoning and intelligent argument. To fail to do so may hint at bigotry more profound— and more consequential— than that of a sixty-five year old grandmother from Rochdale. Tim Stuart-Buttle s a first-year DPhil student. His current research project is entitled “Authority, Impartiality and Independence: David Hume’s ‘History of England’”.
THE U.N. GAME: When nations break the rules INTERNATIONAL POLITICS Kyoto, Copenhagen, Nuclear NonProliferation: the U.N. has rules, just like any other game. Nicholas Chan examines how international relations really work
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n a world where brute force often holds the upper hand, or economic heft too frequently appears to carry the day, the common knowledge seems to hold that foreign affairs are conducted in a different universe altogether. Building social safety nets and articulating human rights often stops at the water’s edge. Saving strangers in distant lands is a luxury for the good times. Just as the promise of an ‘ethical’ foreign policy recedes into the shadows of the 20th century, there is a certain expectation placed on leaders to leave their principles at the door, and shine a harsh light upon the cold, rational calculation of costs and benefits. But, try as they might, there are some things that they can’t leave behind. Before we can even get to the rational calculation of costs and benefits, certain choices have been ruled out because they are seen as ‘beyond the pale’, and other choices become intuitively more attractive, because they are seen as what ‘appropriate’ conduct consists of. The decisions of world politics are made in a context not just of power and wealth, but of collectively shared ideas that send signals about the kinds of action that are ‘proper’. Bismarck once said that “politics is the art of the possible”. However, ‘the possible’ is conditioned by a complex of pre-existing social expectations, moulded over time by experiences and the process of interaction itself. So even if never explicitly acknowledged, these shared rules set the boundaries for the
rational calculation of costs and benefits. The obvious constraints on nations’ freedom of action are those of brute force and economics, but added to these are the constraints of the shared rules. Crucially, such limits on the solutions that we choose from do not arrive deus ex machina, but are the product of our own perceptions. How a problem is defined, and consequently what the range of possible solutions are, is a fundamentally collective undertaking. Across a panoply of issues, decisions are made in a web of rules that set standards about the permissible action to take. To take one major example, China’s rise is framed in terms of being a ‘responsible’ power; acceding to international treaties and participating in international institutions is not just a sign of the benefit these bring to China, but a marker of what responsible powers do. Pressure to conform to human rights standards meets with resistance, but not outright rejection. In aspiring to assume the recognition of being a great power, certain obligations are unavoidable. China’s concern with its ‘image’ cannot be understood without reference to its desire to be a great power in others’ eyes, but in other areas the pressures of these shared understandings can lead to inefficient outcomes. Negotiations on an independent global forests treaty have continued rather fruitlessly since the early 1990s because, in part, of the expectation that an international agreement on deforestation needed to be reached. The understanding that action requires a >>
image | Jorge Valle
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In trying to understand the forces that shape world politics, it would be remiss to regress into a purely utilitarian, rationalist view of the world
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>> global treaty is one that has been internalised and accepted by those involved, even if discussions have failed to achieve significant outcomes. Even that most fundamental feature of international politics, war-making, is not immune from the restrictions imposed by shared ideas about what appropriate wars are about. The criticism over the legality of the 2003 Iraq invasion would, in all likelihood, have seemed rather peculiar a hundred years ago when the use of force to further state interests would have been entirely unremarkable. Among other things, a crucial reason lies in the evolution of what constitutes appropriate reasons for the use of force – in contemporary times, permissible only in self-defence or by UN Security Council sanction. All this suffices to make the more general point that, in area after area of international politics, social pressure exists to conform to various collectively-held standards of appropriate conduct. Rule-breaking doesn’t come easily. But some rules are generally held, and others are more context-specific. One such case, of climate change diplomacy, can better illustrate the complex set of rules that negotiators face. From the very beginning of the climate change negotiations two decades ago, diplomats have strived to achieve an agreement that encompasses almost every country on earth. And yet, it is far from obvious that a universal requirement is the right basis on which the climate negotiations should have been, and continue to be organised. The overwhelming bulk of the world’s car-
bon emissions come from a relatively small group of countries. By and large, the contribution of subSaharan Africa, most of Latin America and the low-lying islands matter little when it comes to the heated discussions on how to apportion responsibility for reducing emissions. This is despite the recognition of climate change as a ‘global’ problem. At negotiating session after negotiating session, well over 150 countries still have a say in the unfolding shape of any agreement, so a commitment to consensus decision-making puts over 150 hands on the handbrakes of agreement. This is a fundamental principle of normalised universal participation, in which negotiators and diplomats agree that multilateral negotiations organised on a universal basis are the right setting in which talks should take place. So the idea of universal participation is one of the basic rules that states accept, a collective expectation about what climate negotiations should look like. The importance of this expectation is more than trivial, because in including essentially all states in negotiations, discussions have had to grapple with a broader conflict between the environmental and economic priorities. The clash of economic interests and the battle of bargaining power on climate change takes place within the boundaries established by the social expectation that a legitimate agreement is one that all states participate in. By way of illustration, President George W. Bush’s decision to withdraw the U.S.
