As I discussed in my previous post, the COVID-19 crisis has undoubtedly triggered a further disruption in the technology sector. From AI, to sterilizing robots, to rapid developments of new technology being reappropriated in ways we have never seen before, we have seen organisations and businesses turn to technology during the Covid-19 crisis, as well as governments adopting it as part of their national response.
I discussed theories from Evgeny Mozrov in relation to the UK government’s use of technology during the pandemic, arguing that the use of the Track and Trace app demonstrates the delegation of responsibility from the government to the individual through technology, in what Mozrov calls ‘solutionism.’ For Mozrov, the emergence of these highly privatized market-based solutions that work at the level of the citizen and not at the collective has meant we are losing the ability ‘debate the moral consequences of digital technologies’- as a collective – about how we ought to reform the world (Mozrov 2014).
Abeba Birhane echoes this in her work The Algorithmic Colonization of Africa, and adds that ‘the use of technology within the social sphere often, intentionally or accidentally, focuses on punitive practices, whether it is to predict who will commit the next crime or who would fail to pay their mortgage. Constructive and rehabilitative questions such as why people commit crimes in the first place or what can be done to rehabilitate and support those that have come out of prison are almost never asked.’ (Birhane 2019) – It’s interesting here that the language used is very much in line with the language used in traditional human rights discourse. For example, Judge Sang‐Hyun Song, President of the International Criminal Court describes the ‘growing recognition that international justice should not only be about punishment of crime, but also about helping societies build a stable future by coming to terms with past crimes rather than sweeping them under the carpet.’ These similarities begin to emerge as I compare the two discourses further.
I also discussed how the ecosystems of the track and trace app – of which Apple and Google are fundamental – demonstrate how we have become ‘almost completely dependent on big platforms’ as suggested by José van Dijck, Thomas Poell, and Martijn de Waal in their work The platform Society: Public Values in a Connective World. They argue that the emergence of these corporations, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, has resulted in our reliance on them as ‘facilitators’ in our daily lives because they help connect us. On the other hand, they have a level of control of our daily activity by means of data flows, and it is this trade off – giving away our data in exchange for free services (Poell, T. & van Dijck, J. 2018).In doing this, as Birhane rightly states, ‘we hand decision-making regarding social issues over to automated systems developed by profit-driven corporations, not only are we allowing our social concerns to be dictated by corporate incentives (profit), but we are also handing over complex moral questions to the corporate world’ (Birhane 2019). Both Poell, T. & van Dijck, J. 2018 and Birhana ask us to consider how we will anchor our public values, things like privacy, security, transparency, accuracy and safety, in a connected world. Furthermore, a joint statement issued by Freedom House on April 2, 2020 stated that
‘[The] use of digital surveillance technologies to fight [the coronavirus] pandemic must respect human rights.’
It is of course clear that a framework is needed. As we know, failure to engage with individual and collective protections risks redefinition by conservative groups. Take the authoritarian governments identified by Evgeny Mozrov in his book, The Net Delusion.
‘Authoritarian governments are effectively using the Internet to suppress free speech, hone their surveillance techniques, disseminate cutting-edge propaganda, and pacify their populations with digital entertainment.’
The governments in question reach out to their critics and let them engage online, imploring them to comment on political issues that they would have previously have censored. Why, you ask? Because they have learned that censorship is less effective than freedom of speech in most of these places. The more you block it, the more it emboldens people to avoid censorship. The best way to control this message is to spin it (Mozrov 2012).
So yes, for all of the above reasons (and many more) we know we need a framework through which to set out protections for citizens who engage in digital technology (although we know it affects those who don’t, too, but that is outside the scope of this blog). But are human rights really the most appropriate framework, particularly in the context of international development, new media activism in the ‘Global South’ and what alternative narratives, tools and discourses are emerging globally? I will argue that human rights are not a long-term solution to the issue of citizen protection in relation to digital technology. To do this, I will commence with an exploration into the role of rights as tools of emancipation, considering the binaries that inform them and their relationship with the ‘cruelties and violence of the colonial encounter. I will discuss the hierarchy in the way rights function with a particular focus on how rights perform for those who don’t, can’t or indeed won’t conform to this hierarchy, and the epistemological implications for these groups. Then, using theories on gender identity which expose the universality of human rights, it will then argue that rights are ‘implicated in power and cannot be decontextualized from history, power and culture, therefore those with fluid identities might not correspond with individual liberty. Lastly, the essay will discuss the concept of rights discourse in relation to social movements, considering the opportunities that non-liberal epistemologies offer us, considering how freedom can be performed, experienced and lived beyond liberalism, and how technology can help or hinder this.
