Contesting Human Rights

Illustrated with case studies from across the globe, Contesting Human Rights provides an innovative approach to human rights, and examines the barriers and changing pathways to the full realisation of these rights. Presenting a thorough proposal for the reframing of human rights, the volume suggests that new opportunities at, and below, the state level, and creative pathways of global governance can help reconstruct human rights in the face of modern challenges.

Associating social justice with landscape is not new, yet the twenty-first century's heightened threats to landscape and their impact on both human and, more generally, nature's habitats necessitate novel intellectual tools to address such challenges. This book offers that innovative critical thinking framework. The establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, in the aftermath of Second World War atrocities, was an aspiration to guarantee both concrete necessities for survival and the spiritual/emotional/psychological needs that are quintessential to the human experience. While landscape is place, nature and culture specific, the idea transcends nation-state boundaries and as such can be understood as a universal theoretical concept similar to the way in which human rights are perceived. The first step towards the intellectual interface between landscape and human rights is a dynamic and layered understanding of landscape. Accordingly, the 'Right to Landscape' is conceived as the place where the expansive definition of landscape, with its tangible and intangible dimensions, overlaps with the rights that support both life and human dignity, as defined by the UDHR. By expanding on the concept of human rights in the context of landscape this book presents a new model for addressing human rights - alternative scenarios for constructing conflict-reduced approaches to landscape-use and human welfare are generated. This book introduces a rich new discourse on landscape and human rights, serving as a platform to inspire a diversity of ideas and conceptual interpretations. The case studies discussed are wide in their geographical distribution and interdisciplinary in the theoretical situation of their authors, breaking fresh ground for an emerging critical dialogue on the convergence of landscape and human rights.

DIVBrings together essays that examine contestation and contingency in today's human rights politics /div

Demonstrates how the Reagan administration and members of Congress shaped US human rights policy in the late Cold War.

The Asian challenge to the universality of human rights has sparked off intense debate. This volume takes a clear stand for universal rights, both theoretically and empirically, by analysing social and political processes in a number of East and Southeast Asian countries. On the national arenas, Asian values are linked to the struggle between authoritarian and democratic forces, which both tend to convey stereotyped images of the 'west', but with reversed meanings.

Offers a complete empirical account of US government programs, policies, and interventions outside the United States on behalf of the human rights of LGBTQ people. Around the world, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people continue to be threatened, attacked, arrested, tortured, and sometimes executed just for being sexual or gender minorities. Since the final months of the Clinton administration, agencies and officials of the US government have been engaging in programs and projects whose stated purposes are to serve goals of justice and equity for LGBTQ people outside the United States. Because We Are Human gives readers an inside look at US sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) human rights assistance programs. Cynthia Burack explores settings where indigenous and transnational human rights advocates meet to fund and strategize SOGI human rights movements. This book also examines key arguments against these programs, policies, and interventions that originate on both the conservative right and the progressive academic left. Burack ultimately recommends support for a US commitment to SOGI human rights and programs that serve the needs of LGBTQ people. “Thorough and thought-provoking In Because We Are Human, Cynthia Burack’s insights help to shape a smart, comprehensive picture of US involvement in the global fight for LGBTQ rights.” — Foreword Reviews

An examination of the construction of contestation over human remains from a sociological perspective, this work advances an emerging area of academic research, setting the terms of debate, synthesizing disparate ideas, & making sense of a broader cultural focus on dead bodies in the contemporary period.

This book shows how human rights became the primary language for social change in Canada and how a single decade became the locus for that emergence. The author argues that the 1970s was a critical moment in human rights history—one that transformed political culture, social movements, law, and foreign policy. Human Rights in Canada is one of the first sociological studies of human rights in Canada. It explains that human rights are a distinct social practice, and it documents those social conditions that made human rights significant at a particular historical moment. A central theme in this book is that human rights derive from society rather than abstract legal principles. Therefore, we can identify the boundaries and limits of Canada’s rights culture at different moments in our history. Until the 1970s, Canadians framed their grievances with reference to Christianity or British justice rather than human rights. A historical sociological approach to human rights reveals how rights are historically contingent, and how new rights claims are built upon past claims. This book explores governments’ tendency to suppress rights in periods of perceived emergency; how Canada’s rights culture was shaped by state formation; how social movements have advanced new rights claims; the changing discourse of rights in debates surrounding the constitution; how the international human rights movement shaped domestic politics and foreign policy; and much more. In addition to drawing on secondary literature in law, history, sociology, and political science, this study looked to published government documents, litigation and case law, archival research, newspapers, opinion polls, and materials produced by non-governmental organizations.