The related questions of cut-backs in the defence programme and East-West détente, raised by the end of the Attlee prime ministership, were duly followed up by Churchill who returned to Number 10 on 26 October 1951. This chapter highlights South East Asia as what was added by Churchill to the possible détente agenda. There has been historiographical interest in the connection between the perceived importance of Indo-China and the post-war security of Europe.

A commitment to human rights is something that all contemporary nation states are united by. No regime would like to be thought of as being opposed to human rights, all portray themselves as champions of human rights. Clearly it appears that human rights are very desirable and ought to be defended. The only murmur of disagreement comes from political theorists. This is ironical, for here is a concept that all practitioners of politics would like to identify with. And yet this is a concept not accepted uncritically by the theorists of politics. (Susan Mendus in David Beetham, 1995)

The extent of this philosophical scepticism can be gauged from the comparison that A. MacIntyre makes of human rights with unicorns and witches! (MacIntyre, 1981) This rather provocative comparison indicates the existence of very profound objections to the whole concept of human rights. However in the bulk of contemporary western political theory there is an acceptance of the concept of human rights although there are debates regarding the content of these rights. (Barry, 1992) The most obvious example would be the differences between the libertarians who see an almost insignificant role for the state, where individuals have rights whether or not recognized by the legal system, and the positive liberals who would insist that the state play a greater role in the regulation of the economy and the society in order to secure human rights.

Museologists will be intrigued by the proposed Museum of Bioprospecting, Intellectual Property, and the Public Domain (MUBIO). An eclectic group of scholars from far a field has unknowingly responded to the 1972 clarion call of Duncan Cameron in “The Museum: A Temple or The Forum.” Cameron wrote that museums should be forums “unfettered by convention and established values” which could “ensure that the new and challenging perceptions of reality, the new values and their expressions, can be seen and heard by all.” Cameron contrasted his vision with the traditional notion of the museum as a temple, characterized by the display of “a structured sample of reality” that functioned “as an objective model against which to compare individual perceptions.” Over the last three decades, the Cameron paradigm has steadily gained acceptance among museologists. It is echoed in a number of proposals which would recast museums as spaces for dialogue in which “diverse communities might learn about and debate issues of contemporary relevance and importance.” Beyond the academic world, there is also acceptance. For example, the museum consultant Gaby Porter criticizes museums for claiming objectivity (“this is how it was”) and advises that exhibits probe opinions and promote questioning. To achieve an atmosphere of debate, the museologist Robert Lumley notes “[museums must first] free themselves of the taboos which make them avoid risky and controversial subjects in the name of their authority.”

After Foucault with the too well known intertwining of knowledge and power and after Said with his indictments of the colonizing impulse of knowledge it might be easy to point at the exclusions and the latent coerciveness of ‘universal rights’. At the level of its working, to show the dominance of the international financing organizations based on the northern countries and the diverse overt and covert ways in which these dictate the terms of understanding, control and day to day activities in the nation states of the south. In this transfer/translation of knowledge, power and economy, the roles of the various non-governmental organizations (NGOs), of well-meaning individuals and globalized functionaries of the state and techno scientific institutions along with certain ‘local’ level initiatives are gradually becoming clearer. Detailed analyses and critical descriptions of the dynamics of these efforts are crucial, yet do not exhaust the problem. The conceptual issues involved must be unravelled (I do not propose this as an easy and self-congratulatory positivist gesture but in the deconstructive spirit of attempting the (im)possible yet unavoidable task of unwinding the ever-tangled loop of thinking, being and doing, of taking the risk of decisions, however contingent, where it is impossible to decide).

Ethics and the World

‘Ethics does not treat’, says Wittgenstein, ‘of the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic.’ (Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914–16, 77e) He seems to suggest that ethics must be a condition of the world in the same sense in which logic must be. Logic must be a condition of the world, as I take him to mean, in the sense that it determines what the world may or may not contain: the world can contain only that which is logically possible and cannot contain anything which is not. This does not mean that it contains, or must contain, all that is logically possible. It means that any x it contains, or may contain, must be logically possible. X's logical possibility is a necessary condition of its being contained in the world.