A Human Pyramid
It has been argued by many scholars that, in the context of the colonial encounter, the liberal thought that makes up the foundation of human rights both ‘record and uphold’ a hierarchy which enforces ‘differentiated understandings of the subject’. For Ratna Kapur in her work Precarious Desires and Ungrievable Lives: Human Rights and Postcolonial Critiques of Legal Justice, there is a hierarchy for how people experience rights. She uses the following system to frame this argument: ‘Human rights produce a hierarchy of who counts as human and who does not; who is more or less human, who is inhuman or unthinkable as human’.
This theory highlights the failure of human rights to acknowledge certain values like liberty and freedom as universal when encountering the ‘other’, because an ‘obvious prerequisite is that the subject who experiences the harm or injury be recognised in the first place.’ As well as the denial of rights to those considered to be ‘inhuman’ or ‘unthinkable as human’ who therefore cannot be human enough to be subject to rights, resulting in the failure of rights to recognise the needs and injustices of marginalised groups (Kapur 2015). This is what Boaventura de Sousa Santos would refer to as ‘the blindness of absence’ in his lecture Global Order and Global Knowledge. He argues that justice and freedom cannot simply be achieved by introducing laws if they still conform to the dominant gender sexual and cultural norms and are therefore inherently exclusive (de Sousa Santos 2016). In their work, Gender, Development and ICT, Amy O’Donnell and Caroline Sweetman acknowledge that ‘Technology mirrors the societies that create it’ (O’Donnell, Sweetman 2018) so, inthis light it is very clear that merely promoting inclusion and protection in the form of human rights in relation to the digital space is not transformative.
Another consequence, pointed out by Kapur, is the tendency of the west to conflate gender and racial differences with cultural backwardness, which is used as ‘justification for the continuation of colonial rule and its civilising mission partly pursued through legal reform’ (Kapur 2014). For example, the ‘other’ woman was, and is, understood to be different from men, weaker and in need of protection. Representation of the ‘other’ in the western consciousness is still tied with the colonial encounter, demonstrated clearly by the laws surrounding the veiled woman. The banning of the veil in public spaces is problematic for many reasons. Firstly, Kapur argues in her other work, Gender, Alterity and Human Rights, it reinforces the depiction of women from the global south as ‘utterly vulnerable, suffering, and powerless subject’ (Kapur 2019), which puts an interesting spin on the term protection because of the implication that some subjects are merely objects in law, deserving of protection, but not subjectivity. This theme has certainly translated to the digital space, with the emergence of what Bhakti Shringarpure calls the ‘Digital Savior Complex’ – a practice which ‘not only transforms complex crises into quotidian cyber realities but also furthers existing colonial hierarchies between the savior and the saved’ (Shringarpure 2020).
The continued policing of the liberal democratic space, which seemingly occurs both online and offline, represents what Kapur calls the ‘fishbowl of human rights’ and its limited conceptions of what both a human is and what freedom is, and it is challenged whether the ‘project of justice as freedom can ever be fully realised within a liberal framing (Kapur 2019).
Re-orienting our way of engaging with Human Rights
Individual liberties in law are starkly challenged when met with identities that are not fixed. When discussing the notion of the right to sexuality for individuals, Judith Butler asks us to consider whether sexuality is even a notion that can correspond with individual rights, arguing that actually it is unlikely that it can because the ‘forms of sexuality in which we engage are culturally and historically situated’ and cannot be reduced to ‘individual liberty, decontextualized from history and culture’ (Butler 2020). Butler approaches the notion of gender in her influential Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity not as biological, but as performative, and in this sense, human rights fall short in their capacity to account for notions like gender at all (Butler 1990).
If our understanding of identities is that they are in fact fluid and based on lived experience, or what Butler calls ‘relational’ as opposed to fixed concepts, we must consider the value in thinking about rights as discourse rather than fixed identities (Butler 2020). It is fascinating that studies are beginning to show that digital spaces are offering new opportunities for ‘changing, challenging and morphing gender norms around young people and sexual/romantic relations,’ but it is also imperative to remember that ‘feminist analysis is needed to realise the full potential of the digital revolution for social justice, including gender equality’(O’Donnell, Sweetman 2018). Butler also emphasises that human rights do not have descriptive powers, and that they therefore cannot translate into any ontological processes, and that to understand such concepts, ‘discourse is useful for is opening up the space for us to understand, define, and live sexuality through any number of languages, vocabularies, practices and institutions’ (Butler 2020). Central to this is the acknowledgement of other forms of knowledge.
