Ethnocentrism and Human Rights

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view one's own culture as superior and to use one's own standards and values in judging outsiders.

Some people consider their own cultural beliefs to be truer, more proper, or more moral than those of other groups.

During my Cultural Anthropology course, I have often reexamined my own ethnocentric beliefs. I have understood that one of my goals, as an open-minded person, is to show the value of the lives of others!

But what happens when cultural practices, values, and rights come into conflict with human rights?

According to an idea called cultural relativism, it is not right to use outside standards to judge behavior in a given society; such behavior should be evaluated in the content of the culture in which it occurs.

But several cultures have customs requiring female genital modification and many human rights advocates have been opposed to such practices.

The idea of human rights invokes a sphere of justice and morality beyond and superior to particular countries, cultures, and religions. Human rights mean that people have the right to speak freely, to hold religious beliefs without persecution, and not to be murdered, injured, enslaved, or imprisoned without charge. Human rights are seen as inalienable (nations cannot abridge or terminate them).

But the cultures in Africa and the Middle East which have customs requiring female genital modification claim that they have cultural rights. Unlike human rights, cultural rights are interested not in individuals, but in groups. Cultural rights include a group's ability to raise its children in the ways of its ancestors.

Some anthropologists choose not to study a particular culture because they know in advance that they will be confronted to a morally repugnant practice or behavior. But do you think that when confronted with such behavior, an anthropologist must make a judgment about it?

Should we describe and judge other cultures by using our own cultural standards?

Or should use cultural relativism in order to have a methodological position rather than a moral stance? avoiding the use of outside standards to judge behavior in a given society...

But it is so difficult for me, as a Cultural Anthropologist student, to accept the clitoridectomy and infibulation that some cultures impose on little girls!! Infibulation involves sewing the lips (labia) of the vagina to constrict the vaginal opening. I cannot accept female genital mutilation (FGM) and I am completely opposed to this custom.

This custom infringes on a basic human right: disposition over one's body and one's sexuality!! I hope that these practices will fade and disappear!

The Berber in Algeria

"I employed the word “state”: it is obvious what is meant—some pack of blond beasts of prey, a conqueror and master race which, organized for war and with the ability to organize, unhesitatingly lays its terrible claws upon a populace perhaps tremendously superior in numbers but still formless and nomad … their work is an instinctive creation and imposition of forms; they are the most involuntary, unconscious artists there are—wherever they appear something new soon arises, a ruling structure that lives, in which parts and functions are delimited and coordinated, in which nothing whatever finds a place that has not first been assigned a “meaning” in relation to the whole."
(Nietzsche 2000: 522)

There was a civilian regime once in Algeria. It means that the land (not the people) was an extended part of France. The civilian regime, according to Abdelmajid Hannoum, saw Algeria as a French territory, not a colony, but rather an inseparable part of France.

For the military regime, Algeria was a French colony, with a population to control.

Before the French colonization, Mercier speaks about northern Africa as the stage for ethnic conflict between the Phoenicians and the Romans, with the Berbers caught in the middle.

The Berbers, according to Mercier, are a mixture of races; some of them are from Iberian and Celtic races, "a blond population" (Mercier 1905: 23-59).

While the Romans chased the Phenicians, they themselves were chased by the Vandals, who where ousted by the Byzantines. The Berber helped the Roman chase the Phenicians, and the Vandal defeat the Roman, and the Byzantine end the rule of the latter!

By the end of the 7th century, another conqueror arrived: The Arabs!

Such was the state of Africa in the time when the Arabs erupted.
The Berbers, one can see, had almost regained their independence. It was against them that the invaders had to fight. However, the disunion of the indigenous population, the absence of patriotic feelings among these people who were not unified yet, would allow their temporary enslavement to the Muslims of the Orient who were unified and disciplined by a strong religious idea. (Mercier 1875: 40)

The Berbers could not fight the Arabs because their nationalism was not mature.

