Author : Kate Nash
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 235 pages
File Size : 49,57 MB
Release : 2015-07-30
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 052119749X
A sociological approach to human rights, showing how rights language is used to address structural injustices around the world.
Author : William T. Armaline
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 140 pages
File Size : 18,97 MB
Release : 2015-02-03
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0745688187
Why do powerful states like the U.S., U.K., China, and Russia repeatedly fail to meet their international legal obligations as defined by human rights instruments? How does global capitalism affect states’ ability to implement human rights, particularly in the context of global recession, state austerity, perpetual war, and environmental crisis? How are political and civil rights undermined as part of moves to impose security and surveillance regimes? This book presents a framework for understanding human rights as a terrain of struggle over power between states, private interests, and organized, “bottom-up” social movements. The authors develop a critical sociology of human rights focusing on the concept of the human rights enterprise: the process through which rights are defined and realized. While states are designated arbiters of human rights according to human rights instruments, they do not exist in a vacuum. Political sociology helps us to understand how global neoliberalism and powerful non-governmental actors (particularly economic actors such as corporations and financial institutions) deeply affect states’ ability and likelihood to enforce human rights standards. This book offers keen insights for understanding rights claims, and the institutionalization of, access to, and restrictions on human rights. It will be invaluable to human rights advocates, and undergraduate and graduate students across the social sciences.
Author : Mark Frezzo
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 187 pages
File Size : 23,60 MB
Release : 2014-12-23
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0745686680
Long the arena of philosophers, legal scholars, and political scientists, the interdisciplinary study of human rights has recently seen an influx of sociologists. Why is this so, and how do sociologists contribute to our understanding of human rights in the contemporary world? In this landmark new text, Mark Frezzo explores the sociological perspective on human rights, which he shows to be uniquely placed to illuminate the economic, political, social, and cultural conditions under which human rights norms and laws are devised, interpreted, implemented, and enforced. Sociologists treat human rights not as immutable attributes but as highly contested claims that vary across historical time and geographic space, and investigate how human rights can serve either to empower or to constrain social actors, from large societies to small communities and identity groups. Frezzo guides readers through the scholarly, pedagogical, and practical applications of a sociological view of major debates such as foundationalism vs. social constructionism, universalism vs. particularism, globalism vs. localism, and collective vs. individual rights. This cutting-edge text will appeal to students of sociology, political science, law, development, and social movements, and all interested in the nature, scope, and applicability of human rights in the twenty-first century.
Author : Kiran Kaur Grewal
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 231 pages
File Size : 13,41 MB
Release : 2016-06-23
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1317015193
This book examines discourses of rights and practices of resistance in post-conflict societies, exploring the interaction between the international human rights framework and different actors seeking political and social change. Presenting detailed new case studies from Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Kosovo, it reveals the necessity of social scientific interventions in the field of human rights. The author shows how a shift away from the realm of normative political or legal theory towards a more sociological analysis promises a better understanding of both the limits of current human rights approaches and possible sites of potential. Considering the diverse ways in which human rights are enacted and mobilised, The Socio-Political Practice of Human Rights engages with major sites of tension and debate, examining the question of whether human rights are universal or culturally relative; their relationship to forms of economic and political domination; the role of law as a mechanism for social change and the ways in which the language of human rights facilitates or closes sites of radical resistance. By situating these debates in specific contexts, this book concludes by proposing new ways of theorizing human rights. Empirically grounded and offering an alternate framework for understanding the fluid and ambiguous operation of power within the theory and practice of human rights, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology, law and politics with interests in gender, resistance, international law, human rights and socio-legal discourse.
Author : Judith Blau
Publisher : SAGE Publications
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 18,15 MB
Release : 2011-05-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1412991382
This anthology examines the implications that human rights have for the social sciences. It discusses how the 1789 Bill of Rights of the US Constitution should be expanded to encompass fundamental human rights, as most other constitutions already have been. This collection has special relevance for sociologists because many implicitly assume positive human rights in their studies of, for example, health care and education, and yet do not make these assumptions explicit. This volume also discusses the relevance of social and political movements. The discussions in this text allow readers to compare constitutions, examine international human rights treaties, and delve into countries' histories. Sociology and Human Rights is ideal for engaging in comparative studies of countries' politics and aspects of international cooperation. Each chapter ends with discussion questions to challenge students to think critically about human rights in the United States and around the world.