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from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 was widely criticised by other states, not just because of its impact upon efforts to bring the treaty into force. Crucially, his repudiation of this UN-centred universal process towards global action offended the sensibilities of most other countries of what action on climate change should look like. In the same way, discussion over the mechanisms of how to implement the Kyoto Protocol also reflected a basic acceptance that any policy action had to be consistent with the prevailing economic philosophy committed to economic growth. Contrasted with the debates that dominated as environmental issues began to appear on the international agenda in the 1970s, the only type of policy action possible in the 1990s and 2000s has had its boundaries set in terms of policies that permit economic growth. And yet developing countries are as much at the forefront of the pro-growth agenda as developed ones are – indeed, without such an agenda developing countries would be even more tempted to view environmental debates in binary growth-or-environment terms. It is this consensus about economic growth as not just compatible, but necessary to meet environmental objectives that defines the space for debate about how to tackle climate change. While developing countries face a diverse set of interests and objectives, their ability to maintain a united front in a single coalition suggests that alignment is more than a fleeting marriage of convenience. The expression of solidarity as a goal among developing countries, where unity is maintained in the absence of short-term benefits, offers a glimpse of the social rules that contribute to the current climate change divide. The experience of unfulfilled promises made by industrialised countries is one that is collectively shared, reinforcing the conviction that developing
Julian Rotela Roscow
countries need to be united. Solidarity between developing countries is treated as an end in itself, where the prospect of a wholesale withdrawal from the coalition, while not unthinkable, remains at the edges of the feasible. These examples offer a picture of international politics as one where certain ideas about what constitutes appropriate action come to structure the realm of the possible. Rather than a constant recalculation of ‘state interests’, the process of defining interests and establishing preferences is one conditioned by aspects of the problem that ‘everybody knows’ and ‘everybody expects’. This is not to say that utilitarian considerations in policymaking are not also important. With climate change, as with other examples, the exercise of power and economic calculation happens within this framework of shared understandings and is enabled by the normative influences present. The obligations of international politics are often thought of in terms of compliance with treaties and agreements. But states also possess obligations based fundamentally around certain ideas of acceptable conduct; the standards of acceptable, appropriate behaviour pervade the conduct of international relations, and sensitivity to their influence challenges our orthodox assumptions that power and wealth are what make the world go round. None of this is to say that such a logic operates all the time or in all settings. But in trying to understand the forces that shape world politics, it would be remiss to regress into a purely utilitarian, rationalist view of the world. N icholas C han is a DPhil candidate in International Relations at St. Antony’s College. He blogs on international politics at www.nickandtheworld. wordpress.com.
