A new special issue on the Sociology of Human Rights released

The International Journal of Human Rights

Volume 16, Issue 8, 2012

Foreword

Patricia Hynes, Michele Lamb, Damien Short & Matthew Waites
pages 1123-1126

Understanding torture: the strengths and the limits of social theory

Lydia Morris
pages 1127-1141

Genocide and settler colonialism: can a Lemkin-inspired genocide perspective aid our understanding of the Palestinian situation?

Haifa Rashed & Damien Short
pages 1142-1169

‘In countries like that…’ moral boundaries and implicatory denial in response to human rights appeals

Irene Bruna Seu

The soldier, human rights and the military covenant: a permissible state of exception?

Ross McGarry, Gabe Mythen & Sandra Walklate

Climate change and the human rights challenge: extending justice beyond the borders of the nation state

Tracey Skillington
pages 1196-1212

Causes and consequences of international migration: sociological evidence for the right to mobility

Tanya Golash-Boza & Cecilia Menjívar
pages 1213-1227

Corporate social responsibility: a duplicitous distraction?

Nicholas Connolly
pages 1228-1249

‘You have a right to be nourished and fed, but do I have a right to make sure you eat your food?’: children's rights and food practices in residential care

Samantha Punch, Ian McIntosh & Ruth Emond
pages 1250-1262

CFP- Social Practice of Human Rights: Charting the Frontiers of Research and Advocacy (Oct 3-5, 2013)

Call for Papers

Since the passage of the Universal Declaration sixty-five years ago, the idea of human rights has undergone a dramatic evolution: from rhetorical flourish to institutional embrace, from moral ascendancy to mainstream status. The human rights community—its scholars, practitioners, advocates, and organizations—constitutes an integral component of international society and regards itself as the standard bearer of normative behavior. Development and humanitarian organizations converge around a rights-based approach to their work. Multinational corporations are increasingly sensitive to the human rights impacts of their operations, and philanthropic foundations shape human rights initiatives around the globe. Broad consensus preordains human rights actors as virtuous and their calling honorable, but cultivates a certainty about mission that can inhibit introspection, and prioritizes, rather than challenges, prevailing assumptions. Seeking a more profound impact, the human rights community is positioned to transcend its good intentions, account for its actions, and navigate the demands of implementing universal values in a complex world. Academic research plays a key role in this respect.

It has now been fifteen years since the research program in Transnational Advocacy Networks began to shape a generation of scholars and scholarship. After two decades of debates over definitions, origins, and foundations, this area of study focuses on the pragmatic side of human rights and proposes models and categories to capture changing dynamics in the sphere of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As the literature in this area grows richer and more robust, the academy is at an auspicious moment to convene around this theme and examine the social practice of human rights: to expose human rights to a degree of self-reflection appropriate to its resources, reach, and prominence. Previously, critical analysis directed at human rights originated among antagonists; this new direction in research provides space for constructive critique to come from within the community. The “social practice of human rights” focuses attention on advocacy and NGOs by exploring the expressions of human rights in the context of those actors tasked with translating abstract moral values into concrete matter.

Submissions pertaining to this topic may address questions that include, but are not limited to:

• What issues constitute human rights issues? Who decides and on what basis?
• What criteria should be applied to validate new rights claims? Is “human rights” always the best means of framing broad objectives of social justice?
• How has the emergence of new actors redefined human rights engagement? 
• What determines best practices in advocacy? What calculations are involved in selecting targets and venues? How do organizational structure and resources impact strategy?
• How can advocates avoid unintended consequences? What standards of accountability apply to human rights actors?
• How do NGOs address systemic causes of violations and confront future challenges? 
• What is the relationship between human rights, humanitarianism, development, and environmentalism?
• Can activists utilize social media to foster communities of solidarity? What effects do atrocity photographs in visual culture have on representations of distant suffering? 
• What is the place of art, music, and language in affecting and transmitting human rights ideas? How do articulations of cultural rights take shape?
• What ethical demands and principles of conduct govern human rights organizations?