Knowledge is Power
In his work, Epistemologies of the South and the future, Boaventura de Sousa Santos developed an ambitious project which challenges dominant discourse, arguing that ‘colonialism has disabled the global North from learning in non-colonial terms.’ The ‘unfreedom of the “other”’ shows us that ‘our universalisms have been based on the realities of this side of the line; the other side of the line has remained invisible’ (de Sousa Santos 2016). This is what Kapur calls the ‘dark side’ of human rights in her work Human Rights in the 21st Century: Take a Walk on the Dark Side. What emerged from de Sousa Santos’ project was the idea of an ‘epistemology of seeing’ as opposed to the previously mentioned ‘epistemology of blindness’, which is built on the call for an alternative and ‘crucial epistemological transformation…in order to reinvent social emancipation on a global scale.’ The ‘epistemology of seeing’ is a procedure to enquire into forms of knowledge and validation of knowledges from the people who have suffered, in a systemic way, the injustices of colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy, because ‘it is really from the perspective of suffering that we can develop an epistemological alternative’ (de Sousa Santos 2016).
Echoing this sentiment, Kapur argues the need for alternative approaches to freedom, advocating for the ‘understandings of freedom that are left out or excluded – quite specifically, non-liberal understandings’ (Kapur 2019). Butler proposes that re-engaging with rights discourse would allow ‘relational’ conception of rights, which would in fact displace individual liberty which sits at the heart of rights discourse. There is, in fact, space for lived experience in human rights, as there is are immense ‘alternatives of life, conviviality and interaction with the world [which are] largely wasted because the theories and concepts developed in the global North and employed in the entire academic world do not identify such alternatives’ (Butler 2020). The opportunity, therefore, lays with ‘access to different popular knowledges generated by different social groups in their struggles against different modes or intensities of domination, mainly capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy’ (Kapur 2015).
Tomas Tufte also argues that there is a huge power in the collective in a discussion in 2017, Communication and Social Change: A Citizen Perspective. Global insurgences represent a struggle for a society that allows for their dignity to flourish, and for many its for a collective dignity. He gives an example of a shared experience as ‘freedom from fear’ (ontologically), as well as the concept of human security, and suggests that civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights lie in this notion of human security (Tufte 2017).
This offering of a conceptual foundation for legal, political and social practise where other forms of knowledge and experience are articulated, communicated, and included to have impact on decision making and social change is offered in direct response to the increasing emergence, and indeed power, of insurgences globally. In his work Towards a Renaissance in Communication for Social Change. Speaking up or talking back? Tufte suggests that some movements show evidence of the ‘epistemology of seeing’ reflected in their communications practises, as well as in how they are creating new ‘opportunity structures’. Digital technology has given communicative opportunities to citizens by not only offering new dynamics in the relationship between governments / institutions and the people, but also as a new way of communicating for social change. These two points are potentially changing the dynamics of the relationships between citizens and states (Tufte 2013). I touch upon this in another blog post.
The core challenge, for Tufte, lies in enhancing communications practises moving forward to ensure that ‘citizen [driven] tactics within the communicative dynamics of the network society’ can emerge ‘helping us to regenerate core values and principles and formulate new heuristic, conceptual and analytical frameworks with which to understand the current and future role of citizens and their claims for participation in more inclusive development processes.’ I wish I could elaborate on this more, but find out more about the pros and cons of the network protest in this post.
This argument is strengthened by the proposals put forward by Abeba Birhane, who suggested that protecting the people of the African continent from the digital ‘systems founded on individualistic and capitalist drives’ can only happen with ‘guidelines and safeguards for individual rights and freedom in place in a manner that accounts for local values, contexts and ways of life, as well as through the inclusion of critical voices as an important part of the tech narrative’ (Birhane 2020). Here, I think the parallel between the discourses of both rights and technology, is strikingly similar, and the above sentence could be applied to both systems.
Conclusion
The increase in global insurgences, despite decades of rights accumulation, marks the failure of human rights to deliver on their promise of real freedom. As this blog argued, the value of rights to deliver freedom for all never held out much hope, except for a very specific constituency.
