Re: Ethnic Hegemony and World-System

Just another note to Wagar's comment that Western Europe "sired" human
rights. There are plenty of non-western cultures/belief systems that
have "sired" human rights. The earliest I am aware of is Buddhism. 500
years before Jesus Christ proclaimed that all humans were equal Buddha
proclaimed pretty much the same thing, going so far as opposing the
Indian caste system and allowing women to become nuns, something
unheard of in India at that time. Also, the Buddhist Indian leader
Ashoka (3rd century BC) tried to institutionalize these "human rights
values", long before the European Enlightenment. For more on the issue
of Reason and East and West, see Amartya Sen's article in the July 20,
2000 issue of the New York Review of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWarchdisplay.cgi?20000720033F

Greg Wilpert


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Gregory Wilpert
Visiting Fulbright Professor
Escuela de Sociología
Universidad Central de Venezuela
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