Statement on Human Rights
The Executive Board, American Anthropological Association
American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 49, No. 4, Part 1 (Oct. - Dec., 1947), pp. 539-543
We thus come to the first proposition that the study of human psychology and culture dictates as essential in drawing up a Bill of Human Rights in terms of existing knowledge:
1. The individual realizes his personality through his culture, hence respect for individual differences entails a respect for cultural differences.
There can be no individual freedom, that is, when the group with which the individual identifies himself is not free. There can be no full development of the individual personality as long as the individual is told, by men who have the power to enforce their commands, that the way of life of his group is inferior to that of those who wield the power. . . .
2. Respect for differences between cultures is validated by the scientific fact that no technique of qualitatively evaluating cultures has been discovered.
This principle leads us to a further one, namely that the aims that guide the life of every people are self-evident in their significance to that people. It is the principle that emphasizes the universals in human conduct rather than the absolutes that the culture of Western Europe and America stresses. It recognizes that the eternal verities only seem so because we have been taught to regard them as such; that every people, whether it expresses them or not, lives in devotion to verities whose eternal nature is as real to them as are those of Euroamerican culture to Euroamericans. Briefly stated, this third principle that must be introduced into our consideration is the following:
3. Standards and values are relative to the culture from which they derive so that any attempt to formulate postulates that grow out of the beliefs or moral codes of one culture must to that extent detract from the applicability of any Declaration of Human Rights to mankind as a whole.
Ideas of right and wrong, good and evil, are found in all societies, though they differ in their expression among different peoples. What is held to be a human right in one society may be regarded as anti-social by another people, or by the same people in a different period of their history. The saint of one epoch would at a later time be confined as a man not fitted to cope with reality. Even the nature of the physical world, the colors we see, the sounds we hear, are conditioned by the language we speak, which is part of the culture into which we are born. . . .
Today the problem is complicated by the fact that the Declaration must be of world-wide applicability. It must embrace and recognize the validity of [543] many different ways of life. It will not be convincing to the Indonesian, the African, the Indian, the Chinese, if it lies on the same plane as like documents of an earlier period. The rights of Man in the Twentieth Century cannot be circumscribed by the standards of any single culture, or be dictated by the aspirations of any single people. Such a document will lead to frustration, not realization of the personalities of vast numbers of human beings. Such persons, living in terms of values not envisaged by a limited Declaration, will 'thus be excluded from the freedom of full participation in the only right and proper way of life that can be known to them, the institutions, sanctions and goals that make up the culture of their particular society.
Even where political systems exist that deny citizens the right of participation in their government, or seek to conquer weaker peoples, underlying cultural values may be called on to bring the peoples of such states to a realization of the consequences of the acts of their governments, and thus enforce a brake upon discrimination and conquest. For the political system of a people is only a small part of their total culture.
World-wide standards of freedom and justice, based on the principle that man is free only when he lives as his society defines freedom, that his rights are those he recognizes as a member of his society, must be basic. Conversely, an effective world-order cannot be devised except insofar as it permits the free play of personality of the members of its constituent social units, and draws strength from the enrichment to be derived from the interplay of varying personalities.
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COMMENTS ON THE STATEMENT ON HUMAN RIGHTS'
Julian Steward
Columbia University
If the plea that cultural values be respected means merely that the primitive peoples, who are on the receiving end of civilizing influences, be treated with understanding and tolerance, there can be little objection to it. To be universally valid, however, the Statement must apply equally to the cultural values which the internal policies and motivate the foreign affairs of the civilized nations. doubt that, in urging that values be respected because "man is free only when he lives as his society defines freedom," we really mean to approve the social caste system of India, the racial caste system of the United States, or many of the other varieties of social discrimination in the world. I should question that we intend to condone exploitation of primitive peoples through the Euro-American system of economic imperialism, while merely asking for more understanding treatment of them: or, on the other hand, that we are prepared to take a stand against the values in our own which underly such imperialism.
As "respect for cultural differences" certainly does not advocate tolerance values in Nazi Germany, where the "individual . .. [realized] his personality" through the Youth movement, a qualification is introduced (p. 543) that seems to contradict the basic premise and to be incompatible with anthropological thinking. "Even when political systems exist that deny citizens the right of participation in their government, or seek to conquer weaker peoples, underlying cultural values may be called on to bring the peoples of such states to a realization of the consequences of the acts of their governments, and thus enforce a brake upon discrimination and conquest." This may have been a loophole to exclude Germany from the advocated tolerance, but it looks like the fatal breach in the dyke. Either we tolerate everything, and keep hands off, or we fight intolerance and conquest--political and economic as well as military–in all their forms. Where shall the line be drawn? As human beings, we unanimously opposed the brutal treatment of Jews in Hitler Germany, but what stand shall be taken on the thousands of other kinds of racial and cultural discrimination, unfair practices, and inconsiderate attitudes found throughout the world?
What are these "underlying cultural values" that can be used to suppress intolerance and promote political freedom in cultures which lack economic or social freedom, or that can be used to halt conquest in a competitive world? Even if there were agreement on objectives, it would take some pretty fancy handling to revamp the portions of cultures which are disapproved. I had thought that anthropologists, of all people, stressed the interrelatedness of cultural values and patterns.
Without committing itself to particulars, the Statement is a value judgment way any it is taken. If it does not advocate tolerance for all cultural values, no matter how repugnant some of them may be to us as individuals, then it must imply disapproval of some cultural values, though it also says that we have no scientific basis for making any value judgments.
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COMMENTS:
1. Does it make sense to talk of cultures being valid (or invalid)?
2. The statement says (after Principle 3 is stated): “What is held to be a human right in one society may be regarded as anti-social by another people, or by the same people in a different period of their history.” Is that true or false? If true, does it support ethical relativism?
3. The statement says: “The rights of Man in the Twentieth Century cannot be circumscribed by the standards of any single culture, or be dictated by the aspirations of any single people.” Is that what the UDHC does?
4. What about the students who risked their lives by demonstrating for democracy in Hong Kong in 2019 or in Tiananmen Square in 1989? Didn’t they think democracy was a universal human right? Would they agree with “the principle that man is free only when he lives as his society defines freedom”?
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