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Month: March 2018

Human rights: Why debating their universality is unhelpful

By Koen Donatz

 Human rights have become a hotly debated topic in both the academic and the political world, one of the main points of contention being whether they are universal or not. As Eva Brems has shown, feminists and cultural relativists are among the staunchest opponents of the claimed universality of human rights, criticizing its male bias and Western bias respectively. Thus, many debates discuss the universality of human rights at what Jack Donnelly calls the historical or anthropological level, examining its historical roots. However, most of such debates (and debates with different approaches, for that matter) ignore the fundamental question: How can we know for sure if any or all human rights are (not) universal? My answer is that we cannot. We may make claims, but the social, legal, moral and philosophical complexity involved in human rights demands that we always acknowledge the uncertainty of our own claims. In other words, the debate about the universality of human rights is irresolvable, which has significant international implications.

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Seeing like a miner: The joys and menaces of informal gold extraction in Chocó, Colombia

by Jesse Jonkman

‘Let’s not fool ourselves, the Colombian state always tries to shut the door to the poor man in order to lead him to war.’ Manuel* spits out the words while he is contemplating the tranquil flow of the Bebará river that passes alongside his natal village La Villa. His criticism is directed at the government administration of President Santos and its eagerness to combat ‘illegal’ mining. ‘The state made up that mining is illegal. I understand that cocaine is illegal. It’s something that inflicts harm upon a lot of people. But a metal that comes from the earth? I don’t believe it.’

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‘Antropologen kunnen bedrijven verder helpen waar anderen falen’

door Menno van den Bos

Cultureel antropologen zijn wereldverbeteraars die je niet zult aantreffen in het bedrijfsleven. Zo, dat cliché is eruit.  En nu over naar de realiteit: dat antropologen daar steeds gewilder worden. “Waar vraagstukken complex worden, hebben bedrijven óns nodig.”

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Being a (feminist) killjoy – he or me?

TRIGGER WARNING: This article, or pages it links to, contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors.

Girl I want to make you sweat

Sweat till you can’t sweat no more

And if you cry

I’m gonna push it, push it, push it some more

Alalalalalong

Bob Marley, Looking In Your Big Brown Eyes

Today a friend of mine sent me a Facebook link with an audio fragment of radio 538, a popular Dutch radio channel (2018, test je vriend, Radio 538). The reactions below were filled with hysterical exhilaration – emoticons that tear up from laughter, variously extended versions of “haha”, and tagged names with requests to “please, take the time to listen to this”.

The fragment was of the show called “Test your friend”, in which people call their friends live on the radio with a made up story to see how their friends react. One of the two male presenters shortly explains today’s prank. Yvette, a woman of 25, will call her best friend Larissa to ask her if she could make use of her apartment to carry out her hypothetical adulterous plans.

Larissa’s phone rings…

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