Gautier wrote: "It is sufficient to remember that the Berber in the twentieth century, as in the seventh century, has no idea of a nation. He does not even conceive the Maghreb as a whole towards which he has obligations. He is not more interested in the smaller nation of the Numidians or the country of Zaïan. He does not have any idea of this. The only thing for which the Berber has passion and is ready to sacrifice his life is his clan, his family. (Gautier 1927: 252)

For Gautier, there are still Berbers and there are still Arabs, and neither of them like the
other. Berbers and Arabs are fundamentally different because of their lifestyle—one of them
is a city dweller, the other one is a nomad. Of course, Arabs are occupiers and Berbers are the real inhabitants of the Maghreb.

Gautier’s description of the greatest threat to western civilization throughout the history of the Maghreb, since Roman times. This greatest danger is a man:

"This man is the nomad, the great nomad, the camel rider, grouped in fearful tribes, each is in itself a sort of a born regiment, without preliminary training. Quick, elusive, capable of emerging at any moment, unexpected, like a catastrophe of unwatched loneliness. A powerful military tool. This great nomad hardened by the privations of the desert is by natural consequence ardent, of deep desire, thirsty for pleasures. In his terrible poverty, this wild animal pursues inside himself, in a confusing manner, a dream of plundering and domination." (Gautier 1927: 184)

In 1930, when France celebrated the century of its occupation of Algiers, they were Arabs versus Berbers versus Arabized Berbers versus Arabs.

Tribalism is still inherent in all these divisions!!!




De Slane, William (1852), Histoire des Berbères d’Ibn Khaldûn, Imprimerie du Gouvernement,
Algiers
Gautier, Emile-Félix (1920), L’Algérie et la métropole, Payot, Paris.
Gautier, Emile-Félix (1927), Les siècles obscures, Payot, Paris.
Gautier, Emile-Félix (1929), “Native life in French North Africa”, Geographical Review, vol. 13, no. 1,pp. 27–39.
Hannoum, Abdelmajid (2001a), “Colonialism and knowledge in Algeria: The archives of the Arab
Bureau”, History and Anthropology, vol. 4, pp. 343–379.
Hannoum, Abdelmajid (2001b), Colonial Histories, Post-Colonial Memories, Greenwood, Portsmouth, N.H.
Ibn Khaldûn/de Slane (1842–1856), Histoire des Berbères, Imprimerie du gouvernement, Algiers.
Nietzsche, Frederick (2000), Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Modern Library, New York.

Yemenis

Yemenis are sedentary and are mainly of Semitic origin. They are divided into the Shia Zaidi sect, living in the north and northwest, and the Shafa'i Sunni Muslims, living in the south and the southeast.

Yemenis are sedentary and they live in small villages and towns scattered throughout the highlands and coastal regions.

In 1962, factions within the Yemeni armed forces carried out a coup against the monarch, Imam Muhammad al-Badr. Supported by Nasser, the coup leaders abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the existence of the Yemen Arab Republic.

Imam Muhammad hid in the northern region of the country and he began looking for support in the local tribes.Yemen was plunged into civil war.

The royalists in the north were helped by the Saudi government and the republican regime of Abdallah al-Sallal received military assistance from Nasser.

In 1967, Britain withdrew from the Aden Protectorate and was immediately replaced by a Marxist National Liberation Front that established the People's Democratic Republic of South Yemen.

Therefore, Saudi Arabia (King Faysal) faced two dangerous Yemens, both of them with radical governments, both of them supported by the Soviet Union, both of them supporting republican rule, both of them against monarchies!!

Fighting between the republicans and the royalists continued until 1970, when Saudi Arabia formally recognized the republican regime and stopped aid to the royalists. Between 1967 and 1972 frequent border clashes occurred between Yemen and Southern Yemen, until an accord was signed (1972) to merge the two countries.

