Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Colonial Legacy And Human Rights In Mexico: Indigenous Rights And The Zapatista Movement, Alexander Karklins

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The current status of human rights in Latin America has been profoundly affected by the legacy of colonial institutions. Since the time of conquest, through colonialism, and after independence, the growth of the Latin American state has been challenged by the alternative discourse of indigenous rights. In Mexico, the dominance of mestizaje (or the quest for a single Mexican ethnic identity) in the formation of its modern state apparatus has left indigenous cultures out of the realm of political participation and exposed to human rights violations. With the Zapatista uprising of 1994-1996, the contradictions inherent in Mexico’s constitution were brought …

September Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

"The New Colonialists" by Michael A. Cohen, Maria Figueroa Küpçü, and Parag Khanna. Foreign Policy. July/August 2008.

Saving Lives: A First Step Toward Freedom Not Dependence, William F. Felice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

During the nineteenth century, European powers extended and deepened their brutal domination of the so-called “uncivilized” (sic) nations and peoples around the world. These efforts were named “colonialist” and were based on the uprooting of indigenous peoples, the export and pillage of natural resources, cultural displacement, direct political control, and economic exploitation and the creation of dependency by the Europeans. While the European states gained colossal economic benefits from these arrangements, the colonized peoples were left with failed states and bad governments. Advocates of these colonialist policies often justified these actions on the basis of a deep-felt ideological belief in …

Nothing "Colonial" About It: Service Delivery And Accountability, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

At one level, there is little in “The New Colonialists” with which I disagree. The necessary state capacity in developing societies for basic service delivery is in many cases absent, significantly weak, or has been corrupted in ways that produce tremendous inequality of access and disproportionate social outcomes that are related to race, ethnicity, poverty, gender, and other categories of social identity. It is true that in the presence of weak state institutions, widespread corruption, and underdeveloped infrastructure, a large number of national and international non-governmental agencies and organizations have sought to redress such imbalances through their work in providing …

Cosmopolitanism And Rationalizing Tendencies, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

When phone-in talk shows, the press, and undergraduates debate the case for cosmopolitan accounts of global distributive justice, there are a number of standard rationalizations given for why we don’t have a duty to help. These include: “we have duties only to our fellow countrymen”; “poverty is caused by corrupt leaders, so not our fault, and therefore not our responsibility“; and “humanitarian aid is counter-productive.” Unlike the other two sorts of rationalization, the latter claim does not necessarily deny the moral cosmopolitanism premise that we have extensive duties to relieve the suffering of those beyond our borders. Rather, it follows …

In With The Old, Out With The New, Brent J. Steele

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Michael Cohen, Maria Figueroa Küpçü and Parag Khanna make some compelling arguments about the inherent drawbacks regarding the role diverse networks of NGOs play in keeping at-risk populations alive throughout the world. We are informed that these groups are “the new colonialists,” agencies much like the old European empires. These new colonialists are apparently enforcing a cycle of dependency which prevents the development of state structures, structures that apparently sustain these populations more effectively. The problem with this thesis is that the authors do not seem to entertain the possibility that the nation-state is itself an (old) colonial construct, and …