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image | Jin Lee
ATHEISM:
A VERY MODERN DEBATE RELIGION Richard Dawkins and the scientists hell-bent on proving him wrong
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theism, it seems, is in intellectual vogue like never before. The celebrity status of evolutionist Richard Dawkins has propelled the question of belief to the fore, stirring vigorous discussion. While Dawkins, former Oxford Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, has become a poster boy for this militant intellectual attack on religion, he is gaining company. A growing number of scientists, philosophers, and writers, collectively dubbed the ‘new atheists’, are joining him in denouncing religion as irrational, immoral and even dangerous. These include philosopher Daniel Dennett, neuroscientist Sam Harris and journalist Christopher Hitchens, who agree with Dawkins on the social and moral impact of religion on the modern world and wish to scrutinise religion with a rational eye. However, while the new atheists have been met with bitter rebukes from the public, religious believers and theologians, criticism has also come from another, perhaps unexpected, source: the scientific community itself. New atheism’s scientific critics do not concern themselves with addressing the validity of religion’s claims about the world, or the need to speak out against dogmatically held beliefs that may foster violence. Rather, they focus on more specific assumptions about the nature of religion – its function, its consequences, its origins – that inform the new atheists’ empirical statements, moral judgments and practical prescriptions. These scientists want to hold the new atheists accountable for their self-proclaimed commitment to reason and evidence. But how, and why, do scientists challenge an atheist movement that so explicitly claims to stand upon firm scientific ground? Fundamentally, they disagree with three assumptions that inform much of the new atheist position: that religion is primarily about placing belief in doctrine; that the net consequences of religion on human welfare are negative; and that religion itself is largely immoral. Religion: What’s belief got to do with it? Pinning down a precise definition of religion is no mean feat. The work of the new atheists often suggests that they understand religion as being primarily about belief. To be a religious person necessarily means to avow belief in a particular set of doctrines, usually concerning
a supernatural agent or transcendent entity. Because they hold belief at the core of religion, the new atheists often criticise the irrationality of religion, pointing out inconsistencies in scripture, the incoherence of religious beliefs with other facts in the world, and the apparent stupidity of religious practices. Due to this emphasis on doctrine, the new atheists often confront a common accusation that they are fighting straw men, reducing all religion to literalism and fundamentalism. But the new atheists claim that these straw men are largely characteristic of mainstream religious believers. Dawkins warns that “a frighteningly large number of people still do take their scriptures, including the story of Noah, literally”, and Harris warns that millions, if not billions, of people read scripture as if it were an infallible guide to living. But regardless of the number of literalists and fundamentalists, the new atheist critique goes further to include religious moderates. The new atheists hold that the problem with religious belief, as opposed to other forms of ‘irrationality’ or ‘dogmatism’, is that it is the only mode of discourse that is shielded from scrutiny. Religious moderates protect religion from serious criticism, enabling fundamentalists to exacerbate religious disagreements. In response, some scientists are speaking out, but in quite a different tenor. Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt urges the new atheists to consider the work of many anthropologists and sociologists who challenge the primacy of belief in doctrine as the core of religion. Haidt emphasises instead the role of ritual, community building, and moral and social support in religion. Furthermore, Haidt argues that much evidence suggests that even people who claim to be literalists do not blindly follow their holy books; they selectively choose different stories, ideas and insights from the text and ignore the rest. Failing to take these crucial aspects into consideration will ultimately skew any understanding of religion. Also highlighting the possible liabilities of this assumption is Scott Atran, a cultural anthropologist. Atran claims that the new atheists miss the point when they focus on belief, because religious literalists are the exception, not the rule. Additionally, trying to talk about religious beliefs as ‘true’ or ‘irrational’ just does not make any >>
>> sense, since religious beliefs, like metaphors, lack any logical or empirical criteria. He argues that the proposition of religious beliefs as flawed, based on a narrow strategic focus of exposing the irrational, is not only naïve, but even unscientific. Religion and Human Welfare If many of the new atheists criticize religious belief, it is not only because they oppose irrationality for its own sake, but because these beliefs have real consequences. The underlying assumption in much of the writings of the new atheists is that religion is fundamentally bad for human welfare. This is immediately apparent in the terms used by the new atheists to describe religion – an ‘infection’, a ‘delusion’, a ‘spell’ and so on. Their works also condemn religion for ‘corrupting’ the minds of many otherwise moral people, promoting violence and hatred between different groups, being the root cause of major conflicts throughout the world, and posing an alarming risk to the United States from both within and without. The preface of Dawkins’ The God Delusion begins with a call to: “Imagine, along with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers’, no Northern Ireland ‘troubles’, no ‘honour killings’.” The implication is clear – while it may have some benefits, in general religion is a force for evil in the world. The new atheists further argue that if religion were eliminated, much of the violence in the world would disappear. Dawkins goes so far as to say that “if children were taught to...think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet there would be no suicide bombers”. It may seem obvious to the new atheists that religion is, by and large, a bad thing. Still, many in the scientific community have called this assumption into question. Atran’s research suggests that religious beliefs are the primary motivating cause of much of the violent behaviour and con-
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flict that the new atheists condemn. In fact, he goes one step further, citing evidence to the contrary: belief in God does not seem to promote violence or combative martyrdom, and simply agreeing with the statement “there is a God” decreases the tendency to blame others for one’s troubles by 45%. Atran is not the only one to challenge the new atheists’ claim about the link between religion and violence. Other research by American social scientist Arthur Brooks suggests that religious believers are happier, healthier, live longer and devote more of their time away from themselves than secular people. Haidt’s research points to the feelings of elation and well being that come as a result of coordinated group gatherings and synchronous movement, both of which are emphasised in religious practices. If these beneficial elements are to be isolated and distinguished from the dogmatism and fanaticism that pose a threat to peace and stability, it will require an open-minded, thorough study of all aspects of religion. Haidt urges the new atheists to consider all the data before reaching a verdict, urging: “If religion is to be subject to trial by science, I want the trial to be fair.”
