Lecture on Rights, including review of past weeks ’ readings and lectures

1. Lecture on Rights, including review of past weeks’ readings and lectures October 11, 2011

2. http://www.civicgovernance.ca/files/uploads/Unlimited_Vision_book_web_0.pdf

3. Chapter 6 of the Brooks text:The Language of Rights Moral absolutes In reality, compromises are necessary, but which ones and how? The politics of rights tends to reduce the space for and possibility of negotiation and compromise. The legalization of politics—what consequences?

4. The Meaning of Rights and Freedoms United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948: political rights/fundamental freedoms, democratic rights, legal rights, economic rights, and equality rights. Other rights? Various group rights, including language rights? Social rights? Environmental rights? Animal rights?

5. UN Right to Water and Sanitation • UN News Centre: “28 July 2010 – Safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights, the General Assembly declared today, voicing deep concern that almost 900 million people worldwide do not have access to clean water.”

6. 2008 Canada foils UN water plan • Canada emerged as the pivotal nation behind recent manoeuvres to block the United Nations Human Rights Council from recognizing water as a basic human right, according to international observers. • After its 46 members accepted a consensus resolution – essentially for more study – Canadian representative Sarah Geh told the council: "Canada does not view this resolution as creating a human right to water under international human rights law.“ • In his final speech, disappointed German representative ReinhardSchweppe stressed action is urgent. Access to clean water and sanitation, is "a part of human dignity," he said, adding a child dies every 20 seconds due to water-borne diseases. • Advocates for water rights were devastated by the outcome. • From Oxford, AshfaqKhalfan, co-ordinator of the U.K.-headquartered Right to Water Program, said he believes the resolution to make water a right would have passed without the resolute lobby efforts of the Canadian delegation.

7. Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, said reservations about specific aspects of the motion were raised by member nations, notably Russia and the U.K. • But she said it was Canada that "derailed" the process, a view shared by other international observers who monitored the Geneva sessions. • "I believe – and I guess the government sees it the same way —– if we start signing on to recognizing water as an international human right ... it might make it easy for private companies, or for those south of the border, who would like to export Canada's water in bulk to embarrass us on the public square," Scarpaleggia said. • "These people could argue, 'Well, you've agreed water is a human right, we here down in Atlanta have no water, there's a drought,' or in California or whatever. You have a moral obligation to be consistent with your word and let us take some water down here, by one means or another."

8. For more than a decade the water justice movement, including the Council of Canadians' Blue Planet Project, has been calling for UN leadership on this critical issue. Right now nearly 2 billion people live in water-stressed areas of the world and 3 billion have no running water within a kilometre of their homes. Every eight seconds, a child dies of water-borne disease – deaths that would be easily preventable with access to clean, safe water. • Council of Canadians: http://www.canadians.org/water/issues/right/index.html

9. Emergence of Rights Issues Rights issues emerge out of political struggles and are framed as rights issues when the cultural and institutional circumstances are such that those claiming a right believe that this is the most effective way to press their demands. To be considered legitimate and to have any chance of success, a rights claim must be anchored to one or more of a society’s core values/beliefs.

10. Remember Chapter 2?The Forms that Ideas Take • Political ideas may take the form of values and beliefs, personality traits, world views, and ideologies. • Ideologies and world views serve as maps that make sense of social and political reality.

11. Remember Chapter 3?The Impact of Social and Economic Conditions on Politics • The social and economic settings of politics establish boundaries to political life. • These settings determine the sorts of problems a society faces, the resources available for coping with these problems, the nature and intensity of divisions within society, and the distribution of politically valuable resources between societal interests.

15. Political Culture & Demography http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2011/01/19/chinas-demographic-changes/

16. Immigration in Canada Canada is becoming increasingly culturally diverse as a result of the changing patterns of immigration since the 1960s. • A shift from European to non-European countries as the sources of immigrants to Canada is leading to a more ethnically varied population

17. To appeal to overseas Chinese, certain branches of TD Waterhouse keep fish tanks (A symbol of prosperity), stocked with 8 Goldfish (an auspicious number) • The company also honors requests to avoid the number 4 in accounts (it sounds like the word “death” in Mandarin and Cantonese)

18. Welcome! Leave your customs at the door“Quebec town posts cultural code”Graeme Hamilton, National PostPublished: Tuesday, January 30, 2007

20. People in Urban Areas An Urbanizing World

21. Growth in Urban Population

22. European Cities Gone from the Top Largest Cities 1994 Tokyo New York Sao Paulo Mexico City Shanghai Mumbai Los Angeles Beijing Calcutta Seoul Jakarta Source: World Bank

23. Cities with an Obscured Future “She knew neither the sea or the mountains, mustard bloom, the meeting of sun and horizon, ripeness of medlar trees, nor any simple loveliness.” Carlos Fuentes, describing a resident of Mexico City’s slums, in Where the Air is Clear

