Thoughts on Cultural Rights

The following piece was written as a final paper for a course in anthropology covering "Cultural Rights." This course was one of the most challenging courses that I have ever taken because it truly made me look at how I think the world ought to be as compared to how it truly is. If you are interested in this area of humantiy I recommend reading the work of Arjun Appadurai, he has the most dynamic perspective on globalization and its effects on human culture. The area of "cultural rights" is very applicable to the study of social change and in many ways is fundamental to understanding how societies "make" the choices that they do.

Entering “Down The Rabbit Hole” of Cultural Rights

What are cultural rights, and do they really exist? This two-fold question is a logical starting point to reflect back on this journey through the study of cultural rights. One can view cultural rights as a highly dynamic and moving target, not only one that moves, one that also changes shape. I am coming at the topic of cultural rights from the processual perspective that sees humanity as a fluid body of relations that is in a constant state of flux, and definitely not in a static state of existence. The influence and importance of the context of a particular cultural right must be recognized; just as when water is poured from one shape of a vessel to another, the shape of the water appears to be different, but fundamentally the water is the same. This analogy of water is very helpful when studying cultural rights because it gives recognition to the plastic nature of culture within humanity, and shows how important the cultural context is to how a cultural right may appear from the etic perspective. So, with all this said, I do believe there are cultural rights. However, it all depends on how one views the concept of culture, but let us save that for the end of this essay. For now let us run with the assumption that culture does have a solid grounding within the human experience and is a fundamental component of humanity. “People and groups have a generic right to realize their capacity for culture, and to produce, reproduce and change the conditions and forms of their physical, personal and social existence, so long as such activities do not diminish the same capacities of others.” This statement from the 1999 American Anthropological Association’s Declaration on Anthropological and Human Rights, speaks to the component of culture as a critical element of the right to be human, it speaks to culture as a part of human rights. Is there a difference between human rights and cultural rights? I do believe there is a difference between these universal rights of humanity. My interpretation of what the AAA is declaring within this statement is – the right to practice and develop culture is a fundamental right of being human. This is to say that, cultural rights are embedded within human rights. If cultural rights are embedded within some kind of human rights, where did they come from? Who is to say what exactly constitutes a cultural right as being valid or legitimate?

The Sources of Cultural Rights

I view the core source of cultural rights as being the voice of the participants’ within a particular cultural context, the voice of self-determination. Throughout many of the case studies that we examined, there was a theme of the importance of self-determination – the right of people to choose their path through the journey that is the human experience. The role and importance of self-determination is extremely obvious when one looks at the examples of the oppression of the indigenous people, the world over. The story is often the same when it comes to the conflict between indigenous cultures and the nation-state of the dominant culture – the self-determination of the indigenous peoples' is crushed by the agenda of the nation-state and its dominant culture. The conflict is usually over the use and control of resources, and the motivation is fueled by ethnocentrism. At a fundamental level, cultural rights are grounded in the belief that all humans should have a voice in how they live their lives, and not be forced to live under the oppression of the desires of others'. Cultural rights appear to rise out of the space between the stakeholders of a conflict, out of a process of creative tension. Rights in general can be viewed as a response to some type of omission or commission, this is to say that, there is a belief that all humans should be viewed as equal and thus receive equal treatment. If all humans were treated in a just and fair manner across humanity, there would be no need for cultural rights. However, since the world that we live in is neither just nor fair, cultural rights have emerged from a place of need. The need for a peoples to successfully negotiate their identities, express their beliefs, and continue to practice, produce and reproduce their culture. This space of creative tension that cultural rights appear to rise from within, can be viewed as the “-“ between the element of humanity that is the nation-state. One cannot, or should not, address the topic of cultural rights and their sources of grounding and manifestation, without looking into the world of politics and political agendas. It is the very political reality of the nation-state that creates the required environment that allows for the need of cultural rights to exist, to flourish. Turning the attention back to the many examples of indigenous people being culturally oppressed by the nation-state, one can see it is the political agenda of creative maintenance by the state, which is required to continue the nation building process, and is at the heart of the cultural oppression. This political agenda of maintaining the nation-state, of building a nation, is accomplished by the destruction of other nations (e.g., the cultural communities of indigenous peoples) by the state sponsored slogan of – assimilate or die! If cultural rights at their core come out of a need for self-determination by the people and can be viewed as a product of the creative tension between the nation and state, does that simply mean that they are universal rights of all humans and that all cultural rights should be treated and viewed in the same way? If it were only that simple, we would be done here.