The next president, Lt.-Col. Ali Abdullah Saleh, strengthened various democratic procedures. In early 1979 border fighting with neighboring Southern Yemen erupted into full-scale war. Peace was soon established, however, and another unification agreement was devised. Saleh was elected for his third term in 1988.

Nearly half of Yemen's population lives below the poverty line of $2 a day and doesn't have access to proper sanitation. Less than a tenth of the roads are paved. Tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes by conflict, flooding the cities.

The country is enduring a rebellion in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.

Saleh's current term in office expires in 2013 but proposed amendments to the constitution could let him remain in power for two additional terms of ten years.

Democracy Now!

Democracy! We are discussing this word every week with the members of our Amnesty club and with the middle school and high school students!

What makes a Democratic classroom??

Charles Dickens published Hard Times in London in 1854, over 150 years ago! In the opening paragraphs, Dickens describes with raging fidelity the following to teachers:

"Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Sticks to Facts, Sir!"...
Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens' description of nineteenth century English schooling sounds resonant, oddly close at hand, a bit like the school-world teachers face here and now in the twenty-first century world!

School leaders even in Apartheid South Africa, Saudi Arabia, fascist Germany, communist Albania, agreed that their students should behave properly in school, stay away from drugs and crime, do their homework, and study hard!...

Well, this the common ground we should find in our Democratic classrooms!

Democracy is a form of associative living in which people make the decisions that affect their lives. "Every human being is of infinite and incalculable value, each a unique intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, moral, and creative force, each born free and equal in dignity and rights, endowed with reason and conscience, and deserving , then, a community of solidarity, a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, recognition and respect."

In my Democratic classroom, I want my students to be able to think for themselves, to make judgments based on evidence and argument, to develop minds of their own. I want them to learn to ask essential questions: Who in the world am I? How did I get here and where am I going? What in the world are my choices and my chances? What is my story, and how is it like or unlike other stories? What is my responsiblity to others?

As Democratic teachers, we must keep these questions vital, alive, and fresh as we, ourselves, are searching for answers!

Respect for persons, for teachers and for students and community members, is at the core of good democratic classrooms!

To be continued...
With our discussion with William Ayers who said "We reach toward freedom, we crawl toward love"

Dickens, G. (1990). Hard times. New York: Norton. (Original work published 1854)

People's Democratic Republic of Algeria

Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika won a third-year term last April with a reported 90 percent of the vote!!!

We can only react with sullen DISDAIN, right?? another crooked election like all the other elections which had taken place in Algeria!

But how to promote Democracy in Algeria? How to promote Human Rights and the rule of law in the country in order to have a more secure environment?

We need to analyse the case of Algeria in a particular context: the colonial legacy, the threat of political Islam, and the impact of the political elite.

Algeria was a French colony from 1830 to 1954, when the War of Liberation began, and, after eight years of war, Algeria declared its independence in 1962. The major legacy of the colonial war and the war of Liberation was the strong, centralized state structure designed by the military and civilian elite, which affected the prospects for democratization in Algeria.
The supremacy of the military, an authoritarian government, the bureaucratic elite...

The military, the bureaucratic elite, and the PRESIDENT, form the three pillars of the centralized state structure... and power is centered in their hands!

The Algerian parliament is bicameral, consisting of a lower chamber, the National People's Assembly (APN), with 380 members and an upper chamber, the Council of Nation, with 144 members.

The APN is elected every 5 years. Two-thirds of the Council of the Nation are elected by regional and municipal authorities; the rest are appointed by the President.

The Council of the Nation serves a 6-year term with one-half of the seats up for election or reappointment every 3 years. Either the President or one of the parliamentary chambers may initiate legislation. Legislation must be brought before both chambers before it becomes law. Sessions of the APN are televised!

Algeria's central bank has some $140 billion in foreign exchange reserves, invested in treasury bills and central bank deposits abroad.

The finance ministry also has a hydrocarbon stabilization fund, known as the Fonds de Régulation des Recettes. According to finance minister, this has a dinar-denominated equivalent of about € 50 billion. It acts as a savings fund, helping ensure that the budget will balance if there is a hydrocarbon price crash, so that, for example, infrastructure projects can continue.

