Editorial: Human Rights, Pragmatic Solidarity, And Behavior Science

Abstract

In an increasingly globalized world, human rights abuses remain ubiquitous. Every violation of human rights is a matter of individual or collective behavior, and most are embedded in interlocking cultural practices constituting structural violence. Behavior and cultural analytic scientists ought to have a great deal to say about how these occur, but none is simple, and depth of critical and contextual analysis is required to understand where the actions that violate human rights originate and how they are maintained. Solidarity is a willingness to make respectful common cause with the vulnerable, but for Paul Farmer, Harvard anthropologist, physician, and human rights activist, pragmatic solidarity goes beyond this by contributing through the active exercise of one's power and privileged status as scientist, scholar and/or practitioner toward ensuring that the rights of the vulnerable are honored, actively focusing one's work on relief of suffering in ways that are consonant with the vision of the vulnerable themselves. One final and humbling query emerges from all of this for each of us: is there more that I could and ought to be doing in my own work to act in pragmatic solidarity with those most in need? Giving Paul Farmer the last word, "Intellectual recognition is only a necessary first step toward pragmatic solidarity, that is, toward taking a stand by the side of those who suffer most from an increasingly hard 'new world order'." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).