Quoting Slavoj Zizek from memory: During the struggle against apartheid, the ANC spoke of universal values, and Buthelezi, in the pay of the CIA, always talked about special African conceptions of human rights.
.........
An important point.
While it's undeniable that cultures differ -- what receives a lot of attention in Kwangju, S. Korea may not inspire passion in Cleveland, USA -- when it comes to discussions of global styles of justice and ideas of fairness, excessive hair splitting is usually put at the service of the people holding the guns and the money.
For example...
During the 1980s and 90's -- the Tiger years -- we heard a lot about 'Asian Values'.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_values>
Former Singaporean PM Lee Kuan Yew (who served, or perhaps reigned is more accurate, from 1959 - 1990) promoted the idea that Asia had no use for Western style democracy. The material success of Japan, Taiwan, S. Korea, Singapore, etc was all the proof anyone should need that the sorts of rights Westerners tirelessly nattered on about weren't required for a robust society. At least, not in Asia.
The concept of 'Asian Values' became the core of what Michael Hill of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand called "reverse orientalism". Here in the West, 'Asian Values' stories were featured in publications ranging from that middlebrow rag Time Magazine to elite geopol pr0n outlet "Foreign Affairs". Of course the business press and corporate book market, ever eager to adopt and push ideas that describe corporate friendly social conditions as an expression of natural laws, rapidly embraced 'Asian Values' as a guide to method.
And at first glance, why not? If Singapore was, as William Gibson wrote a decade or so back, "Disneyland with the death penalty", who were we to judge? The roads were nice, buildings soared, the people enjoyed all modernity's benefits and reportedly, few of its problems. It was our multiculturalist duty to accept Prime Minster Lee's statements as serious social and anthropological theory.
Trouble was, 'Asian Values' -- the difference that supposedly made a difference -- was not only used to hush chatty Westerners, but also, much more seriously, to explain why riot police were brutally suppressing democracy activists.
'They aren't protesting for democracy', the Asian Values crowd insisted, 'they're challenging the fundamental glue of our societies...exchanging their heritage for outside ideas of justice.'
Similar things have been said about Iranian protesters. Comments about their styles of dress and so on...intended, it appears, to instill the impression that the dissatisfied and disaffected aren't quite real Iranians.
No doubt, there's an IRI equivalent of 'Asian Values'.
.d.