Everyone in Algeria knows that the country is far too dependent on using hydrocarbon exports to fund imports, which are often subsidized. Algeria, for example, is the world's largest importer of wheat, and Africa's largest importer of milk. This is despite vast tracts of unused farmland.

"Northwestern Africa, after all, was the breadbasket of the Roman Empire." (O'Neill Dominic, 2008).

Climate Change

Bangladesh is one of the countries in the world most vulnerable to the effects of global warming.

Floods have worsened the outlook for the 150 million inhabitants, most of whom are desperately poor.

Glaciers in the Himalayas have melted more than in the past, and scientists say that Bangladesh may lose as much as 20 per cent of its land to flooding by 2030. Twenty million people unable to farm their flooded land could then become "climate refugees."

Henry Kacprzyk, a Philadelphia zoo curator, explained how reducing energy use and recycling can cut the greenhouse gas pollution that contributes to global warming.

Global warming causes several problems to the poor countries that cannot afford to build a defensive infrastructures. Rich countries create huge problem to the poor countries!

But can capitalism be greened?

The poor are greener than the rich and yet far more vulnerable to environmental problems!

The First Lady Of Freedom

Aung San Suu Kyi, the 65-year -old Burmese Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was released from house arrest on November 13, is in the heart of all the oppressed and impoverished people on the planet!

This graceful woman, who has used only the nonviolent resistance, has the courage to stand up to the generals who control Burma.

For 15 of the past 21 years, the military regime kept her locked up. But all these years in detention did not discourage her! She is just as determined to fight for the civil liberties of Burma's 50 million people.

She said, "My very top priority is for people to understand that they have the power to change things themselves."

Following the adoption of a new constitution by national referendum, Myanmar's military junta is set to organize multiparty elections in 2010: the first general election in Myanmar in twenty years!

One thing is certain: when the civilian government arrives in 2011, there will be no place in it for the First Lady. But Suu Kyi considers herself very lucky. She says, "In my life, I have been showered with kindness. More than love, I value kindness. Love comes and goes, but kindness remains."

Bahrain

Bahrain's government transformed its political activity from strict Islamism to a more liberal outlook.

In 2002, King Hamad's National Charter reintroduced constitutional rule under a bicameral parliament. The lower house was to be wholly elected.

But finally, the upper house (appointed by the royal family) ended up having the same power as its elected lower house and the Shia started to protest.

As I have mentioned it before, the Shia make up approximately 70% of Bahrain's population. Between 1994 and 1996, Bahrain witnessed a massive Shiite uprising and the Shiite have repeatedly taken to the streets of Bahrain to protest various actions of the government.

Al Wefaq, the strongest of all the Shia political parties, suspected that the monarchy wanted to stop them from dominating the political arena. Therefore, they boycotted the 2002 elections in protest.

Iran exerts a strong influence over the Shia population in Bahrain! especially a country like Iran with nuclear capability!

The beginning of women participation in the political process is a great happening. Fatima Salman became the country's first female councillor, in Muharraq, though she ran unopposed.

King Hamad's new cabinet, appointed by him a few days after the elections, continued to be dominated by members of the ruling family.

Bahrain plays an important role among the six countries composing the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Let us not forget that Bahrain is particularly significant since it serves as the headquarters of the United States Fifth Fleet.

There is an important social problem in Bahrain: the BIDUNS. Most of the Biduns are Shiite and they are denied political and social rights and are refused integration into the society, even though some are third generation residents.

Although most of the Biduns were born in Bahrain, they do not have legal residency and cannot hold Bahraini passports. They have no right to travel abroad, to buy houses under government sponsored programs, or to hold government jobs. The Bahraini government issued regulations preventing them from sending their children to public schools or receiving free medical care. They are considered foreign and they can be deported any time.

