Enhancing Asia-Europe Co-Operation Through Educational Exchange by Georg Wiessala

Author:Georg Wiessala [Wiessala, Georg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136839610
Goodreads: 17581295
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

Human Rights within the context of EU–Asia relations1

There are three main reasons for an inclusion of a Human Rights focus in a book about Higher Education and intellectual exchange in Asia–Europe relations.

First, EU–Asia relations in general are still a largely under-researched subject-matter. Sporadic media attention, for example on the ‘war on terrorism’ in Asia, notwithstanding, Asia more often than not occupies a position of ‘low policy-salience’ (H. Smith 2002: 201) on the foreign policy agendas of the EU.

In spite of the EU’s decade-long efforts to construct a ‘go-East policy’ (Chapter 4) there is as yet – perhaps there cannot ever be – an ‘EU Neighbourhood Policy’ for Asia; Asia is too heterogeneous for that.2 Neighbours these countries may well be in the age of globalization. However, they remain in many ways ‘Distant Neighbours’, to use a well-worn phrase. Much of Europe still considers Asia the ‘Far Abroad’, or the ‘Other East’, and there remain vast ‘ignorance-gaps’ (Letta 2003: 482) between the two hemispheres.

In 2010/2011, Asia has slipped further down the agendas of EU policy makers, and a more-convincing EU approach on Asia is still akin to Dinan’s (1999: 508) metaphor pertaining to the development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP): it resembled the development of ‘a caterpillar into a butterfly which is colourless and cumbersome and had great difficulty getting off the ground’. This holds especially true for the inclusion of Human-Rights in EU–Asia dialogue, and for the many related issues of ‘participation’, ‘entitlement’ and ‘representation’ in the intellectual exchange between the two world regions.

Second, it is particularly the issues connected to those many ‘normative’, ‘ethical’, ‘value-guided’ and Human Rights policies, and their successes, inconsistencies and contradictions, which illustrate particularly cogently that EU– Asia relations as a whole are still a mixed bag, possessing both considerable ‘enabling’ and significant ‘inhibitory’ potential for the present and the future. Human rights are thus an apt contemporary prism, through which to observe both the ‘dynamism’ and the ‘lethargy’ inherent in contemporary EU– Asia-Pacific dialogue, and to speculate about its future course and priorities.

The Asia–Europe discourse on ‘individuality’, ‘rights’, ‘liberties’, ‘entitlements’ (and, conversely, on ‘communality’, ‘duties’, ‘restrictions’ and ‘commitments’ to society) can indeed illustrate some of the reasons why there is so much that is ‘constructive’, ‘promising’ and ‘empowering’ in EU–Asia political and cultural co-operation between civilizations – and why, on the other hand, there is also so much that is ‘destructive’, ‘inhibiting’ and ‘obstructive’.

Third, and especially when seen from a social-constructivist perspective (see Chapter 2), a closer investigation of Human Rights in Asia–Europe interactions is helpful in explaining the pivotal role of ‘myths’ (Smismans 2010), values and rights, ideas, ‘mind-maps’, ‘learning-processes’, ‘stereotypes’, ‘assumptions’ and identities, communication and ‘people-to-people contacts’ in the wider picture of developing a transformative set of EU–Asia relations.

Social Constructivism, or simply ‘Constructivism’, throughout this chapter as throughout this book is assumed to mean that political ideas and perceptions form a part of cognitive structures that imbue the material world with meaning (Aggestam 2004: 82; Pace 2007; Chapter 3).

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