Appropriation and the dualism of human rights: understanding the contradictory impact of gender norms in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper conceptualises appropriation as an analytical tool to capture the contradictory nature of human rights localisation. Here appropriation is understood as the intentional reinterpretation of ideas across cultural, spatial and temporal contexts aimed at definitional power. In the first part of the paper I lay out the concept and develop an operationalisation. In the second part I apply the framework to the case of contested gender reform in Nigeria. The analysis highlights the localisation of human rights norms as an amalgam of different competing appropriating acts, leading to a hybrid and contradictory outcome that bears both transformative and stabilising potential.

Keywords:

• human rights
• norm diffusion
• localisation
• development
• appropriation
• United Nations
• CEDAW

Acknowledgements

For invaluable comments and suggestions I am indebted to Louiza Odysseos, Anna Selmeczi, the participants at the EWIS workshop ‘The Power of Rights and/or the Rights of Power in Global Politics’, Anna Holzscheiter, Tanja Börzel, David Budde, Justus Dreyling and the two anonymous referees.

Notes

1. See Grugel, Democratization.

2. It goes without saying that there is no clear-cut ‘local’ sphere inseparable from a ‘foreign’ or ‘global’ context. In referring to ‘local’ or ‘domestic’, I aim at those contexts, arenas or orders targeted by international norm promotion strategies.

3. Schimmelfennig and Lavenex, “EU Rules beyond EU Borders”; Noutcheva, “Fake, Partial and Imposed Compliance”; and Elbasani, “Democratisation Process in Albania.” For an excellent critique from an appropriation perspective, see Zimmermann, Same Same or Different?

4. Acharya, “How Ideas Spread”; and Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter?

5. Many disciplines have dealt with ‘travelling ideas’, asking how transnational concepts attain their local meaning and how and to what effect these concepts change in the process. Debates with similar cognitive interests are centred on the notions of translation, appropriation, localisation, glocalisation, vernacularisation, hybridisation, creolisation, indigenisation, syncretism, travelling models, multiple modernities, entangled histories, histoire croisée, and others. See, for example, Bhabha, The Location of Culture; Randeria, “Konfigurationen der Moderne”; Conrad and Randeria, “Einleitung”; Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities”; Mosse and Lewis, Development Brokers and Translators; De la Rosa, “Aneignung oder Annäherung”; Galvan and Sil, Reconfiguring Institutions across Time and Space; Hannerz, Transnational Connections; and Robertson, “Glocalization.”

6. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities”; and Eisenstadt ‘Multiple Modernites’. See also de la Rosa, “Aneignung oder Annäherung.”

7. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities”, 39.

8. Randeria, “Konfigurationen der Moderne,” 161.

9. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 152–171; and de la Rosa, Aneignung und Interkulturelle Repräsentation, 43–50.

10. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge.

11. Foucault The Care of the Self; and Foucault, The Use of Pleasure.

12. Allen, “The Anti-subjective Hypothesis,” 127; and Arndt and Richter, “Steuerung durch Diskursive Praktiken,” 30f.

13. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, 10–11.

14. Arndt and Richter, “Steuerung durch Diskursive Praktiken,” 35.

15. ‘Vernacularisation’ is defined as ‘the process of appropriation and local adoption of globally generated ideas and strategies’. Levitt and Merry, “Vernacularization on the Ground,” 441. See also Merry, Human Rights and Gender Violence. Being a feminist approach, vernacularisation is decidedly normative. The vernacularisation literature looks at politically committed cultural translators who strategically ‘take the ideas and practices of one group and present them in terms that another group will accept’. Levitt and Merry, “Vernacularization on the Ground,” 448. See also Merry, “Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism,” 48; Ackerley, “Women’s Human Rights Activists”; and Moghadam, “Engendering Citizenship.”

16. Levitt and Merry, “Vernacularization on the Ground,” 448.

17. Holzscheiter, Children’s Rights in International Politics, 426–431. See also Galvan and Sil, “The Dilemma of Institutional Adaptation,” 8.

18. Goodwin and Duranti, “Rethinking Context.”

19. Wodak et al., The Discursive Construction of National Identity, 33.

20. Center for Systemic Peace, Polity IV Country Report.

21. Okeke, “Women’s Rights and Social Status”; Pereira, “Appropriating ‘Gender’ and ‘Empowerment’”; Sokefun, “Women Development and National Policy.”

22. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, “Nineteenth Session, Summary Record of the 395th Meeting”; Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, “Nineteenth Session, Summary Record of the 396th Meeting”; and Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, “Pre-session Working Group for the Nineteenth Session.”

23. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, “Nineteenth Session, Summary Record of the 395th Meeting,” 2.

24. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, “Thirtieth Session, Summary Record of the 637th Meeting”; and Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, “Thirtieth Session, Summary Record of the 638th Meeting.”

25. WOCON, Nigeria NGO Report, 1.

26. ECOSOC Committee on the Status of Women, “Review of the Implementation of the Beijing Platform.”

27. Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, Nigeria’s Report on the Implementation of the Beijing Platform.

28. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, “Considertion of Reports: Sixth Periodic Report of State Parties”; and Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, “Consideration of Reports: Annexes to the Sixth Periodic Report of Nigeria.”

29. NCWD, A Compilation of the Constitution.

30. BAOBAB, The Nigeria NGO Coalition Shadow Report; Nwankwo, Human Rights of Women; and Nwankwo, Women in Power & Decision Making.

31. GEM, “Hearing Women’s Voices.”

32. Adamu, “Woman’s Struggle.”

33. Ibid., 3–4.

34. NPC, Nigeria Vision 20–2020 10 (emphasis added).

35. NPC, Meeting Everyone’s Needs, viii.

36. Pereira, “Appropriating ‘Gender’ and ‘Empowerment’,” 43.

37. NPC, Report of the Vision 2020, 21 (emphasis added).

38. NPC, Meeting Everyone’s Needs, ix (emphasis added).

39. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, “Consideration of Reports: Second and Third Periodic Reports,” 12.

40. NCAA, “Domestication of Cedaw.”

41. Most prominently the National Economic Empowerment and Economic Development Strategy (NEEDS) and the Vision 2020. NPC, Meeting Everyone’s Needs; and NPC, Nigeria Vision 20-2020.

42. And hardly a new strategy. See Boserup, Women’s Role in Economic Development.

43. GADA, A Political Agenda for Nigerian Women.

44. NPC, Meeting Everyone’s Needs, 34.

45. Ibid., ix.