2nd Annual College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences Forum on Human Rights “Human Rights Locally and Globally”

Call for Proposals from Undergraduate and Graduate Student Researchers

2nd Annual College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences Forum on Human Rights
“Human Rights Locally and Globally”

Spring 2013

March 1, 2013
Virginia Tech

Overview
Through the institutionalization of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights, the discourse of human rights has had some six decades to spread throughout the globe, largely through a system of state actors. Meanwhile, human beings have wrestled with ideas and practices of human rights for millennia within their respective communities as well as between distinct communities. While some issues focus on international law, state violations, and processes of globalization, others look at individuals, families, and communities that are working to create structures of human rights on the ground. It is clear in the 21st century that human rights are both local and global, are here at home and abroad – each affecting each other. People and communities at home and abroad are inventing their futures in dignity and self-determination. We can learn from them and they can learn from our research. Bringing the best undergraduate and graduate research in the region together for a one-day conference, “Human Rights Locally and Globally,” will serve as a space where we can investigate these issues across multiple disciplines.

Possible topics include, but certainly are not limited to:


·      Human rights in our own backyard

·      The social psychology of dignity

·      The role of human rights in peace and violence prevention

·      Human rights cities

·      Participatory Action Research and community empowerment

·      Date rape and silence regimes

·      Societalperceptions of human rights

·      New media and political mobilization

·      Race and human rights

·      Ethics and cognition

·      Spaces of human rights

·      Writing as resistance

·      Human rights in the U.S. election cycles

·      Constructing human rights identities

·      New social movements

·      Agriculture, human rights, and resistance

·      Human rights and methodology

Keynote Speaker
The Keynote Speaker will be Keri E. Iyall Smith, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Suffolk University in Boston, MA. Dr. Smith’s research explores the intersections between human rights doctrine, the state, and indigenous peoples in the context of a globalizingsociety. She has published articles on hybridity and world society, human rights, indigenous peoples and teaching sociology. She is the author of States and Indigenous Movements (Routledge), editor of Sociology of Globalization (Westview Press), co-editor with Judith R. Blau of Public Sociologies Reader (Rowman & Littlefield), and co-editor with Patricia Leavy of Hybrid Identities: Theoretical and Empirical Examinations (Brill and Haymarket). She is a former vice-President of Sociologists Without Borders and co-editor of Societies without Borders: Human Rights and the Social Sciences..

Submission Guidelines
Interested undergraduate or graduate student researchers should submit a proposal to Professor David Brunsma (brunsmad@vt.edu<mailto:brunsmad@vt.edu>) by January 15, 2013. Proposals should include name, email, university, degree program,year of completion, faculty mentor’s name, and a 250-500-word proposal. The proposal should include purpose statement, research questions, methods, andconclusions, etc., in order that the committee might get a good sense of the research. Proposals will be vetted by the Working Group for the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Virginia Tech. Participants will be notified of the committee’s decision by December 15, 2012. If you are unsure whether your research fits the conference theme, please do not hesitate to contact the organizer, Professor David Brunsma (brunsmad@vt.edu<mailto:brunsmad@vt.edu>).

The Conference
The 2nd Annual College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences Research Forum on Human Rights, “Human Rights Locally and Globally,” will take place on the campus of Virginia Tech located in Blacksburg Virginia. All the papers and creative works will be presented on Friday, March 1, 2013. Pending funding, lodging may be provided for presenters travelling from other universities. The most promising papers and creative works will be considered for possible publication in Societies Without Borders: Human Rights and the Social Sciences and/or Philologia, the journal of undergraduate research published by the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech.

We very much hope you will consider submitting and/or attending this conference.

Dr. David L. Brunsma
Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology
Virginia Tech
560 McBryde Hall (0137)
Blacksburg, VA 24061
brunsmad@vt.edu
Executive Officer, Southern Sociological Society
(http://www.southernsociologicalsociety.org/)
Co-Editor of Societies Without Borders: Human Rights and the Social Sciences
(http://societieswithoutborders.org/)
Past Chair, Section of Racial and Ethnic Minorities, American Sociological Association
(http://www2.asanet.org/sectionrem/)
Race and Ethnicity Section Editor, Sociology Compass
(http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/sociology/section_home?section=soco-race)
Treasurer, Sociologists Without Borders
(http://www.sociologistswithoutborders.org/)
Co-Editor of The Handbook of Sociology and Human Rights
(http://www.paradigmpublishers.com/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=298828)
(573) 355-0599 [cell]

"I may never prove what I know to be true, but I know that I still have to try." -Dream Theatre