The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights (review)

The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights, by Joanne R. Bauer & Daniel A. Bell (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1999), pp. 377.

The "Asian values" debate is a recurring theme that is featured in recent works of many Western and non-Western experts on Asia. It reaffirms the message, which has become apparent since the early 1980s, that Asian values account for the unprecedented Asian economic progress. However, since the end of the Cold War, the Asian values debate has been framed largely to counter Western universalist power and value projection. Many Asians have called for a "level playing field" that allows for renegotiating the basis for the global civil society and international human rights. As such, the debate has refocused scholarly attention on a classic question: Are certain cultural values or value-shifts--both at individual and societal levels--essential for the realization of people's democratic demands and human rights? A serious discourse has been brewing on the issue of international human rights, spurring a fruitful framework to discuss matters of value dominance, epistemic hegemony, intercultural hermeneutic, and intercivilizational dialogue.

The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights takes a critical look at the charges of Western cultural imperialism and rationalist hubris made particularly by the proponents of the "Asian values" point of view. The burden of this volume is to investigate ways in which a dialogue between scholars of different cultural backgrounds could contribute to a search for a common civility. A product of a series of international workshops, the book brings a comparative perspective on understanding human rights in East Asia by wide-ranging scholars, including political scientists, sociologists, development specialists, and other experts hitherto left out of the human rights discourse. The workshops took up the task of examining various conceptions of human rights held by East Asian intellectuals and how such notions have been shaped by the socioeconomic and political changes transpiring in the region. The collection is organized around four parts: (1) critical perspectives on the "Asian values" debate; (2) theoretical proposals for a more inclusive human rights regime; (3) cultural traditions that can help promote human rights in the region; and (4) economic development and its impact on the key human rights issues facing the region.

In the opening chapter, Inoue Tatsuo lays out a compelling critique of the so-called concept of "Asian Orientalism." He argues that asserting Asian cultural uniqueness, based on the old dualism of the Asian countries as the Orient and the Euro-American countries as the Occident, is counterproductive and deeply flawed. Some Asians emphasize the "value dominance critique" approach toward the realization of an international human rights regime and deny the universal validity of democracy and human rights principles on the grounds that these are culturally-specific Western values. This approach, Tatsuo notes, reinforces, and indeed rationalizes, the orientalist bias that Asian culture is incompatible with human rights and democracy. Rather, Tatsuo suggests, the most effective way to realize an international human rights regime is to adopt the "epistemic hegemony critique" approach, which undermines Orientalist dualism by denying that Asia is essentially unsuited to develop human rights principles and democratic systems. The author argues, provocatively, that Asians can then "remind the West of its own supported grim record in terms of democracy and human rights." ¹

In Chapter Two, Jack Donnelly questions the rationale of those who deny the notion of the universality of human rights on the grounds of their "foreign" origin. He asserts that today authoritarian states and unbridled market economies pose a myriad of threats to issues of human rights and that human rights have become increasingly important in providing the most effective means or mechanisms available to human beings to ward off those threats. Moreover, there are grounds for arguing that norms originating elsewhere in the world can be instrumental in situations in other parts to the extent that they meet a particular social need. ² Thus, while it is surely the case that...