But no sense can be given to the corresponding terms ‘ethically possible’ and ‘ethically impossible’. Ethical principles do not determine the possibility or impossibility of anything they are relevant to; rather, they determine its desirability or undesirability. Of course, they are not relevant to anything and everything, but only to certain types of things, like individuals, their groups, their actions, motives, intentions, attitudes, plans and policies, projects and projections, etc. Let us then speak of ethically desirable and undesirable things, that is, things which are in accordance with, or violative of, ethical principles, and not of ethically possible and impossible things.

Introduction

Although at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula geographically, Bulgaria was politically isolated from the region for most of the twentieth century. Until the end of the Second World War, this isolation was mainly the result of the Bulgarian political elite's irredentism aimed at restoring the state borders outlined in the San Stefano treaty (Map 1). When the communists came to power after the Second World War, they proclaimed a complete break from pre-war irredentism: the work of pre-war writers, historians and other scholars promoting irredentist views was denounced and withdrawn from circulation; military marches and patriotic songs were banned because they included references to territories belonging to neighbouring Balkan states and the communist authorities accepted the territorial status quo of the Balkan region agreed to after the Second World War.3 But, despite these political efforts, Bulgaria continued to remain politically isolated from the Balkans, even in the communist period. The Soviet Union did not support initiatives aimed at promoting multilateral cooperation between the Balkan states because it feared that through such cooperation, Moscow would lose political control over Bulgarian politics.

It is true that there have been some occasions when the Bulgarian communist regime participated in initiatives that promoted multilateral cooperation in the Balkans. Immediately after the Second World War, the BCP was part of an ill-fated attempt to create a Bulgarian–Yugoslav federal state, with a view to its eventually including other Balkan countries.

The History of the Debate

The 50s and 60s saw radical changes in the very conception of civil liberties in nations all over the world. On the one hand, there were western nations like USA, where people started recognising the injustices that have been inflicted on minorities and felt the need to make up for these years of injustice. On the other hand, there were nations like India, which were just coming out of colonial rule and were feeling the need to recast the entire social network by removing discriminatory practices from society, which proved to be real obstacles to the progress of the newly formed nation. This was done again by making up for years of oppressive practices against socially disadvantaged sections like women, backward castes and tribes, and minorities. It was felt that the country could not progress as an independent developing nation if a large section of the population still lived under social oppression. Statesmen and builders of constitutions all over the world started speaking about preferential treatment or reservation policies, or what is known as ‘affirmative action’. All these involve positive steps taken by governments to increase the representation of socially discriminated sections of people like women, minorities, ethnic or racial groups or castes in areas of employment, education and business, from which they have been historically excluded. This affirmative action seemed to be at that point of history as a morally commendable effort towards rendering compensatory justice to sections of people who have for generations been subjected to abject discrimination, oppression and injustice.

In 2005 Irina Hristova, a successful Bulgarian journalist in one of the national dailies, told me about her exasperation with reading a recent article in the newspaper Trud, one of the most widely read publications in Bulgaria. The article was by Anton Donchev, a well-known writer, who argued that despite suggestions that Bulgarian children today need to study English but prefer to read Terry Pratchett instead of old Bulgarian children's books, the study of Bulgarian language and literature in the schools was more important than ever. In Irina's words, Donchev insisted that ‘we need to have our Bulgarian passports close to our hearts as we enter the EU' and ‘ had this nasty, jingoist, awful rhetoric’. Irina ‘ got scared’ after reading this, because she realized how popular such rhetoric is, considering that it is typical of Trud and considering that this newspaper has one of the highest circulations in the country:

This chapter looks at the position of young cultural producers, such as Irina, and investigates how they negotiated the tension between Bulgarian national identity and European belonging on the eve of Bulgaria's accession into the European Union in 2007. ‘Europe’ impacts the Bulgarian context, not just through actual political and economic interaction with the EU, but also as a mental concept that can be strategically mobilized by social agents to improve their life chances.

