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Assuming that human rights advocacy still largely hales from the West, Jack Donnelly asserts that it would gain additional legitimacy by recognizing the differences between Western cultures and others. Advocating "special caution and sensitivity," he calls for "relative universality ." Other scholars advocate similar views. At the same time Donnelly agrees with the new anthropological insight about the "deeply contested" nature of cultures in the global South, as elsewhere, that in my view makes the recognition of the cultural differences across North-South axis almost impossible. How could Western advocates decide which of the fractions in a given contested culture should be nominated for culturally-sensitive considerations to arrive at "relative universality ?" A significant section of his theory explains how universalism can be relativized in "interpretation" and "implementation." I contend that scholars, exploring the notion of "tempered" universality, should focus on the violating nation-states and posit their theories on the corpus of the available documentations and analyses. Hypothetical examples without references to specific human rights reports cannot be practically useful for monitoring and advocacy.

A recent trend in human rights scholarship reflects the influence of the cultural relativist claims that have often been advanced by the political elites of the non-Western authoritarian states. This scholarly trend in which universalism meets cultural relativism gives birth to the notion of "chastened universalism," or "tempered universalism." The Politics of Women's Rights in Iran , by anthropologist Arzoo Osanloo, fits well in this trendy genre. I read these ethnographical studies with interest—and for an aftereffect. What comes after such knowledge? As an un-chastened advocate of universalism, I use the standards derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights model. How should I modify my approach, or methodology, in analyzing and presenting the violations that take place in a contemporary nation-state like Iran? These ethnographical explorations call for a retooling of human rights discourse and practice. My conclusion is, however, that these explorations hardly provide meaningful guidelines, or even vague recommendations, that could be of practical value to human rights monitors and researchers who must remain focused on the occurring violations, with the victims always in sight.

In the June 2009 election debacle, the Islamic Republic of Iran faced a legitimacy crisis the like of which it has not experienced since its creation in 1979. I offer my reflections on the country's class-cultural divide. A significant sociocultural realignment has taken place in recent years indicating that the official Iran of the devout multitudes may not be a majority, as compared to the "other" Iran of a largely modern and pragmatically secular citizenry. I argue that neither President Ahmadinejad's class-based political views nor his cultural grandstanding is progressive. The "masses" mobilized by religious fundamentalism play into the hands of national demagogues. I offer my reflections on the pragmatic secular attitudes that shaped the reactions to the June electoral fraud. I argue that the Iranian experience seriously undermines the assumption that the future success in building a democratic polity depends on the success of the discursive rediscovering of Islam's humanistic-egalitarian nature. It seems that Muslim theorists offering their new interpretations of Islam are largely left behind by the young Iranians, whose way of life is characterized not so much by their anti-religious ethos as by their practical disposition towards contemporary needs and desires. Finally, I comment on the emerging phenomenon of a citizen seeing herself as a distinct individual and realizing that to preserve a sense of personal worth within the structure of the modern state she needs the state to respect her human rights. An ordinary person can now be heroic merely by virtue of her own individuality: No cultural or nationalist metanarrative; no collectively conceived claims.