Once again, I will emphasize that protections for the online space need to be developed, but it requires ‘scrutinizing the systems we ourselves develop and setting ethical standards that serve specific purposes instead of accepting Western perspectives as the standard.’
Upon further exploration, it is clear that the foundations of human rights are built upon the colonial encounter, and within the foundation exists a hierarchy that seeks to subordinate certain groups of people. What is also clear is that the digital space can echo this. The establishment and upholding of this hierarchy has enabled the system to deny or partly-deny the universal rights of man to those considered not human enough to receive their protections. It has also been used to align equality with the rule of the majority, as well as penalise and erase differences. Based on this, this blog has discovered that human rights in the current climate are not effective as a long-term solution to provide to protections to the global population in the online space. Instead, what has been proposed is a re-working of human rights discourse, or a ‘relational’ approach to rights, based on lived experiences.
What this means in theory is that to solve the crisis of representation, in which citizens are not subject to universal freedoms, we need to include other forms of knowledge. What this means in practise is to:
- Enhance participatory practices to ensure citizen-led social change processes, knowledge, and practices can emerge and be central in the re-working of discourse.
- ‘Develop methods of intercultural translation’ because, without an understanding that there are different cultural linguistic forms, different kinds of semantic fields, and the consideration that our own ‘knowledges are incomplete’. (de Sousa Santos 2016).
So there we have it. Can human rights create protections for global citizens in the digital space post covid-19? No, not right now. Can digital technology provide new pathways for more equitable, human-centred solutions to human rights? Potentially. Then we could maybe readdress the question.
This process has been really useful for me because not only have I found new friends in my co-creators, I have also been forced (forced?) encouraged to engage with a wider variety of the course literature in order to make sure each blog was unique, relevant and academically sound. A big lesson learned is not to leave the submission of your work to the last minute when the process of uploading your work to WordPress takes such a long time with Beirut internet. Thank you very much for the opportunity to participate.
Bibliography
Books
Birhane, A. 2019: The Algorithmic Colonization of Africa, Real Life Mag, 9 July.
Butler, J, 2002, ‘Explanation and Exoneration, or What We Can Hear’ See also Butler, J‘Afterword’, in D Eng & D Kazanjian (eds), Loss: The Politics of Mourning (University of California Press
Kapur, R, 2006, Human Rights in the 21st Century: Take a Walk on the Dark Side, 28 Sydney L. Rev.
O’Donnell, A. & Sweetman, C. 2018: Introduction: Gender, development and ICTs, Gender & Development
Poell, T. & van Dijck, J. 2018. Social Media and new protest movements, in: Burgess, J., Marwick, A. & Poell, T. (eds.): SAGE Handbook of Social Media. London: Sage.
Shringarpure, B. 2020: Africa and the Digital Savior Complex, Journal of African Cultural Studies,
Tufte, T, 3013, Towards a Renaissance in Communication for Social Change. in , Speaking up or talking back? Media, empowerment and civic engagement among east and southern African youth (Gothenburg: Nordicom)
Articles
Kapur, R, 2018, ‘ Look inside Preview Hardback Gender, Alterity and Human Rights’ 1(1) Chapter 1: Liberal freedom in a
fishbowl <https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788112536.00007>
Kapur, R, 2015, ‘Precarious Desires and Ungrievable Lives: Human Rights and Postcolonial Critiques of Legal Justice’, London Review of International Law <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281774142_Precarious_Desires_and_Ungrievable_Li ves_Human_Rights_and_Postcolonial_Critiques_of_Legal_Justice
Lectures
Butler, J, 2020. Issues In Society, History And Queerness, Where We Discuss Issues Of Feminism, Inequality, Desire, Resistance, And Identity, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1bTXwvN9v0 accessed November 2020
Kapur, R, 2016, Gender and human rights : Success, failure or new imperialism, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOlJg1xwXhA accessed November 2020
de Sousa Santos, B, 2013, Global order and Global knowledge, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_A0YIuCcqI, accessed November 2020
De Sousa Santos, B, 2016, ‘ Epistemologies of the South and the future’ 1(1) FROM THE EUROPEAN SOUTH 1 <http://europeansouth.postcolonialitalia.it> accessed November 2020
Tufte, T, 2017, Communications and social change: a citizen perspective, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5Ai4tOZIqo, accessed November 2020