the starting point for ethical inquiry. But cross-cultural studies and open-ended response surveys have increasingly shown that this limited moral domain is not representative of the whole world. To recognise the wide variety of moral concerns, Haidt produces a definition of moral systems based not on their content, but their function: moral systems are interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible. Haidt’s account allows him to view religion and many religious moral concerns in a new light. He suggests that with his definition, religion starts to look like a very valuable strategy for solving the problem of human cooperation and promoting many of the moral virtues people value all over the world. The trouble with the new atheists’ account of religion, Haidt claims, is that they prematurely dismiss religion as immoral because they do not consider moral concerns holistically. Thus, they define morality in such a way as to make it inevitable that religion fares poorly.
Religion and Morality
The works of the new atheists contain many useful insights and have been instrumental in raising public interest and encouraging debate over the nature of religion and its role in contemporary society. But in their harsh condemnation of religion and its consequences, they have come under criticism from some within the scientific community. Holding them to their self-proclaimed advocacy of intellectual honesty and reason are scientists like Haidt, Atran and Wilson, who cast a critical eye on many underlying assumptions. The discussion is far from over. As long as the new atheists are held responsible for all the claims they make about religion, their voices, as well as those of their critics, will continue to clarify and inform our understanding of this peculiar human phenomenon.
Since they see religion as having such profound consequences, the new atheists also denounce religious beliefs, preachings, and practices as immoral. In fact, this is the case almost by definition. The new atheists tend to characterise morality as primarily concerned with happiness and suffering. It is by these criteria that they conclude that many religious texts and prescriptions are immoral because they do not promote happiness and often advocate violence and abuse. But the new atheists’ detractors believe this final verdict on religion is a mistake – it is dependent on an excessively narrow conception of morality that precludes a fair assessment of religion. He points to a tendency of the new atheists to assume, either explicitly or implicitly, that the moral domain is limited to concerns about harm and fairness. This assumption comes out of the Enlightenment tradition, which takes the individual’s autonomy and welfare as
The Discussion Continues
Lena Groeger is a research associate at Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. She previously studied at Brown University.
