Vernacular rights cultures and the ‘Right to Have Rights’

Abstract

We use a case study of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil and the Via Campesina network of which they are part to develop the concept of ‘vernacular rights cultures’. Vernacular rights cultures calls attention to the way in which demands for the right to have rights call on particular cultures, histories and political contexts in a manner that can transform the rights inscribed in constitutions and political imaginaries. What Ranciere (1999) and Balibar (2002) call the democratisation of democracy, we therefore argue, does not just involve a logic of equality and inclusion through which dispossessed groups demand already existing rights. Rather, it also occurs as mobilisations alter the means through which rights are delivered and transform the content and meaning of the rights demanded.

Keywords::

• human rights
• citizenship
• vernacular rights cultures
• Landless Workers Movement
• acts of citizenship

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Prof. Kate Nash, Prof. Kimberley Hutchings, the three anonymous referees and the editorial team of Citizenship Studies for their generous and insightful comments on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. Vernacular rights cultures therefore differ from Engle-Merry and Levitt's (2009, 441) notion of the ‘vernacularisation’ of rights, understood as the ‘process of appropriation and local adoption of globally generated ideas’.

^2. Literature in social movement theory has discussed how social movements mobilise participants by making demands that resonate with their particular contexts (see Bassel 2014). However, literature on citizenship as a right to have rights and literature on the MST and la Via Campesina have, despite some exceptions (Kröger 2011), not engaged with social movement theory. To ensure that we have sufficient space to engage with literature on citizenship and on the MST, we have opted not to engage with social movement theory.