Human Rights Take-home midterm

LIMIT CASES: INTERNATIONAL FILM, LITERATURE, AND ECONOMIC HUMAN RIGHTS
Midterm: 15% final grade
Due Date: 24 March 2011
Name______________________________________
I. Short Answer: 3-5 sentences; 5 points each
Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, and Kevin Bales, Disposable People
A. What does Pogge mean by “negative duties” and how does this relate to his arguments about human rights in the context of our global economic system?
B. What is the problem of “explanatory nationalism”? How does this inform what Pogge calls the double standard used by developed nations to judge national v. global poverty?
C. What is the difference between interactional and institutional human rights, and how does Pogge pitch it as a way to address global poverty and our role and responsibility for it?
D. Kevin Bales begins his analysis of slavery in the contemporary era with a story about the bones of a slave found by the African Burial Ground project in Manhattan. How specifically does that story set the tone for Bales’ discussion of slavery? What important lessons can we learn about global slavery today from a comparison of the “old” v. the “new” slavery?
E. Name two ways that, as consumers or business people, we may be complicit with (or benefit from) the contemporary slave trade.
F. Identify and define four possible statuses that one could hold in relation to property as a resident of a slum.
Section II: Short Essay: @1-2 pages; 10 points each
A. Choose one poem from Gwendolyn Brooks or Anne Winters, or the Nobel Prize acceptance speech by Doris Lessing, and write a one page literary analysis of what kinds of human rights claims the poem/speech is making and how it makes those claims. What is the effect on the reader?
B. Using Thomas Pogge and Mike Davis, briefly describe how the global economic system (particularly
the World Bank and its policies as defined by the Washington Consensus) has contributed to increasing global poverty.
SectionIII: Reviews: @ 2-3 pages each; 15 points each
Book Review:
Revisit Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Month and a Day and Letters and write a review that focuses on three points: the ways that Saro-Wiwa seeks to leverage international human rights law for his cause; the critique he makes of the exercise of national law in his arrest and detention; and the issue of international complicity and response in the wake of his death.
Film Review:
Write a review of the film City of God that illustrates EITHER the ways human lives and personalities can be shaped by the environment of the slums, OR the basic relationship between violence and poverty, using Mike Davis as a theoretical context. Refer as specifically to Davis’ theories as you can, and use close reading techniques to refer to and analyze specific scenes (cinematography, setting, characterization, plot, etc.) in the film.