Response to Rodriguez: A "Long Walk to Freedom" and Democracy?

Havidán Rodríguez's article, "A 'Long Walk to Freedom' and Democracy: Human Rights, Globalization, and Social Injustice," (2004) offers a powerful critique of globalization, capitalism, and democracy. His piece provides evidence of how individuals remain in inhumane conditions, despite doctrine designed to protect all. He also poses challenging questions and begins answering them with theoretical claims and empirical evidence. Yet, in his examination of human rights, Rodríguez does not consider collective rights, such as rights to culture, language, and the environment. Instead, he emphasizes individual rights, primarily first- and second-generation human rights. He also uses a convenient definition of globalization and assumes that democracy is a desirable choice of government always compatible with human rights doctrine. It is important to establish more clearly what globalization is — both theoretically and empirically — before we can fully consider its impact on human rights doctrine, protections, and enforcement.

Globalization

Globalization, in theory, is a two-way process: the universalization of particularism and the particularization of universalism (Robertson 1997). Local communities interact with the global community, and the global community interacts with the local communities. This can occur in economic, cultural, and political spheres. One result of a global economy is an expanded area of economic competition, the global market (Chase-Dunn 1999). With the resulting standardization — universalizing the particular — goods can be sold around the world with little, if any, customization, such as the Sony corporation's Walkman (du Gay et al. 2000 [1997]). At the same time, localities can customize standard goods — particularizing the universal — exemplified by the use of large media conglomerates to transmit traditional local ideologies (Tehranian & Tehranian 2000 [1997]). Communications allow people to share the experiences of globetrotting friends and witness events around the world, creating space for a global culture (Appadurai 1998). But globalization threatens the power of the sovereign states via transnational actors such as businesses and advocacy organizations (Beck 2000). And while global political action and civil societies are emerging, a global governing body has not yet been established.

Globalization, empirically, is rife with contradictions. It promotes and inhibits democracy. It is homogenizing and diversifying, standardizing and localizing (Kellner 2002). It might be the only avenue to world prosperity and the greatest threat to human development (Cheru 2000; Howard-Hassman 2004; Rodríguez 2004). Its standardization and homogenization processes can standardize oppressive policies just as they can standardize liberating ones.

The local and global exchanges in a globalizing world produce divergent responses: localization and globalization. Globalization is not the only global social force. There are other one-way global processes and other processes of global exchange and interchange. A single powerful party can act to spread its own culture and its own economic or political practices and norms. One example of this is Americanization, the spread of American cultural, economic, and political systems around the globe. Another example, global capitalism, is bringing change to the international economic system. In global capitalism, the economy is internationalized and corporate bodies act across borders to maximize profit and financial incentives. But Americanization and global capitalism should not be confused with globalization. While these many processes might be concurrent, they are separate phenomena, both theoretically and empirically.

Collective Human Rights

Human rights encompass the right to "what is minimally necessary to live one's life as a human being" (Howard 1995:14). Human rights protect human agency and by extension protect human agents (Ignatieff 2001). Ideas of what is minimally necessary to live, what protects agency, and what protects agents are socially constructed. Thus, the empirical expression of human rights is not static, but shifts as the socially defined meaning changes. Basic human rights generally consist of the right to subsistence; protections from cruel and unusual punishments; and the freedom from oppression, interference, or abuse. In a human rights context, all individuals have equal moral worth. The empirical reality may or may not reflect this value statement.

Rodríguez eloquently demands attention to human rights, particularly the rights protecting the welfare of individuals. Beyond first- and second- generation human rights,¹ positive and negative rights,² or...