image | Richard Dawkins / Luis Enrique Ascui
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RESTLESS VIOLENCE LITERATURE The violence inherent in contemporary society has always provided fertile material for authors and dramatists. Caroline Taylor examines our fascination with violence in art
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or most of us, first-hand experience of violence is limited. Yet, popular culture produces countless images of violence in films, games and music, provoking endless debate about the possible effect this could have on our behaviour as individuals and as a society. One popular belief is that the increase in depictions of war, gun fights, murder and sexual violence serve to desensitise the viewer. If so, is there a difference between the portrayal of violence in popular culture and in works of art? What can art hope to achieve by portraying violent acts if images of brutality are so commonplace as to become banal? Violence in art is no recent innovation: Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Othello and Titus Andronicus all depict cycles of violent retribution. But modern portrayals of violence have often taken on a quite different character, combining graphic depictions of sex, mental and physical abuse, even suicide, with the express intention of shocking and provoking audiences. Nobel prize-winning Austrian author and dramatist Elfriede Jelinek provides an especially pertinent example of how such shocking evocations of violent behaviour can be used in theatre. Jelinek’s graphic portrayals of violence are designed to show the ways in which human aggression is denied and sublimated to the extent that it erupts in the home and community as domestic and sexual abuse, self-harm and brutal murder. Popular culture, Jelinek implies, fosters the violent undercurrents it appears to repress. However, her commentary is far more contextspecific than that, directly engaging with Austria’s somewhat chequered past, criticising the Austrian tendency to cultivate an image of ‘respectable’ society and turning a blind eye to the violent remnants of the country’s Nazi past. Jelinek’s writing never fails to create waves of controversy
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for its ruthlessly graphic violent and sexual imagery described with raw irony, sardonic wit and black humour. Her unique style reveals the dark side of a language riddled with corruption, creating a merciless parody of popular culture and language. Her work subverts conventional meanings in an active protest against hollow discourses which conceal more than they reveal. Critical and media reception of Jelinek’s work has been mixed since the beginning of her career in the late 1960s. Initially, her experimental style provoked interest, but her pessimistic and critical outlook soon came under fire. Her early plays caused controversy for their use of sexually explicit material and were labelled ‘degenerate’, causing such public outrage that it was no longer possible to stage her plays in Austria. No less controversial is the British playwright Sarah Kane. Kane, who wrote a string of ultraviolent plays before her suicide in 1999, is best known for her final work, 4.48 Psychosis. Psychosis, often thought of as Kane’s own suicide note, invites the audience to experience the human mind at its most damaged state. Following an individual in the brutal final days of a long battle with severe clinical depression, Psychosis combines explicit language and violent imagery to create a pervasive air of unrelenting despair. Yet, despite the extremely uncomfortable nature of Kane’s work, 4.48 Psychosis continues to be a popular play, raising the question of what drives audiences to revel in the gloom created by violent art. Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange is another example of a popular work with a particular focus upon human violence. The novel follows the exploits of its cocky and yet strangely endearing adolescent narrator Alex in graphic and disturbing detail. What shocks the reader most about Burgess’ work is not the violence of the acts perpe- >> image | Elfriede Jelinek’s “Über Tiere” / DDP Images
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We are simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by violence when it is presented to us so explicitly in the theatre
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>> trated by Alex, but the extent to which he or she empathises with a protagonist who delights in such violence. This is a direct effect of the creative use of language which draws readers in and implicates them in the events narrated. Alex shows no remorse for his crimes – his jovial slang downplays the seriousness of his violent acts, meaning readers also catch themselves reacting nonchalantly to crimes which, in other contexts, they would find abhorrent. The novel appears to dwell on the question as to whether free will should be prioritised over social order, simultaneously suggesting that violence is an inherent part of human nature. It seems this willingness to engage with and understand that human capacity for violence is what allows and encourages us to endure uncomfortably violent works. One reason Jelinek’s work provokes thought is her insistence that violence is a product of the very social structures which are commonly taken to represent order rather than chaos. The law, the economy and especially the family, rather than controlling and eradicating the violent tendencies innate in human nature, actually foster and create a culture of competition and possession in which status is governed by the ability to dominate. This colours all human interaction, especially the sexual relationships between men and women, where the need to assert their masculinity leads men to treat women as potential conquests. Jelinek’s work has been criticised heavily in the popular press for its pessimistic tone, offering no hope for change, and for its graphic and grotesque depictions of rape, domestic violence and male aggression. She has also been criticised by feminists, as the women in her work are shown to be complicit in their own oppression, exploiting the economic benefits afforded to them by marriage. But it is in her most famous novel Die Klavierspielerin (The Piano Teacher), for which Jelinek won the Nobel Prize for Literature, that the structure of authority in the family is shown to have direct implications for sexual identity and relationships. The novel tells the story of a middle-aged piano teacher who still lives with her domineering mother in a small flat, and even shares a bed with her. Her mother has brought her up to consider herself a cut above the rest of society, pushing her into pursuing a career as a concert pianist and discouraging her from complying with the norms of adolescent feminine behaviour, opposing any attempts to dress attractively or have close contact with men. Erika’s sexual
