Human Rights Education and the Politics of Knowledge

Description

Around the world there are a myriad of NGOs using human rights education (HRE) as a tool of community empowerment with the firm belief that it will help people improve their lives. One way of understanding these processes is that they translate universal human rights speak using messages and symbols which make them relevant to people’s daily lives and culturally resonant. However, an alternative more radical perspective is that these processes should engage individuals in modes of critical inquiry into the ways that that existing power structures maintain the status quo and control not only how we understand and speak about social inequality and injustice, but also act on it. This book is a critical inquiry into the production, distribution and consumption of HRE and how the discourse is constructed historically, socially and politically through global institutions and local NGO practice. The book begins with the premise that HRE is composed of theories of human rights and education, both of which are complex and multifaceted. However, the book demonstrates how over time a dominant discourse of HRE, constructed by the United Nations institutional framework, has come to prominence and the ways it is reproduced and reinforced through the practice of intermediary NGOs engaged in HRE activities with community groups. Drawing on socio-legal scholarship it offers a new theoretical and political framework for addressing how human rights, pedagogy, knowledge and power can be analysed between the global and local by connecting the critical, but well-trodden, theories of human rights to insights on critical pedagogy. It uses critical discourse analysis and ethnographic research to investigate the practice of NGOs engaged in HRE using contextual evidence and findings from fieldwork with NGOs and communities in Tanzania. Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright Page......Page 5 Table of Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgements......Page 8 List of abbreviations......Page 10 1 Introduction: HRE, the politics of knowledge and social transformation......Page 12 Human rights education......Page 14 The context of HRE......Page 16 Power, knowledge and ideology critique......Page 22 Organisation of the book......Page 28 Conclusion......Page 33 Technical......Page 34 Interpretative......Page 40 Critical......Page 45 Counter-hegemonic......Page 49 Conclusion......Page 56 3 A global discourse of human rights education......Page 57 Evidence of HRE in UN conventions and associated instruments......Page 59 UNESCO and the institutionalisation of HRE......Page 63 1995 onwards......Page 72 Conclusion......Page 77 Critical HRE scholarship......Page 79 Practical HRE scholarship......Page 87 Conclusion......Page 98 Situating the case study and its limitations......Page 100 Participant NGOs......Page 101 Background and history......Page 107 Conceptions......Page 116 Practice......Page 126 Conclusion......Page 147 6 The dominant discourse: human rights education as cultural translation......Page 148 The production of HRE discourse......Page 149 The distribution of HRE discourse......Page 152 The consumption of HRE......Page 164 Conclusion......Page 168 7 Conclusion: learning from the edge: towards HRE as transformative praxis......Page 171 HRE as governance......Page 172 Rethinking culture, pedagogy and power......Page 175 HRE as transformative praxis......Page 178 Conclusion......Page 185 Appendix 1: methodologies used during the research......Page 186 Appendix 2: total interviews conducted in Tanzania......Page 188 Appendix 3: interviews used and content referred to in Chapter......Page 190 Bibliography......Page 192 Index......Page 206