Author : Elisabeth S. Clemens
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 142 pages
File Size : 33,73 MB
Release : 2024-05-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1509561919
With an entire discipline devoted to political science, what is distinctive about political sociology? This concise book explains what a sociological perspective brings to our understanding of the emergence, reproduction, and transformation of different forms of political order. Crucially, political sociology expands the field of view to the politics that happen in other social settings – in the family, at work, in civic associations – as well as the ways in which social attributes such as class, religion, age, race, and gender shape patterns of political participation and the distribution of political power. Political sociology grapples with these issues across an enormous range of historical and geographic settings, from intimate to geo-political scales. It requires an analytic toolkit that includes concepts of power, identities and inequalities, social closure, civil society, and modes of political action. Using these central concepts, this updated edition of What is Political Sociology? discusses the major forms of political order, processes of regime formation and revolution, the social bases for political participation, policy formation as well as feedbacks, social movements and social change, and the possibilities for new forms of digital and transnational politics. In sum, the book offers an insightful introduction to this core perspective on social life.
Author : Patricia Hynes
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 275 pages
File Size : 15,95 MB
Release : 2014-02-25
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1317985311
Sociology and Human Rights: New Engagements is the first collection to focus on the contribution sociological approaches can make to analysis of human rights. Taking forward the sociology of human rights which emerged from the 1990s, it presents innovative analyses of global human rights struggles by new and established authors. The collection includes a range of new work addressing issues such as genocide in relation to indigenous peoples, rights-based approaches in development work, trafficking of children, and children’s rights in relation to political struggles for the decriminalisation of same-sex sexual activity in India. It examines contexts ranging from Rwanda and South Korea to Northern Ireland and the city of Barcelona. The collection as a whole will be of interest to students and academics working in various disciplines such as politics, law and social policy, and to practitioners working on human rights for various governmental and non-governmental organisations, as well as to sociologists seeking to develop understanding of the sociology of human rights. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of Human Rights.
Author : Jack Donnelly
Publisher : Westview Press
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 38,31 MB
Release : 2012-07-22
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0813345022
International Human Rights examines the ways in which states and other international actors have addressed human rights since the end of World War II. This unique textbook features substantial attention to theory, history, international and regional institutions, and the role of transnational actors in the protection and promotion of human rights. Its purpose is to explore the difficult and contentious politics of human rights, and how those political dimensions have been addressed at the national, regional, and especially international levels. The fifth edition is substantially updated, rewritten, and revised throughout, including updates on multilateral institutions (especially the UN's Universal Periodic Review process and the Human Rights Council's Special Procedures mechanisms), regional systems, human rights in foreign policy (including a specific chapter on U.S. foreign policy), humanitarian intervention and the "responsibility to protect," and (anti)terrorism and human rights. The book also includes a new chapter on the unity (indivisibility) of human rights. Chapters include discussion questions, case studies for in-depth examination of topics (including new case studies on the U.N. Special Procedures, Myanmar, and Israeli settlements in West-Bank Palestine), and ten "problems" (including new entries on the war in Syria and hierarchies between human rights) tailored to promote classroom discussion.
Author : Anthony Woodiwiss
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 194 pages
File Size : 14,1 MB
Release : 2012-11-12
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1134236638
Are human rights part of the problem or part of the solution in the current 'clash of civilizations'? Drawing on a hitherto neglected body of work in classical social theory and combining it with ideas derived from Barrington Moore, Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault, Woodiwiss poses and answers the questions: How did human rights become entangled with power relations? How might the nature of this entanglement be altered so that human rights better serve the global majority? In answering these questions, he explains how and why rights discourse developed in such distinctive ways in four key locations: Britain, the United States, Japan and in the UN. On this basis he provides, for the first time, a general sociological account of the development of international human rights discourse, which represents a striking challenge to current thinking and policy.
Author : Mahmood Monshipouri
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 30,81 MB
Release : 2020-04-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1000065731
This book elucidates why human rights still matter in contemporary global affairs, and what can lead to better protection of international human rights in a post-liberal order. It blends theoretical, empirical, and normative perspectives, while providing much-needed analysis in light of the perils of populism, authoritarianism, and toxic nationalism, as well as highlighting the hopes with which people around the world view human rights in the new millennium. Systematically combining theoretical perspectives from across the disciplines with numerous case studies, it demonstrates not only the complexities of the domestic conditions involved, but also the ways in which human dignity can be preserved and promoted during periods of rapid change and uncertainty. Finally, the book addresses the question of how to protect human rights in such a world in which the active promotion of democratic values and enforcement of human rights may not be necessarily aligned with evolving economic and geopolitical interests of many great and diverse powers on the global scene. As such, it is a timely intervention for human rights as a concept as it has been attacked and eroded by the instability in our world today. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of human rights in politics, law, philosophy, sociology, and history and to humanitarian bodies, practitioners, and policy makers.
