The Contemporary Transformation of the International System
                                       Professor John Wilton
                                             Lecture 5
            Culture, human rights and justice in the contemporary international system



                                                           Lecture 5



-                         THE PROBLEMATIC OF THE ‘INTERNATIONAL’

         1. the States-system

         2. historical perspective

         3. the U.S.A. and Russia

         4. developing and underdeveloped states

         5. culture, rights, justice (and power)

                                             Lecture 5

Questions and issues prominent in the contemporary international system

•                         the idea of an international system based on common rules, institutions,
and values associated with a liberal capitalist order;

•                         recent attempts to expand the geographical and moral boundaries of that
liberal capitalist international order;

•                         criticisms and challenges to those ideas and processes

                                             Lecture 5

-                         ‘social basis’ of cultural identity - creates ‘collective identity’ –
produces ‘sense of belonging’ + ‘rights of belonging’

-                         power of States reinforced through appeals to image of the nation, and
nationalism

         = link between culture, rights, justice, and      power domestically and within
  international system

Social constructivists – ‘narrative of the nation’ shapes national culture and identities

                                             Lecture 5

-                     inside States the dominant culture – values, beliefs, customs – influences
and shapes rights

         - i.e.  dominant culture = ‘collective’ =          ‘collective rights’

             dominant culture = individualistic =          ‘individual rights’

                                             Lecture 5

United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948

- established moral claim for individual rights

- asserted that each individual human being matters, deserves to be heard, and must not be silenced

- asserted that each individual deserves respect, and is entitled to be treated with dignity
regardless of race, gender, creed, colour, or mental capacity



                                             Lecture 5

               Communitarianism

     (- rights and justice are culturally specific

        - key principles = self-determination, and         State sovereignty)

                       or

               Cosmopolitanism

     (rights and justice linked to human capacity to reason, and rationality = universal process =
basis for universal moral principles on which human rights and justice should be based)



                                             Lecture 5

             THE ‘INTERNATIONAL’





 POLITICAL ECONOMIC     CULTURAL



States-system         liberal free   identity (‘feeds’                market         nationalism -

historically                         or being eroded

  specific                      by cosmopolitan

                     INTERACTION         values?)