Origins and Universality in the Human Rights Debates: Cultural Essentialism and the Challenge of Globalization

Preoccupation with cultural relativism has until recently crowded out most other theoretical questions in the field of human rights theory; today globalization and other problems are receiving much more attention. The worry addressed here is that despite this timely broadening of the analytic focus we tend to view these new problems through the lens of cultural relativism. As a result, we are asking the wrong questions about globalization and human rights and looking for the wrong kinds of answer. This essay pleads for a critical reevaluation of contemporary approaches to globalization and human rights and proposes an alternative framework.