development is therefore arrested; she feels alienated from her body and her desires. Attempting to take control of her life, she purchases fashionable clothes which she never wears, goes to peep-shows and spies on couples having sex in a park, and self-harms. In a final attempt to break free from her mother’s control, she begins an affair with a young student, Walter Klemmer, whose own motivations for the liaison are cold and calculating – he intends to use the older woman as a ‘practice run’ for later conquests. As the novel develops, Erika is caught up in a power struggle between her own desire for control over her life, her domineering mother and her potential lover. Graphic descriptions of the struggles between mother and daughter eventually erupt – we witness the two women pulling each other’s hair out, and their complex love-hate relationship is revealed in a vivid incestuous assault, where Erika attacks her mother in bed with kisses and bites, grabbing at her pubic hair and exposing her genitals. What is most significant in understanding our fascination with ‘artistic’ violence is viewing where violence begins and ends. Where Burgess’ novel questions the inevitability of violent behaviour in adolescents, Kane’s and Jelinek’s works offer no such optimistic solution for their characters. Kane’s protagonist commits an inevitable suicide, mirroring Kane’s own death, while Jelinek’s continue down a spiral of continual domineering violence. According to Kane’s and Jelinek’s works, aggression, despair and violence are inevitable unless we radically change the foundations upon which our society operates. As individuals it barely makes sense to speak of ‘free will’, because we are formed so entirely by our social culture that we cannot say anything which exceeds the language of our everyday existence and cannot act in any way which is not socially determined. We are simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by violence when it is presented to us so explicitly in art. But it is what such art reveals about human nature and the relative hope of redemption from the darkest parts of that nature that draws us into the works. While there is no hope for the characters of many of these works, a critical examination could still hold the key to social change. C a r o l i n e Tay l o r is a MSt Languages student at Merton College whose research focuses on contemporary female literature in German.
image | Sarah Kane’s “4.48 Psychosis” / The Barbican Centre
HABEAS CORPUS AND OTHER ENIGMAS
LEGAL ETHICS The concept of human rights are an integral part of how we view the world – but what exactly are they?
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hey are referred to in nearly all standard legal, moral and political discourse; a growing number of international treaties and covenants refer to them; and their protection has been cited as the justification for ‘humanitarian interventions’, including the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Given the fact that human rights are so frequently invoked, then, it is surprising that there is no clear definition of what exactly they are or what they entail. The appeal to human rights is powerful and clearly carries with it a sense of moral urgency, but strikingly, despite the pervasive use of human rights talk, most have neglected to make clear what exactly is at stake. Lawmakers, human rights activists, scholars and politicians, amongst others, have all failed to make clear just what human rights are and precisely what justification we have for including any particular right under the powerful heading of ‘human rights’. Initially some might struggle to see what is unclear about the concept: surely something is a human right when the law stipulates that it is? Perhaps, but the problem is figuring out what exactly this stipulation amounts to. The term human rights is not used in a uniform way in different international documents, nor is it always used consistently within and between the statutes of one particular document. For example, the U.N.’s Universal Declaration states that there is a human right to medical care, but exactly what this translates into is ambiguous: precisely what obligations does this human right impose, and on whom? Moreover, legal scholars and human rights activists alike remain deeply dissatisfied with the current list of legally recognised human rights, claiming that many rights are excluded that ought to be included, and vice versa. People often speak as if human rights exist, whether or not they are legally recognised as such. Human rights in this sense are just ‘plain moral rights’, that is to say they are morally justified rights. Some philosophers maintain that a theory of human rights is a misguided aim. They suggest that human rights are not a concept that ought to be subject to philosophical scrutiny because it is merely a useful political term – a bit of rhetoric that is intentionally vague and hyperbolised. Richard Rorty has expressed such sentiments, condemning the recent philosophical obsession with providing justification of human rights as “outmoded and irrelevant, and potentially even counter-productive”. However, we ought to be wary of espousing such shaky foundations for a concept that has already been incorporated into numerous statutes in international law and appealed to on more