Universality Vs. Relativity

At another level, cultural rights are the result of the tension between the two realms of ethnocentrism and relativism. Cultural rights should not be viewed as universal with respect to their content, but universal in their existence; at this level, cultural rights mirror the existence of the cultural diversity within humanity. The issue of cultural rights should not be a question as to the legitimacy of the multitude of different cultures within humanity; it should be the recognition of the necessity of the diversity of culture within the unity of humanity. Just as the human genome requires a certain level of diversity to continue its successful reproduction, so does human culture. If cultural rights were truly universal at the content level, they would contribute to the homogenization of human culture, and potentially to the extinction of the human genome, of humanity itself. If we can establish the need to work from a point that respects and values the right of self-determination, then we can use a framework of cultural relativity to allow for the members of a cultural community to establish what it is that should, and should not, be protected within their specific context. The members of the community, and its neighboring communities, which practices and invents the particular cultural context, should establish the content of their cultural rights. It is the emic perspective that truly understands what is authentic, what is traditional, and what is significant within a cultural context. I have included the neighboring communities in order to give credit to the co-creation of cultural identity and the cross-cultural influence that all cultures in this world of modernity experience. The identity of a member of a particular cultural community is in part validated by the non-membership of the community members of the “other.” One only needs to look at the work of Appadurai’s to see how the increasingly global world of humanity results in a macro-level cultural context that all cultures co-create and co-inhabit. I see this newly forming world that Appadurai’s work is pointing towards as leading to a cultural context environment where the balance between ethnocentrism and relativism is made more powerful, but at the same time more of an implicitly experienced phenomenon. The global cultural economy that Appadurai speaks of is a complex world of relations that embodies the processual perspective on human culture. Just as the continued development of human culture is a fluid process, the content of cultural rights must be viewed and established with the same respect for the flow of the constant state of flux within humanity. If the content of cultural rights is context dependent, then are the duties and responsibilities that accompany the rights context dependent as well? What are the duties and responsibilities of being human?

Rights Equate Into Duties and Responsibilities

Cultural rights do imply some sort of social duties and responsibilities that must accompany them. If a member of a cultural community is going to exercise their cultural rights, then they should also be willing to adhere to the connected duties and responsibilities. Cultural rights should be viewed as privileges and not as entitlements; this is to say that a right of any type is exercised through a social agreement between the individual and the communities that are involved with the right. The particular cultural context, which the cultural right is exercised within, has established social norms that can be viewed as the parameters of this social agreement. Keeping with the theme of indigenous people, and in particular Native American peoples, one could look at the cultural right to practice traditional religion and its accompanying duties and responsibilities. For example, if a Native American religious practice includes the use of a powerful substance like peyote, which is seen as an illegal controlled substance outside of the particular Native American cultural context, the members of the community must practice the use of peyote in accordance with their communities’ traditions. It is up to the particular Native American community to establish what is appropriate use, and what is abuse, of peyote within their cultural religious beliefs. This particular example shows how the Native American community must negotiate their duties and responsibilities, which are associated with the use of peyote, with the neighboring cultural communities through the nation-state of the United States of America. In order to maintain a cultural right it is the duty of the cultural community to establish the set responsibilities of its members with respect to the exercising of their cultural rights. The primary locus of control over the duties and responsibilities of a cultural right should be from within the emic perspective. However, no single culture exists within a vacuum, and therefore, must also consider the influences of their neighboring cultural communities when establishing the duties and responsibilities that are connected to their cultural rights. As the AAA stated with their declaration on human rights, “so long as such activities do not diminish the same capacities of others”, therefore it is important for a cultural community to consider how their actions are impacting the cultural rights of their neighbors, and the larger community of humanity. Just as the content of a cultural right is dependent on the particular context that it is within, the associated duties and responsibilities will also need to be culturally appropriate to the particular context. However, I do see a universal aspect to the duties and responsibilities that accompany all cultural rights. There must be a social agreement that is implicitly made between every human being and the community that is humanity. Therefore, it is the duty of the community of humanity to establish the set responsibility that every human must adhere to. For this responsibility to fit into a cross-cultural structure it would have to be rooted in acceptance and empathy for other humans, for the differences of the “other,” but also grounded in the balance of ethnocentrism and relativism of what it is to be a human being. With self-determination in mind, I believe that an important part of this universal responsibility of all cultural rights is to honor every community member’s choice to either be a part of the community that they were born into or join another cultural community that they choose.

