Session 8: Culture, Identity and Human Rights

Session 8: Culture, Identity and Human Rights
Chair: Pathik Pathak

National Identity, Law and Human Rights
Vincent Depaigne
Directorate General Employment of the European Commission, Brussels, Belgium

The establishment of a ministry of “national identity” in France raises the question of the legal content of such a notion and the extent to which it is compatible with other norms, in particular human rights and non-discrimination. The proposed paper, based on international examples and focusing in particular on constitutional law, will assess the extent to which the assertion of a particular national or cultural identity is compatible with the respect of human rights and non-discrimination principles.
Referring to “social contract” theories as well as recent theories of nationalism, I will begin with a short history of the nation-State and how it is at the same time linked and in contradiction with human rights principles. I will show that the nation-State has been conceived as providing both a universal and equal protection to all its individual members and protecting a distinct cultural character. The key issue is that the twin objectives of a community both universal and particular in character are in constant tension.
I will then turn to the integration policies developed by the State in order to build a cohesive society. I will show the continuity between recent policies developed to manage migration and earlier policies conceived to foster internal cohesion, in particular cultural policies (linguistic policies, education). At the same time, multiculturalism has been seen as an alternative, as the notion and content of a dominant culture became increasingly contested. I will outline various models of national identity from unitary conceptions of the State to multicultural and pluralist conceptions.
Last, I will address the question of how to legally assert national identity without putting in question human rights and non-discrimination principles. I will address the various in which national identity can be translated in legal texts, in particular in constitutional texts and then turn to compatibility of such legal notions with human rights and non-discrimination principles.

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Identity, Structure and Ideology – Manuel Castells’ Contribution to the Identity Policy Discussion
Markku Valtanen
University of Helsinki, Finland

In this presentation I illustrate Manuel Castells’ theory of the identity policy in the network society and ask how it helps us to understand the ideological conditions of human experience and agency in our times. Castells’ vision constitutes a fruitful baseline for setting essential questions about the relationship between human subject and social structure, albeit I will argue that certain shortcomings of his theory make it an insufficient conceptual tool for its purposes. The ultimate goal of my endeavour is to bridge these shortcomings by re-reading Castells’ observations with a more substantial understanding of the concept of ideology.
Castells’ trilogy The Information Age (1996-2000) is best known for a vision about the emergence of global network society but what has remained less analyzed is its contribution to the discussion about the identity policy. His theorizing can be seen as an attempt to extrapolate the identity policy discussion into the age of global informational capitalism. The essential question is: what are the elements that condition the emergence of social agency and its mobilization now when the nation-state and its apparatuses no longer structure the destiny of human subject with the sovereignty as they did in modern industrial era. Castells’ answers by placing the human subject into an equivocal matrix spanning from within the internal forces of the self to the global flows of wealth, power and images.
The analysis of Castells’ view on the identity policy will be utilized to formulate questions about the ideological condition in which the human experience and social agency emerge today. Are there meaningful ways to talk about ideology in the age of information capitalism? I will argue that a more substantial understanding of the concept of ideology is a way to break free from the impasses of Castells’ vision and identity theory in general.

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Is There a Place for Culture in Human Rights? Recommendations from Cultural Sociology
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
Research & Project Development Director, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

No abstract is presently available