Sen on Traditions

During his discussion of universal human rights, Amartya Sen focuses especially on the cultural critique, which challenges the true "universal" nature of human rights. Those who employ the cultural critique argue that at their core, universal human rights are, "invit[ations] to join the club of "Western democracy" and to admire and endorse traditional "Western values" (233). To respond to this critique, Sen discusses both alternative interpretations and societal desires to maintain tradition.  I found these considerations to be at odds with each other.

In his discussion of traditions, Sen notes that unlike outdated technology, lost traditions can "cause anguish and a deep sense of loss" (141). Ultimately, a society must determine the amount of tradition it seeks to preserve, and Sen emphasizes the importance for all people to be able to take part in these decisions, not only the social elite. Sen continuously notes that in many Asian societies, it is the social elite, who are incentivized to keep their power, that have been interpreting historic Asian texts. 

While I agree with Sen that entire societies ought to play a role in determining tradition, I think that Sen is too quick to discard the weight that the interpretations of past elite hold in Asian societies. To counter popular elite interpretations, Sen explores individual Asian thought leaders who demonstrate ideas that he believes can be understood as "constitutive elements" of democracy (234). While Amartya Sen's proof is convincing, I continued to question the weight this exposition should hold during the reading.  Even if these interpretations are logically consistent, they are clearly not the ones which tradition has been built around, and as Sen acknowledges, it is these traditions that are most ingrained within a society. Sen criticizes authoritarian readings as "very arbitrary interpretations and extremely narrow selections of authors and traditions," but I think that the same could be said for Sen--it seems there is enough information for any interpretation to find some rational ground. For this reason, I think Sen's approach is not very effective--I think that he needs to work within the traditional interpretations that exist in societies instead of attempting to personally reinterpret documents which have been analyzed within these societies for generations.

I found Sen's "cross-cultural argument" similarly denied tradition/ history in a problematic way. Sen references how chili, a dish considered a "national tradition" in India actually came from the Portuguese. The point of his argument here is to demonstrate that we can "enjoy the cultural products of different countries" without sacrificing national identity (243-244). Once again, I agree that such cross-cultural appreciations are important, but I think that Sen has detrimentally left out historic associations. We can hardly compare the transfer of the chili to the transfer of "democracy" from the West because this "transfer of democracy" has infamously poor historic associations with imperialism and a disrespect for tradition. We have to act with a conscious understanding that asking other countries to appreciate democratic ideas that are championed by the West, even if these ideas are not necessarily Western-specific, has historic and traditional connotations which affect the societal significance of adopting democratic ideas.