ABSTRACT
The primitivist nostalgia characteristic of relativist criticisms of human rights is part of a wider antimodernist nostalgia for community. Communitarians and individualists have radically different perspectives on the value of social life in the two types of societies. This chapter presents these different perspectives in summary form. Individualism challenges the routine and valued orderliness of communitarian society. Communitarianism is frequently thought to characterize traditional societies, whereas individualism characterizes modern. Communitarians fear that individual human rights undermine collective obligation. This is a legitimate fear. In modern Third World societies as in modern North America, community is sustained even as traditional modes of life disappear. Human rights are a social fact not only in the Western world, but also internationally. The modern community is spreading as the processes of social change usually called Westernization spread. At the same time, the modern idea of the individual separate from her society is spreading.
