I think you have to look at government as a product of culture, and I think you have to look at culture as a functioning system. It isn't a question of what the majority have decided. It is a question of how things fit together.
The problem with a "it's just the way it is" argument is that it prevents any possible critiques across cultural boundaries. That's not what I am proposing. I think you have to start from the way it is, look at how things fit together, and then find problems with this. However such a discussion is incomplete unless you can point to why people generally accept something and what incentives they have to accept it.
Let's take a rather major example: female genital cutting in Sudan. It's very easy to just say "this is oppression of women!" but that doesn't really work. A much more thorough review would include:
1. The very real problems reproductive-wise and health-wise this causes, but also
2. The fact that this practice is a way of marking privileged socio-economic status, and therefore giving it up is essentially placing women who would forgo the practice outside of the upper classes, and
3. The fact that this practice has become in the wake of Western criticism a way of circling the wagons cuturally, and a symbol of standing up to perceived colonialism and thus confers additional positive status that way.
I think you have to look at government as a product of culture, and I think you have to look at culture as a functioning system. It isn't a question of what the majority have decided. It is a question of how things fit together.
The problem with a "it's just the way it is" argument is that it prevents any possible critiques across cultural boundaries. That's not what I am proposing. I think you have to start from the way it is, look at how things fit together, and then find problems with this. However such a discussion is incomplete unless you can point to why people generally accept something and what incentives they have to accept it.
Let's take a rather major example: female genital cutting in Sudan. It's very easy to just say "this is oppression of women!" but that doesn't really work. A much more thorough review would include:
1. The very real problems reproductive-wise and health-wise this causes, but also
2. The fact that this practice is a way of marking privileged socio-economic status, and therefore giving it up is essentially placing women who would forgo the practice outside of the upper classes, and
3. The fact that this practice has become in the wake of Western criticism a way of circling the wagons cuturally, and a symbol of standing up to perceived colonialism and thus confers additional positive status that way.