Amir Hamad granted citizenship to many Biduns in 2001. The Amir Hamad has shown a positive attitude and he is willing to negotiate with the opposition. He seems to be concerned about the human rights.

Let us hope that the Amir Hamad's first steps towards reform will continue.

Personal Space

Different countries have striking cultural contrast! Between a culture that tends to discourage physical contact and one in which the contrary is true, it is difficult to know exactly how to behave sometimes...

"Don't touch me" "Take your hands off me" Such statements are not uncommon in North America, but they are never heard in Algeria, Morocco, or Tunisia.

The Mediterranean people like to shake hands, hug each other, and kiss each other on the cheeks every morning!

Indeed, the world's cultures have strikingly different notions about displays of affection and about matters of personal space.

In Mediterranean cultures, boys and girls kiss each other on the cheek, two or three times a day, coming and going! They kiss male and female kin, relatives of friends, friends of relatives, and more casual acquaintances. Men kiss their fathers and uncles and cousins throughout their lives.

In other cultures, it is completely different! According to clinical psychologist David E. Klimek, who has written about intimacy and marriage in the United States, "In America society, if we go much beyond simple touching, our behavior takes on a minor sexual twist" (Slade 1984).

North Americans define demonstrations of affections between males and females with reference to marriage.

Cultures have strikingly different standards of personal space, such as how far apart people should stand in normal encounters and interactions. I always try to remember these standards of personal space since I am teaching in an International school!

Aesthetic Victorians

The Aesthetic Movement in the Victorian period reacted against the notion that art was inefficient to culture. Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater were two of the leading literary critics of the Victorian period whose philosophies of aesthetics relative to art and literature were at times complimentary and at other times at odds with each other.

Matthew Arnold found that the “philistine” middle class of Britain were demonstrating a spiritual limitedness and he wanted to help them achieve an elaborated intellectual life.

Arnold criticized his contemporary dullness and he thought that literature and art can be the “healer of a diseased society” (Greenblatt, 2006). An unadorned literature, which has the quality of “high seriousness” can guide readers and help them achieve a “richer intellectual existence.”

Therefore, Arnold thought that good literary criticism can help develop a civilized society. Without Culture, citizens cannot develop an open-minded way of thinking and they could be incapable of being critical thinkers. The only remedy to people’s dullness was culture and good literary criticism because they make humans more civilized. In the same manner, Walter Pater thought, like Matthew Arnold, that criticism helps us “to see the object as in itself it really is” and the “function of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish” and “to analyze.” Both authors think that the purpose of the critic is to analyze and to scrutinize an object but Arnold insisted that it should be done without being prejudiced and biased.

In contrast to Arnold, Pater argued that the “critic, like the reader or audience member, participates in creating meaning rather than remaining uninvolved in the work.” For Arnold, the role of the critic is “of lower rank than the creative” (1385). Pater thinks that “criticism in in itself a form of creation.”

He wrote, “What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects” (1508). Arnold thought that aesthetic can be experienced through an objective mind and experience.

In the other hand, Pater thought that art is a sensual experience and readers should enjoy “those sensations provoked by works of art” (1506).

Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater have written about the profession of the critic in cultural and literary matters and they have both insisted in the notion that art was essential to culture. Still, Pater insisted that the critic is an active person who does not remain detached from the art and literature work.

Modernist Ireland

Within the British Empire, many conflicts erupted between the native Irish and the English. The poetry of W.B. Yeats and the prose of James Joyce often express their concerns and interest in the needs of Ireland and Irish literary heritage. In both books, Joyce’s “The Dead” and Yeats’ “Easter, 1916,” the writers articulate their hopes and fears for Ireland and its heritage relative to the elements of Modernist literature.