From the studies in this book it is clear that the process of Europeanization that Bulgaria has undergone in its quest to join the EU has profoundly influenced the development of the country's political, economic and social life in many ways. Bulgaria is now a full member of the EU, but this does not mean that Europeanization has finished. As the introduction of this book suggested, Europeanization should be seen as a wider process which has the ultimate aim of effecting widespread convergence between Bulgaria and what the elites of the country perceive to be Europe. Yet, as this book has also shown, Europe is not a static unchanging concept. Over the years it has mutated into various guises to incorporate both external changes and domestic needs. However, as long as Bulgaria's elite are attracted by external political, economic and social models of development and as long as Europe is seen as being the/or part of the global locomotive of modernization, then the process of Europeanization will continue.

EU accession was therefore a landmark in the country's post-communist Europeanization, but not an end in itself. Convergence requires Bulgaria to take yet further steps. One of these is joining the passport-free Schengen zone, which has already seen 25 European states systematically remove border controls. Bulgaria, which shares lengthy borders with three non-EU states, Turkey, Serbia and the FYROM, is scheduled to join the zone along with Romania on 1 March 2011.

The above is a statement made by a ‘patient’ in a psychiatric hospital. The ‘patient’, whom we cannot name due to a certain code of confidentiality, had been under a long period of treatment in the same psychiatric hospital. Every time the ‘patient’ was called for an interview with the psychiatrist, he came with a small notebook. The notebook contained pages of ‘incoherent’ ramblings from which he would try to read out excerpts (only excerpts) for us. Each time the ‘patient’ made a demonstration of his ‘psychosis’ in an explicit manner, the number and dose of medicines increased. In the subsequent sessions the ‘patient’ appeared more groggy and slurred. But every time the ‘patient’ looked capable of continuing his (broken) dialogue with the psychiatrist … continue the dialogue in the hope of establishing his sanity. Until, finally, somewhat in exasperation the ‘patient’ made the above statement.

What would the psychiatrist do? How would s/he respond to the charge? The doctor-patient relation (here the relation between the ‘psychiatrist’ and the ‘mentally ill’ or the more fashionable ‘mentally challenged’) has been an area of intense debate. The doctor has been described as the expert, godlike or godsend, who bestows health or life. The patient is said to be a layperson, who entrusts faith, belief and the authority in the doctor to make decisions and judgments on his/her behalf.

In this paper I would like to examine the presuppositions of moral relativism and suggest that moral relativism, like any other relativism, does not hold good because of certain conceptual oddities involved in it. To argue that moral values are relative to cultures and societies and that morality is culture-variant is wrong because there are moral values which cut across all cultures and societies. Moral ideals and principles are not products of culture because culture itself presupposes them. Hence it is more appropriate to argue that morality has a core that does not change with history and culture.

What is Moral Relativism?

Moral relativism is the moral theory that says that moral values are of cultural origin and that they are relative to the cultures in which they are expressed. That is to say, moral values are culture-variant and they cannot be shared by all cultures. This argument regarding the nature and origin of moral values admits the relativity of moral ideals and values and reduces them to certain cultural practices or at best to some cultural ideals which are specific to some historical contexts. This is how cultural relativism has been identified with moral relativism in recent times. (Matilal 1994)

The strongest argument for moral relativism is that moral values are mancentric and that they arise due to historical and cultural needs of mankind. Thus moral values are no exception to the general historical and cultural situation which controls and conditions our life.