25. A Regional Tragedy The whole Middle East stands in danger of being “left behind again” in the information age just as had occurred in the industrial era. --- Syrian scholar Sami Khiyami, 2003

26. “We missed the Industrial Revolution.We will not miss the Information Technology Revolution.” National Chief, Assembly of First Nations, 29 October 2001

27. Measuring the Social and Economic Performance of Canada • Material well-being • The image that most people have of Canada is of a middle-class society characterized by a reasonably high degree of socio-economic mobility. • Distribution of wealth over time, Figure 3.2 in your text • Has the ‘income gap’ increased in recent decades? See Figures 3.3 and 3.4 in text

28. Occupy Wall Street, Canadian version, October 15 • Upper-upper class • About 1%, “old money” • Lower-upper • 2-4%, nouveau riche, .com millionaires. • Sir Kenneth Thompson Canada’s richest man ($19.6+ billion 2006) (9th in the world) • David Thomson and family 22 billion 2007

29. Classes in Canada: Lower Class • 20% of population • Social assistance and working poor • Revolving door of poverty • Seasonal, part-time workers, minimum wage earners.

30. The Importance of Class What sort of things does social class affect • Lifestyles and Interests • Tastes • Language • Self Image • Values • Political orientation • Access to such resources as education, health care, housing and consumer goods. • How long you will live & how healthy you will be

31. BALANCING INTERESTS

32. What is a need? Who decides? Who wins? Who loses? Example FYI: http://www.feminisms.org/1542/chipping-away-at-gender-equality-harpers-5-year-round-up/ “Who gets what, when, and how?” ~Harold Lasswell

33. Power • The ability to influence what happens • Not restricted to government • Distinguished: Coercion (force), influence (persuasion), and authority (compliance because of internalized norms) A - B

34. Who exercises power? What values and purposes guide those who hold power? Power powerpower

35. What’s the good life?

36. Theories and politics • Interpretations • Coherent stories • “order and make sense of the world” • History of political thought: • wave of crises forced humans to reflect on practices of human governance

37. “…question whether formal equality can mean anything very profound whenwe are so demonstrably unequalto each other with respect to our access to other kinds of power.”

38. Can we consider truly democratic a set of politicaland social arrangements that render us formally equalto each other when the way that we actually live our livesis increasingly unequal?

40. The role of ideas in politics What people think and believe about society, power, rights, etc., determines their actions Everything has to pass through the mind of the individual before he or she acts How do the ideas and beliefs appear in our minds? • Critical examination of reality – thinking for oneself • Influence of others’ opinions– family,education, mass media, etc.

41. Approaches to studying politics • Political scientists who focus on normative questions seek to discover the ideal way that politics should work, in hopes of improving our political institutions. • Concerned with moral or ethicalquestions

42. Plural Legal Orders—last week’s lecture • When the white man first seen us, when they first said, “Well, there’s something wrong with these people here. They don’t have no religion. They have no judicial system. We have to do something for these people.” I guess that must have been what they thought because they totally screwed up what we already had.... • We had that judicial system and the white people, when they came here, they didn’t see that. They said, “These guys have nothing. We have to introduce all these different things to them so they can be one of us.” That’s exactly the problem that we have. • Chief Philip Michel Brochet • Source: Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission http://www.ajic.mb.ca/volumel/chapter2.html#1

43. The quest for the Good Society Divided over vision of the good

44. Rights Liberty Equality Leadership Efficiency Community Democracy Global Warming Growth in Nastiness Shrinking middle class Increasing working poor Global migration Pandemics New scientific frontiers Civic recession Economic challenges … Great Ideas Issues in 2011

45. Big Questions we’re still tackling • What is the good life? • Who should rule? • What is the best form of government? • What is justice? What is fairness? • What is right? • What is liberty?

46. Who are we, by nature?Men of gold, silver and bronze? (Plato)Hierarchical ordering of society (Burke)In a state of nature, life would be nasty, brutish and short. (Hobbes)Machiavelli: a pessimist or a realist? Objective is to ensure the realization of the full capabilities of human individuality (J.S. Mill)

47. What is the nature of reality? The Cave in The Republic of Plato Are we preoccupied with the world of appearance?

48. Whose values? “The great conversation across the centuries.” -Mortimer Adler

49. “Conflict between civilizations will be the latest phase in the evolution of conflict in the modern world. …the conflicts of the Western world were largely among princes—emperors, absolute monarchs, and constitutional monarchs attempting to expand their bureaucracies, their armies, their mercantilist economic strength and most important, the territory they ruled.” …

50. “In the politics of civilizations, the peoples and governments of non-Western civilizations no longer remain the objects of history as targets of Western colonialism but join the West as movers and shapers of history.”Samuel P. Huntington(1993)