The Concept of Culture – The Cornerstone

It is easy to write about cultural rights under the assumption that culture is a well known and agreed upon concept. However, I see this assumption as being a fundamental error in judgment that will lead to critical miscommunications surrounding this complex issue of cultural rights. As I have stated early on in this essay, I see culture through the lens of the processual perspective that acknowledges its fluid and plastic properties. However, I do not totally discredit the essentialist perspective for it does point out some of the solid cultural structures that are fundamental with the process of cultural evolution. I am using the term “evolution” to recognize the constant state of flux that human culture goes through, and not to suggest that the change is always for the better or represents some kind of hierarchical state of superiority. This potentially paradoxical reality of the existence of the processual and essentialist perspectives can be likened to the relationship between ethnocentrism and relativism. This is to say, the essentialist perspective may be used in a complementary way to ground the processual perspective into the more rigid aspects of cultural traditions, which leads to the recognition of the plastic qualities of human culture. With respect to cultural rights, I believe that using any one perspective or theory in its totality is a fundamental error. For example, if one peers through the lens of the essentialist perspective that is overlaid with a relativist filter, one may see cultural rights as a completely context specific concept that is dependent solely on the way things used to bewithin the particular context and does not take into account for the influence of the surrounding world of change. If we swap out the lens and filter to include the processualist and ethnocentric, respectively, one may see cultural rights as a concept that is in constant flux and being blown by the winds of how things ought to be within an increasingly global cultural landscape. My hope was that in using these two somewhat extreme examples shows how the concept of culture fundamentally changes how cultural rights are viewed and thus constructed. One potential danger I see within the studies of culture is a tendency to objectify it, to almost view it as separate from its origin, to view it separate from humanity. This observation, maybe a result of my personal bias towards viewing culture as a truly organic manifestation of the body of humanity, and my not being a relativist at heart.

Feeling Around with a Little Light in The Darkness

In the spirit of being a processualist, I see my understanding of culture, and thus cultural rights, as being in the early stages of a never-ending process. I feel like I am deep within the rabbit hole with just enough light to barely see what is in my hands; in fact, I can feel what it is more than I can see what I am holding. I feel that human rights can be viewed as an umbrella that is intended to protect and shelter the most vulnerable members of the human community, and cultural rights are the center post of the understructure of this umbrella of human rights. I feel that cultural rights require a new level of global understanding that can be viewed as a form of meta-cognition of one’s role within the larger and newly forming global cultural economy (Appadurai 1990). Our individual roles within cultural rights require each of us to accept the duties and responsibilities that are directly connected to retaining the privilege of exercising the rights within a cultural context and within the community of humanity. Can we view cultural rights as a “natural” process of human culture that could be likened to that of natural selection? Are cultural rights a manifestation of the deep-seated desire of humanity to survive through its most powerful tool of adaptation, through its culture? There appears to be an implicit balance of creation within the process of cultural rights that is between what is innately valued within humanity and the fears associated with the conflict over resources. One should not enter into the dark hole of cultural rights without the stomach to confront the sociopolitical structures of the world, for it is the state who has been given the power to simultaneously polices and commit crimes against, cultural rights. It is within the voice of self-determination that the basis of cultural rights truly lays, and the costs and benefits of all the stakeholders must be heard around the table of cultural rights. At the heart of this cost-benefit analysis, the true question for all humans is – What is cultural diversity truly worth, and what is truly at stake?