Values in Translation by Sarfaty Galit A

Author:Sarfaty, Galit A.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2012-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Reconciling Interpretive Gaps

Economizing Human Rights

HOW DOES THE CLASH OF EXPERTISE within the Bank’s organizational culture shape the internalization of human rights norms? To bring about internalization, actors must “vernacularize” norms, or adapt them to local meanings and existing cultural values and practices (Merry 2005, 2006b). In this chapter, I focus on “interpretive gaps” as a critical obstacle to operationalizing human rights and achieving widespread norm internalization in the Bank. I analyze how professional subcultures within the organization correspond to distinct interpretive frames on human rights (see Barnett and Finnemore 1999). Interpretive gaps refer to the differences between employees’ interpretations of human rights, including how they define human rights, justify their relevance with respect to the Bank’s mission, and conceptualize their practical role in Bank operations. Of course, interpretive gaps are only one obstacle to achieving norm internalization. Other factors include lack of an appropriate staff incentive system to motivate behavior, little leadership by senior and middle management, and insufficient investment of resources to effectively institute policy changes. But I argue that in the case of the Bank, the clash between an intrinsic interpretive frame and an instrumental one is an underemphasized factor that has hindered the development of a human rights consciousness among staff. It reveals contradictions within the Bank’s bureaucratic culture, which exhibits a tension between principles and pragmatism. Before analyzing the competing interpretive frames, I first review the evolution of human rights as a taboo in the institution.

Evolution of the Human Rights Taboo

The issue of human rights has been and continues to be a taboo at the institution, but the type and extent of the taboo has changed over time and in different contexts. Human rights norms are not systematically incorporated into staff decision making or consistently taken into consideration in projects (although there are minor exceptions that I discuss here). Not only have human rights not been incorporated into the Bank’s official policies, they are also not openly discussed within many parts of the institution. Many employees consider it taboo to discuss the topic in everyday conversation and to include references to it in their project documents. The Bank is an environment of tabooed topics, which become part of the everyday consciousness of employees and are encoded in their daily routines. Employees have been socialized to adopt a set of attitudes and beliefs about the human rights of their work and the role of human rights in the Bank in general. Even though staff members clearly face moral or ethical dilemmas in their work, they are usually not encouraged to discuss them publicly.

In my interviews with employees from a number of departments, I found repeated references to the taboo of mentioning human rights. Here are a couple of excerpts:

The Bank is very skittish about using the words “human rights” because in some countries [especially Middle Eastern countries and China], that’s a dirty word that means American or Western values. . . . [Employees] have come to the conclusion that you can’t call it “human rights,” but you can call it a lot of other things .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.