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Copyright © 2003 Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies.
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Abstracts
BRIIFS
Volume 5, Number 2
(Autumn/Winter 2003)
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Camilo Perez-Bustillo
THE RIGHT TO HAVE RIGHTS: INTERNATIONAL POVERTY LAW AS A NEW PARADIGM IN THE STRUGGLE FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE
This paper argues that contemporary international human rights have traditionally been marked by a conceptual and structural imbalance between the relative recognition and enforceability of civil and political rights, on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural rights, on the other. This disequilibrium is inherently unstable and unsustainable, producing a 'poverty of rights' amid the unprecedented globalization of concentrated wealth and generalized misery, and is historically grounded in the dialectics of the origin of international human rights law in the intertwined processes of the European conquest of the Americas—colonialism, imperialism and slavery—and their epistemological implications. The issue of social justice is addressed in this context and explored in terms of its importance for the duality between neglected rights and neglected peoples, with emphasis on the case of indigenous peoples in Latin America. The paper further argues that there is an emerging paradigm of 'international poverty law' rooted in the demands of 80% of the world's population for the satisfaction of their basic human needs and reflected in efforts to secure recognition for a 'new international economic order,' the 'right to development' and, more recently, the construction of a new 'global moral economy,' as set forth in critiques of the devastation of 'neoliberal' globalization.
Maurice Eisenbruch
KHMER ROUGE AND TRADITIoNAL HEALERS AS MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGISTS? RETOOLING HEALTH AND SOCIAL JUSTICE in cambodia
The aim of this paper is to examine how a society such as Cambodia's, which has undergone massive trauma, might heal and, in particular, whether traditional healers can help with the healing. The paper draws upon a participant observation of more than 1,100 healers carried out over 12 years in order to reveal how various forms of traditional healing instil illness and suffering with meaning and how the Khmer Rouge manipulated and reconstructed local explanatory models of illness to reflect their fundamentalist ideology. It describes the fate of traditional healers under Pol Pot and examines the cultural meanings assigned to mental illness, sexually transmitted diseases (including AIDS) and malaria by both traditional healers and Khmer Rouge cadres. As Pol Pot showed, the dismantling of systems that provide social justice is most effectively done by those who know the culture. This paper asks whether the retooling of social justice might also be most effectively handled by the traditional harbingers of cultural meaning, namely, the healers. The challenge posed by the 'outbreak of peace' matches the one that accompanied war. In Cambodia, it encompasses alarming new incarnations of trauma as AIDS sweeps the country, parents traffic daughters, children shoot parents, lovers hurl acid and youths descend into Ecstasy.
Jack Saul
PROMOTING COMMUNITY RECOVERY IN LOWER MANHATTAN AFTER
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
The field of international psychosocial response to disaster and massive violence has much to contribute to an understanding of the social impact of the September 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent events in New York City. The author presents lessons learned from his experience in Kosovo and other international contexts that have been applied to promoting collective recovery in the his own Ground Zero community in lower Manhattan. Programs that promote healing in trauma-affected communities may contain a number of themes. First, they bring people together to promote positive connections as a foundation for social support, education and access to existing resources. Second, these programs can provide opportunities for people to organize their experience and emotions and tell their stories in ways that can be affirmed by the community. Third, these programs can facilitate conversations, which shift the focus from stressful experiences and haunting memories to affirmation of strengths, problem-solving and positive visions of the future. And, fourth, people can come together to reaffirm their connection to nature, spirit, the seasons, holidays and other events, which are life-affirming and growth-promoting. One of the challenges faced has been the shifting of the dominant discourse of institutions and funders from one that focuses primarily upon a medicalized view of psychological trauma to one that recognizes and enhances the inherent strengths and resilience of individuals, families, communities and cultures to recover from such events.
Bruce Kapferer
INJUSTICE, SUFFERING AND THE STATE: SORCERY AND RENEWAL IN CONTEMPORARY SRI LANKA
Sorcery in Sri Lanka is entirely about human suffering and issues of personal injustice, which are viewed in terms of cosmological/mythological conceptions of the state and its transition from a pre-Buddhist to a Buddhist socio-political order. This paper argues that personal injustices and self-perceptions of individuals as victims are grasped through conceptions of sorcery as a failure in the moral order of state and society. Sorcery discourses in Sri Lanka are concerned with the remoralization of social processes. This is particularly true in the contemporary circumstances of globalization and nationalism. The paper presents information on the emergence of innovative sorcery shrines (thoroughgoing inventions of colonialism and post-coloniality) in the mainly urban contexts of contemporary Sri Lanka. One critical implication of the argument that is presented here is that contemporary political developments have created a moral crisis in the order of the Sinhala Buddhist state. Paradoxically, the emergence of new forms of sorcerous activities—and the persistence of long-term ones—are intended to bring the state and its agents and agencies (which are seen as being at the root of personal distress, injustice and suffering) back within an encompassing moral order in which injustice is ultimately redressed and suffering overcome.
Riaz Hassan
GLOBALIZATION'S CHALLENGE TO THE ISLAMIC UMMA
The concept of umma is an important element of historical, as well as contemporary, discourse on Islam. This paper provides an overview of the development and evolution of the concept of
umma and its usage in Islamic discourse to explain the current social, political and economic conditions of the Muslim world. It reports findings about
umma consciousness among Muslims in Southeast Asia, South and Central Asia and the Middle East, examining the impact of globalization on the Islamic
umma and how it is shaping the emerging struggle between 'hybridity' and 'authenticity' among Muslims and Islamic movements. The paper concludes with some observations on the risks and challenges of this struggle and its sociological implications for the future of the Islamic
umma and the world.
Document Abstract
Kamal S. Salibi
RECOLLECTIONS OF LEBANON IN THE 1940S AND 1950S
Using turning points in his personal life as a framework, Lebanon's best-known living historian recalls the political and social developments that occurred in the country from the time of the Vichy regime's local defeat in 1941 to Fuad Chehab's controversial election as president in 1958. This evocative essay chronicles the slow transformation of Lebanon and of the author's West Beirut neighbourhood in the aftermath of Lebanese independence from France and from Syria, and in the context of such regional crises as the war in Palestine, the Egyptian and Iraqi revolutions, and the creation of the United Arab Republic. It is intended to serve as a source for future historians of Lebanon and the region who are interested in tracing the roots of the political instability that became apparent in the latter half of the twentieth century as well as the social history of the country after World War II.
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