At the beginnings of the 20^th century, modernist literature develops and conflict is one of the main characteristics of the modernist period. W.B. Yeats has felt the need to write about the conflict happening in Ireland and about the need of Irish people to construct their national identity and independence through rebellion. In “Easter, 1916” Yeats had been inspired by Irish nationalism so he wrote a poem about the Easter Rising of 1916. The Irish nationalists staged a revolt against the British government’s rule and they proclaimed an Irish Republic (Greenblatt, 2006). Yeats asserts in “Easter, 1916” that Ireland had “all changed, changed utterly” (15) and he stresses later on that its people “are changed, changed utterly” (79).

Indeed, Irish nationalism started with violent protests against the “cultural, economic, and political subordination of Ireland to the British Crown and Government” (Greenblatt, 2006, p. 1831). Yeats believes that Irish people are tired of “polite meaningless words” (8) and they needed to show their discontent through the birth of “a terrible beauty” (16).

The Irish nationalism had fiery revolutionaries people and “vainglorious lout” (32), like Major John MacBride and Maud Gonne, who were so devoted to the Irish Nationalist cause. The poet is an observer who is walking down the street and meeting the people “at close day” (1) and remarking that they are “coming with vivid faces” (2). Yeats notices that these activists have the blossoming of ingenuity in their blood and they are determined to preserve the Irish history and language. Yeats’s use of the pronoun “I” (1) shows readers that he is quiet detached of the heat and passion which is animating all the people who are present in the poem. Yeats wrote, “I have met them at close day of day.” (1)

According to Greenblatt (2006), Yeats’s nationalism and antinationalism, his divided loyalties to Ireland and to England, find powerfully ambivalent expressions in “Easter, 1916.” The poet is aware of his Irish leaders’ humanity as well as their faultiness. Yeats describes Constance Gore-Booth as an “ignorant good-will, / Her nights in argument / Until her voice grew shrill” (18-20). Then, Yeats portrays Padraic Pearse as a “man” who “had kept a school” and Thomas MacDonagh as a “helper and friend” (24/26). Furthermore, Yeats asserts that Irish mentality “changes minute by minute” in order to metamorphose into true independence. Yeats is indeed aware that common people can believe in change and that they can intensify the drive for independence.

In the same manner, Joyce articulates his hope and fear for Ireland and its heritage relative to the elements of Modernist literature through his narrative called “The Dead.” Joyce, as the true Modernist who wishes to break with the past and the power of patriarchy and imperialism, wrote a short story where readers overhear the character speaking. Joyce portrays the protagonist Gabriel Conroy as a man who is struggling with his “Irish identity, his feelings towards his family and his countrymen.”

Gabriel Conroy is not able to communicate effectively because he is torn between choosing Robert Browning or Shakespeare. Gabriel was “undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for he feared that they would be above the heads of his hearers” and that “some quotation that they could recognize from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better” (Greenblatt, 2006, p. 2174). Robert Browning is an English author who is not representative of the national identity of Gabriel Conroy’s native Ireland. Robert Browning does indeed symbolize colonialism. If Gabriel uses his quotations, he would be considered as an antinationalist.

Hence, Joyce is presenting to his readers a protagonist in conflict with the British rule, with his wife, and with his Irish identity. When his wife Gretta tells Gabriel that she is thinking about “a person long ago who used to sing that song,” Gabriel’s smile “passed away” and “a dull anger began to gather again at the back of his mind and the dull fires of his lust began to glow angrily in his veins” (2197). Consequently, Joyce describes his protagonist as a person who lacks confidence and determination. When he thought of his wife who “had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes” (2199), Gabriel’s eyes were filled with tears. Therefore, Joyce’s protagonist portrays the theme of “social and political paralysis in Ireland through his interactions with his Aunts, his peers, and his wife at a social gathering (Schwarz 19, as cited by Ballif, byu.edu).

W.B. Yeats’s poetry and James Joyce’s prose express their concern with the Irish Nationalism movement and the hope for their activist compatriots to achieve an Irish identity.

The uprisings of Easter in 1916 were suppressed in six days and most of the rebels were executed.

Both authors have expressed the facts about Irish life and the hope and desire of the Irish nationalists.