1. From the Introduction to UNESCO, Human Rights: Comments and Interpretations, London: Allan Wingate 1949, pp. 10-11; cited in Abdullahi A. An-Na'im, "Towards a Cross-Cultural Approach", 28-9.

2. Jack Donnely, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, Ithaca/London: Cornell: U.P., 1989, pp. 28-37.

3. Yasuaki Onuma, "In Quest of Intercivilizational Human Rights", page 1, also n. 4.

4. Which is why Locke had to introduce a restrictive adjective to block this option of waiver, when he spoke of "inalienable rights". The notion of inalienability had no place in earlier natural right discourse, because this had no option of waiver.

5. I have talked about substantially similar issues in somewhat different terms in the last chapter of The Ethics of Authenticity, and also in Philosophical Arguments, chapter "Liberalism and the Public Sphere".

6. That is what is so dangerous to public order in cases like the recent O. J. Simpson trial, which both show up and further entrench a deep lack of respect and trust in the judicial process.

7. There is a Western analogue in the positive part played by Juan Carlos during the coup in Madrid in 1964.

8. See Stanley Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer, Cambridge U. P., 1976.

9. See the discussion in John Girling, Thailand: Society and Politics, Cornell University Press 1981, pp. 154-7. Frank Reynolds in his "Legitimation and Rebellion: Thailand's Civic Religion and the Student Uprising of October, 1973", in Bardwell L. Smith, ed., Religion and Legitimation of Power in Thailand, Laos, and Burma, Chambersburg, PA: Anima Books, 1978, discusses the use by the student demonstrators of the symbols of the "Nation, Religion, Monarchy".

10. Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka, Princeton University Press, 1988, chs. 6 & 7.

11. Saneh Chamarik, Democracy and Development: A Cultural Perspective, Bangkok: Local Development Institute, 1993, p. 137.

12. "Innerweltliche Askese"; see The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr. Talcott Parsons.

13. The reform strand which I am describing generally takes a positive view of the historic dhammaraja tradition of the Thai polity, suitably re-interpreted. But they want to distinguish this quite sharply from the other classical tradition, which they reject, that which sees the king as devaraja. This view, of Hindu origin, sees the king as ensuring through his ritual action harmony between polity and cosmos. The emphasis is on ceremony rather than on right rule. Many Buddhist intellectuals today want to distinguish the Sukhotai period as their paradigm from the later Ayutthaya régime, which they claim introduced elements of the Hindu devaraja tradition under alien Cambodian influence. These ancient régimes still have powerful symbolic resonance in today's debates. See Peter Jackson, "Thai Buddhist Identity: Debates on the Thaiphum Phra Ruang", in Craig Reynolds, ed., National Identity and its Defenders: Thailand 1939-1989, Clayton, Victoria: Monash Papers on Southeast Asia no 25. 1991, pp. 191-232.

14. See Sulak Sivaraksa, Seeds of Peace: A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society, Berkeley and Bangkok: Parallax Press, 1992, chapter 9.

15. See Sulak, op. cit., especially Part Two.

16. See the discussion in Vitit Muntaborn & Charles Taylor, Roads to Democracy: Human Rights and Democratic development in Thailand, Bangkok and Montréal, International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, July 1994, part 3.

17. A good example is Pierre Bourdieu's description of the "correspondences" between the male-female difference and different colours, cardinal points, and oppositions like wet-dry, up-down, etc. See his Outline of a Theory of Practice.

18. See his "Towards a Cross-Cultural Approach to Defining International Standards of Human Rights: A Meaning of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment", in Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, ed., Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992, chapter 1.

19. Paris: Gallimard, 1976.

20. Tocqueville was already aware of the change, when he commented a passage from Mme de Sévigny in La Démocratie en Amérique.

21. See Sources of the Self, Harvard University Press, 1989, chapter 13.

22. I have discussed at greater length the two opposed understandings of the rise of modernity which are invoked here in "Modernity and the Rise of the Public Sphere", in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values.