Albert Einstein believed imagination was more important than knowledge. Unfortunately, most museums do not nurture imagination despite mission statements to the contrary. They obsess with the transmission of knowledge which is the very lowest level of learning in Bloom's pyramid (Fig. I.1). This broadside is not to say that museums lack imagination; it is simply to say that even the best ones stop short of becoming part of the imaginative process. Once a visitor leaves the typical exhibition, there is no trace of his or her ever having entered it, guest books notwithstanding. Fortunately, the new information technologies can change all that. Data sets can be generated on the interaction of people with the exhibits and, more importantly, with one another.

The Introduction was inspired in part by an unsatisfying experience at the museum El Morro in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Let us now look at a satisfying experience which, nonetheless, also inspires us as to what we should not do. On 3 April 2007, Carlos Muñiz-Osorio, the research assistant for this anthology, and I went to Bunjilaka, The Aboriginal Centre at the Melbourne Museum in Australia. Then showing was the exhibition “Two Laws: Indigenous Knowledge, Law and Property.” It begins in a sitting area below a triptych of three large plasma TVs.

One of the great questions of our time is how to promote global economic development, while preserving the biological and cultural diversity of “this fragile earth, our island home.” The international debate over how to reconcile these two seemingly conflicting goals has increasingly focused on the interplay among three international agreements that have entered into force during the past 15 years. An examination of the moral foundations of those three agreements can greatly illuminate the Rawlsian notion of “procedural justice,” and the “fair and equitable” objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), as already cited by Manuel Ruiz (Chapter 3) and Tomme Young (Chapter 4).

The CBD was opened for signature at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. As elaborated elsewhere in this volume, it seeks to promote the conservation, sustainable use, facilitated access to, and the equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources. As a part of this overarching objective, Article 8(j) specifically calls upon its members to “respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, and to promote their wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices.”

Introduction

In November 1989 Bulgaria started its transition from Soviet-type state socialism to parliamentary democracy and market economy. The following years confronted Bulgarian society with many hardships and challenges. Bulgarian Turks, as part of this society (they are about 700, 000, or just under 10 per cent of the population) not only faced the same difficulties, but also encountered even greater problems. The reasons for this are complex, but key among them was the socioeconomic character of the transition process. Thus, with a decreased role, the state could no longer direct economic development, and spent less money on social and national programs. Still other reasons are historic – the beginning of the transition period marked the end of the so-called ‘revival process’. This was the name communist propaganda gave to the campaign, which started at the end of 1984 and was the most serious attempt of the communist government to assimilate Bulgarian Turks by depriving them of their identity. Because of these historic reminiscences, the situation of Bulgarian Turks during the transition period can be properly analysed only when their experiences during the ‘revival process’ are taken into account.

Historical Background

Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Period Up to the Communist Takeover

The roots of the problem are deep in the past. At the end of fourteenth century, the Ottoman Turks conquered the Balkans. The medieval Bulgarian state ceased to exist and for 500 years, Bulgarians had to live within the borders of the mighty Ottoman Empire.

Let me start with the truism that gender is a political, cultural and epistemic category, as well as a historical one. The key feature of gender is concerned with relations, as R. Connell defines it as ‘the structure of social relations that centers on the reproductive arena’. In order to read the post-communist situation using the language of gender, we have to keep in mind all dimensions of this category. Let me also clarify at the beginning, that I will attempt to focus only on gender identity, keeping in mind that identities have multiple dimensions including ethnic, educational, generational, etc. Moreover, the concept of ‘identity’ can be defined as a twofold process: on the one hand, to identify oneself means to take up positions which are imposed on the subject, whose representations are constituted through ideological discourses; on the other hand, identification means expending energy and investment to perform these positions. The second key concept I am using, that of ‘social policy’, can be defined as a set of policies and measures directed toward implementation of the basic principles of the social system. These principles reflect complicated and dynamic relationships between men's and women's public and private roles, the state and broad social communities.

Taking into account this ambivalent approach to identification – considered both as artificially enforced and as achieved ‘selves’ – I would like to point out two main levels of gender identity-building in the post-communist period.