Gםordon, N. and N. Berkovitch. 2007. Human Rights Discourse in Domestic Settings: How Does it Emerge? (original) (raw)
Related papers
Human Rights Discourse in Domestic Settings: How Does it Emerge?
Political Studies, 2007
Building on the literature that analyzes the impact of norms and ideas on international and domestic politics, it is our assumption that the widespread introduction and dissemination of a human rights discourse enables oppressed groups to translate events into rights language and to appeal to courts, politicians and media in order to seek remedies for their grievances. In so far as human rights discourse actually helps introduce more ethical policies and legislation,it is crucial to understand how this discourse, which in the past 55 years evolved and proliferated on the global level,emerges and develops in domestic settings. Using Israel as a case study, and more specifically analyzing the Israeli press, we further develop some of the existing theoretical claims about how the global and local interact.We argue that in order to understand how the rights discourse is imported into the domestic arena and how it expands once it enters the local scene,it is crucial to employ a broader conception of the global and a more differentiated view of the local.We emphasize the significance of local events and practices in determining the impact of the global on national settings, suggesting that one cannot understand transnational flows without unveiling the black box of the domestic arena.
Shades of Universality: Variation of Performances in the Glocalized Israeli Human Rights Discourse
Sociological Perspectives, 2020
Discursive variations of human rights are typically examined in a cross-national comparison, while usually referring to local arenas as homogeneous particularistic spaces confronting glocal uniform performances of human rights. Using a comparative analysis of six paradigmatic altruistic Israeli nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and critically reviewing globalization and human rights literature, this study challenges the cross-national-oriented studies and the common analysis of human rights in local settings as a monolithic phenomenon. By mapping the Israeli organizational field of human rights, the study reveals substantial variations in terms of glocal identity, which allow the creation of an analytical framework for contextualizing local diversity. This diversity, as this paper shows, includes distinct models of human rights activities, which were mostly absent or dismissed as inauthentic in research thus far. The paper discusses the importance of future awareness of intranational variations, and the potential contribution this may have to the sociological understanding of current human rights institutions. Finally, the paper concludes by raising awareness to liberal normative assumptions in research, which may lead to the exclusion of alternative social phenomena from inquiry, especially in the case of moral discourses.
The human rights discourse and Israel: beyond victimhood and underdogs
a critique of an article by Ron Dudai (‘Entryism, mimicry and victimhood work: the adoption of human rights discourse by right-wing groups in Israel’, in an earlier issue of this journal. Dudai accuses "right-wing" groups like NGO-Monitor of abusing human rights discourse to pursue an agenda fundamentally hostile to human rights. We argue that one can apply his logic with far greater accuracy to the "left-wing" human rights NGOs, who systematically fall dupe to precisely this kind of human rights abuse by Palestinian groups.
Translating Human Rights of the "Enemy": The Case of Israeli NGOs Defending Palestinian Rights
This article explores the practices, discourses and dilemmas of the Israeli human rights NGOs that are working to protect and promote the human rights of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. This case can shed light on the complex process of "triangular translation" of human rights, which is distinct from other forms of human rights localization studied thus far. In this process, human rights NGOs translate international human rights norms on the one hand, and the suffering of the victims on the other, into the conceptions and legal language commonly employed by the state that violates these rights. We analyze the dialectics of change and reproduction embedded in the efforts of Israeli activists to defend Palestinian human rights while at the same time depoliticizing their work and adopting discriminatory premises and conceptions hegemonic in Israeli society. The recent and alarming legislative proposals in Israel aimed at curtailing the work of human rights NGOs reinforce the need to reconsider the role of human rights NGOs in society, including their depoliticized strategies, their use of legal language and their relations with the diminishing peace movement.
Palestinian Press Discourse towards Civil and Political Human Rights Issues
2018
The study aims at identifying the nature of the Palestinian press discourse, defining its attributes, actors, reference frameworks and arguments. It also tries to find out the similarities and differences between the two selected newspapers in this study, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (The New Life) and Palestine. This descriptive study uses several methods including discourse analysis, comparative interrelationship as well as the use of frame analysis theory. Data collection involves using discourse analysis and content analysis tools. The researchers choose samples from Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and Palestine, and their issues are collected in systematic random sampling according to the artificial week approach over a year started from 1/1/2012 to 31/12/2012. The study concludes that the thesis of "Prisons' Hunger Strike" in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and "The Torture of Israeli Occupation against Prisoners", in Palestine have received the highest percentage of discussion among other theses that tackled civil and political human rights issues. There is a convergence between the study papers in the use of arguments. Discourse producers in Palestine newspaper depended on "Legal Reference" and "Historical Reference" as the most prominent references.
International Sociology
Human rights discourse is central for the work of international social movements. Viewing human rights as a context-dependent and socially constructed discourse, this article investigates how it is used by a specific social movement – Israel-critical diaspora Jewish activists – and argues that it can simultaneously challenge and reproduce existing practices of domination. The article applies contemporary critiques of human rights to the case of Palestine, where this discourse has arguably been used to undermine Palestinians’ political subjectivity and collective struggle, and legitimise outside intervention. Nevertheless, transnational groups critical of Israel, particularly diaspora Jewish organisations, rely on a human rights frame. There are several reasons for this: it offers activists a means to achieve ‘cognitive liberation’, to speak about the issue and to frame their activities so as to attract recruits. The article investigates this paradoxical role of human rights, and recommends understanding it as a language which both constrains and enables the practice of transnational solidarity.
Israel Affairs, 2014
This article analyses the attempts to establish a human rights commission in Israel by using public choice theory and socio-cultural variables as explanations. It develops a theoretical framework that views the decision-making process (1999-2004) as dictated by several conditions: non-governability, the judicialization of politics and the special characteristics of civil society in Israel. It emphasizes the existence of an outcome-directed, participative political culture with alternative (instrumental) characteristics. Thus, the call for social change is characterized by protest and challenges to the authorities. These considerations have received less emphasis in the human rights literature.
A widely diffused, engaged approach understands human rights as an opportunity to enhance moral progress. Less visible has a critical realm of research that reveals the often-ambiguous social life of human rights discourses. This article draws on a specific case study from the intricate issue of how activism for Arab-Palestinian Bedouin citizens in Southern Israel engages with the global human rights discourse. It follows the implications of mobilization, focusing on events related to a campaign against house demolitions in informal, unrecognised settlements. The case shows how human rights discourses tend to silence the agency of political subjects, victimizing and patronizing those who seek emancipation. The ethnographic insights emphasize the role of a range of carnivalesque and spontaneous acts of resistance, which subvert the patronizing implications of the human rights language.
Media and Human Rights Western Media’s coverage of Power Flexing in the Middle-East
2018
The political economy of the media influences the media discourse. This study attempts to study the media discourse of the western media with reference to the human rights violations in Palestine. Given the fact that the human rights regime, especially the idea of civil and political rights has been established by the west, a discourse analysis is necessary to gauge how the west portrays the violation of the human rights of the Palestinians. Further the study employs Fairclough’s Inter-Textuality for the Critical Discourse Analysis. It uses theoretical frameworks such as Chomsky’s Manufacture of Consent and Golding’s Critical Political Economy Theory so as to provide explanations for the outcomes of the study. Index Terms Inter-textuality, Manufacture of Consent, Critical Discourse Analysis, Human Rights Violation, Political Economy.