Human Rights in Asia: A Reassessment of the Asian Values Debate

✍ Scribed by Damien Kingsbury, Leena Avonius

• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 265
• Edition: First Edition
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book offers a critical reassessment of the “Asian values” debate, which dominated the human rights discourse in the late 1990s, and a reappraisal of the human rights situation in Asia since then. In this book Asian and non-Asian scholars contextualize the “Asian values” debate and examine in what ways the issues raised then continue to trouble Asian societies. Human rights are seen both in the context of political developments in individual Asian countries as well as in relation to global issues such as the Global War on Terror. The book challenges the reader to critically examine human rights rhetoric and practice both in Asia and globally.  

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 6
Preface......Page 8
Note on Contributors......Page 10
Introduction......Page 12
1 Universalism and Exceptionalism in “Asia”......Page 30
2 Asia Values? Why Not, But How?......Page 52
3 Human Rights from the Left: The Early Chinese Democracy Movement......Page 74
4 Chinese Values and Human Rights......Page 94
5 From Marsinah to Munir: Grounding Human Rights in Indonesia......Page 110
6 From “Asian Values” to Singapore Exceptionalism......Page 132
7 Human Rights in Thailand: Rhetoric or Substance on “Asian Values”......Page 152
8 “Asian Values,” Gender, and Culture-Specific Development......Page 170
9 The Nation-State and Its Violence: Debates in Post–Cold War Japan......Page 194
10 Walking the Line between the “War on Terror” and the Defense of Human Rights......Page 214
Bibliography......Page 236
C......Page 260
D......Page 261
H......Page 262
M......Page 263
S......Page 264
Y......Page 265