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than one occasion to justify the breaching of state sovereignty, humanitarian intervention and war. The general consensus amongst legal scholars and philosophers alike is that a clearer account of human rights is needed, one that lends some intellectual credibility to the concept beyond its use in political rhetoric. The fundamental disagreement in human rights scholarship lies between the ‘traditionalists’ and the ‘functionalists’. The former hold that a philosophical account of human rights has the capacity to serve as a useful normative standard against which we can judge the present state of international human rights law; the latter claim that a cohesive philosophical account of human rights has little or no bearing on what ought to be institutionalised as a human right in international law. Traditionalists attempt to derive human rights from the basic or essential features of human beings. According to James Griffin’s traditionalist account, for example, human rights protect our personhood, which he claims is essentially composed of the twin-elements autonomy and liberty. In David Miller’s view, the features that determine human rights are human needs. Others, such as John Tasioulas, base human rights on a plurality of human interests. Traditionalists generate a list of human rights which, according to some, provides an ethical framework against which we can judge the extent to which the current list of legally recognised human rights is rationally or morally justified. A simple human needs model will convey the general idea: if there is a human need for food, then this serves as the moral justification for a human right to food. From this it follows that the human right to food ought to be incorporated into international law. The pre-eminent legal philosopher Joseph Raz, however, is highly dubious of the traditionalist approach. More specifically, he is sceptical that a traditionalist account of human rights has any real bearing on human rights law and, moreover, notes the failure of proponents of traditionalist theories to provide an argument for why actual human rights practice should be scrutinised according to the lists of human rights generated by such theories. Raz’s chief complaint is that traditionalist theories derive human rights from concerns than do not relate to the practice of human rights. He goes so far as to say that these theories “offer a way of understanding [the nature of human rights] which is so remote from the practice of human rights as to be irrelevant to it.” Raz has a radically different approach to arriving at a theory of human rights. In his view, one ought to look at the way human rights function in order to arrive at the appropriate theory. >>
image | Plate from Vesalius’ “De humani corporis fabrica libri septem”, 1543
>> Functionalist theories aim to clarify the concept of human rights according to what we want human rights to do, hence human rights are grounded in or justified by the function they serve (or are intended to serve). For Raz, this means that developing a theory of human rights that is capable of criticising current human rights practice requires looking at how human rights function in that practice. He claims that the task of a theory of human rights is to “establish the essential features which contemporary human rights practice attributes to the rights it acknowledges to be human rights” and “to identify the moral standards which qualify anything to be so acknowledged”. What Raz gleans from human rights practice is that their main function is to set limits on state sovereignty. As he sees human rights, they function mainly as conditions or obligations states must meet in order to stave off remedial international action; if these conditions or obligations are not met, this serves as sufficient justification for violating state sovereignty. Therefore, we can deem human rights practice to be at fault if it ever recognises as a human right something which, if violated, does not justify international action against a state, or if it fails to recognise as a human right something which, if violated, would morally justify overriding state sovereignty. However, why limit the scope of human rights to rights against states? Surely human rights are also rights against individuals even in human rights practice? For example, recently a seven-year-old girl in Birmingham was tragically starved to death by her own mother and stepfather. Does this not constitute a violation of the girl’s human right to subsistence? Moreover, is this not a rights claim against individuals, namely her mother and stepfather, perhaps even some domestic authorities? Raz does indeed acknowledge that human rights can be held against individuals as well as domestic institutions, but that in international law the main agents are usually states. Confusingly it seems by ‘human rights practice’ Raz does not mean any law involving the protection human rights, but rather international human rights law. Perhaps he intends to restrict human rights practice even further to international humanitarian law – which is narrowly defined as the business of regulating
