Conclusions

Abstract

Passivity Generation has investigated what happens when the public is informed about human rights violations, and the actions (or inaction) resulting from this knowledge. What happens between knowledge and action has usually been conceptualised as a single gap, but I contend (Seu, 2010) that such conceptualisation is over-simplistic and misleading. Rather, several gaps can be identified between knowledge and action. The first is between the actual human rights violation and its communication to the public (through media or NGOs’ communications). Another is between this communication and its reception by the public (this includes the public’s understanding of the communication and their cognitive and emotional reactions) and a further gap is between public reception of the information and their (in)action.

Could one feasibly entertain the vision of a global human community in which an obligation to come to the assistance of others in danger or distress was widely felt as amongst the most powerful of imperatives, moving people to action when the risks of acting were small to non-existent, making a serious demand on their consciences — on their day-to-day practical deliberations — even when the risks were greater than that, and making of shame something more than a ‘metaphysical’ shadow, more than a post hoc individual sentiment following failure to act; making shame, and of the foretaste of it, an effective, mobilizing norm of social life?

(Geras, 1998:57)