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armed conflicts, war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. This raises an altogether different question, however: even if it is true that states are the main agents in international human rights law, what argument has Raz provided for his claim that the ‘predominant mark’ of human rights in human rights practice is setting limits to state sovereignty? It is true that a special feature of human rights is that they can set limits to sovereignty, but it only seems plausible to say that this is the ‘predominant mark’ of human rights in practice if we restrict human rights practice to the sphere of international humanitarian law, which governs conflicts. For an example of how international human rights legislation contradicts Raz’s view, consider human trafficking. The number of victims has reached epidemic proportions over the past decade, prompting the United Nations to adopt the Palermo Protocols in 2000, aimed at protecting the human rights of migrants and reducing the power and influence of organised criminal groups. In 2005 the Council of Europe adopted a similar measure: the Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which states that “trafficking in human beings constitutes a violation of human rights” and that one of the Convention’s purposes is to “to protect the human rights of victims of trafficking”. Here, human rights are being protected by international human rights law, but setting limits on sovereignty is not their primary function. Raz could try to argue that there is still some limiting of state sovereignty in virtue of this legislation, albeit mild. However, that seems hard to argue, as in this case the culprits are primarily large cartels of organised criminals, and human trafficking is already so widespread that to suggest widespread violation of the human right not to be trafficked is a reason for action against states in the international arena would be ridiculous. In Canada alone foreign trafficking for prostitution is estimated to be worth C$400 million dollars annually: should this fact justify an international intervention in Canada? In considering the ways we might think human rights function in practice, we are thus led to doubt Raz’s own functionalist account; the notion that human rights might be justified in part by their function is not altogether unreasonable. However,
the claim that essentially the only rights properly understood as human rights are those that, when violated, morally justify breaches of state sovereignty, interventions or war is hardly plausible. It seems fairly obvious that human rights practice does not and should not consider this the predominant function of human rights. Raz seems to warn against abandoning the limiting of state sovereignty as the primary role of human rights, but in his concluding remarks he actually forebodes its inevitable rejection by human rights practice itself. He advances the argument that as human rights practice becomes more successful, the scope of norms that it incorporates widens until it includes so many human rights that the term will no longer have any normative force or moral weight over and above ordinary citizenship rights. However, even if this is true, Raz has still not provided a convincing argument for why his theory of human rights even as it stands today should be accepted; why human rights practice as it stands today ought to conform to it; and why we should adopt his extreme restriction on what counts as ‘human rights practice’. Despite its faults, there is a clear lesson we can take away from this final dimension of Raz’s view. Regardless of whether one ultimately seeks to endorse a traditionalist or functionalist approach to human rights, it seems wise to take heed of Raz’s sceptical concerns that the concept of a human right will eventually become trite if our lists of human rights remain as long, vague and untamed as they are today in both moral and legal discourse. A rich and complex dialogue clearly underlies the pursuit of a morally justified account of human rights, and there of course remain countless issues in human rights scholarship that warrant substantial attention from legal philosophers, lawyers and human rights activists alike. Whether or not the discussion of these issues ultimately leads to any universally agreed-upon theory of human rights, the endeavour in and of itself will doubtlessly be a productive one. Exploring these matters is conducive to deepening our conception of what human rights are, and what role they really play, or ought to play, in international law. Stephanie Malik is reading for a BPhil in Philosophy, having previously studied at Oberlin College, Ohio. images | Woody Pirtle
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THE FACE OF ADVERSITY
PHOTO ESSAY The Sahara has always pitted man against nature – John Cairns looks at those who make their living in the desert and finds them threatened not only by their habitat, but from modernity itself
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o understanding of the Sahara is complete without an appreciation of its two most salient characteristics. First, its sheer scale: the world’s largest desert spans nine countries and covers approximately 3.5 million square miles of Africa. With a population of only 2.5 million, the Sahara is a place where nature takes firm precedence over human inf luence, where thousands of square miles of this most significant geographical phenomenon are left almost entirely untouched. The second is the Sahara’s harsh nature. Thousands of miles of arid landscape stretch out, threatening to overwhelm travellers, representing a zenith of natural adversity. The indigenous people, the Berbers, live their lives navigating not only these inhospitable environmental conditions, but also the increasingly tough political conditions. Like so many other tribal groups around the world, the Berbers struggle to protect their traditional identity from the steady march of modernisation. Whilst they make up roughly 40% of the population, they are becoming increasingly marginalised. Berbers struggle at school, where the Berber language is not spoken, and the Moroccan government recently banned some traditional Berber names being given to new-born children. The discrimination the Berbers face has become a hot topic of the international Human Rights Watch, who are closely monitoring their plight.
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J o h n C a i r n s is a freelance photographer based in North Oxford. His website is www.johncairnsphotography.co.uk
top | Caravans face innumerable
dangers: wild animals, lack of water and extreme temperatures
right | The Berbers are famed for
their hospitality, inviting visitors in to hear traditional tales and music
left | A Berber man makes his way across the desert
E X P OS ITI O N Thomas Hull House, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford, ox1 2dh, United Kingdom, (+44) 01865 288 450