A New Book: Human Rights as Social Construction

Human Rights as Social Construction

Benjamin Gregg

Cambridge University Press - August 2013

Most conceptions of human rights rely on metaphysical or theological assumptions that construe them as possible only as something imposed from outside existing communities. Most people, in other words, presume that human rights come from nature, God, or the United Nations. This book argues that reliance on such putative sources actually undermines human rights. Benjamin Gregg envisions an alternative; he sees human rights as locally developed, freely embraced, and indigenously valid. Human rights, he posits, can be created by the average, ordinary people to whom they are addressed, and that they are valid only if embraced by those to whom they would apply. To view human rights in this manner is to increase the chances and opportunities that more people across the globe will come to embrace them.

Table of Contents 
Part I. This-Worldly Norms, Local Not Universal:
1. Human rights: political not theological
2. Human rights: political not metaphysical
3. Generating universal human rights out of local norms
Part II. This-Worldly Resources for Human Rights as Social Construction:
4. Cultural resources: individuals as authors of human rights
5. Neurobiological resources: emotions and natural altruism in support of human rights
Part III. This-Worldly Means of Advancing the Human-Rights Idea:
6. Translating human rights into local cultural vernaculars
7. Advancing human rights through cognitive re-framing
Part IV. Human Rights, Future Tense: Human Nature and Political Community Reconceived:
8. Human rights via human nature as cultural choice
9. The human-rights state
Part V. Coda:
10. What is lost, and what gained, by human rights as social construction.

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A New Book: The Human Rights Enterprise

The Human Rights Enterprise: Political Sociology, State Power, and Social Movements

William T. Armaline , Davita S. Glasberg and Bandana Purkayastha

Polity Press - September 2014

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 <em>human rights enterprise</em>: 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.

Table of Contents
1. The Human Rights Enterprise and a Critical Sociology of Human Rights
2. Power and the State: Global Economic Restructuring and the Global Recession
3. The Human Rights Enterprise: A Genealogy of Continuing Struggles
4. Private Tyrannies: Rethinking the Rights of “Corporate Citizens”
5. Current Contexts and Implications for Human Rights Praxis

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The real problem with the Canadian Human Rights Museum

Why have we built a $300-million tribute to human rights just a few kilometres away from one of Canada’s most destitute neighbourhoods?

Umut Özsu  

THE STAR.COM - Wed Sep 17 2014

On Sept. 20, more than a decade after it was first conceived, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights will open its doors. A product of government funding and philanthropic donations, the museum dominates The Forks, a historically important section of downtown Winnipeg. Its very edifice — encased in glass and spiralling to a height of no less than 100 metres — has been designed as a “tower of hope.”

Much has been written over the years about the museum. Its supporters have claimed that Canada is an apt location for a human rights museum, and that the building will revitalize a city that has long been identified with its crippling winter, attracting large numbers of tourists and students in an effort to underscore Winnipeg’s diversity.

Its detractors have raised concerns about curatorial content and argued that it is a significant waste of resources, particularly as there is little evidence that the museum — which has cost more than $300 million — will contribute meaningfully to the local and provincial economy.

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CFP: Human Rights and Justice Conference

CFP: Human Rights and Justice Conference

Human Rights and Justice
The Hague Institute for Global Justice
8 – 10 June 2015
4th joint conference, organized by:
Human Rights Section, International Studies Association (ISA)
Human Rights Section, American Political Science Association (APSA)
Human Rights Research Committee, International Political Science Association (IPSA)
Standing Group on Human Rights and Transitional Justice, European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR)
In association with:
The Hague Institute for Global Justice (THIGJ)
Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS)
International Human Rights Law Interest Group, European Society of International Law (ESIL)
Transitional Justice and Rule of Law Interest Group, American Society of International Law (ASIL)
The human rights sections of the International Studies Association , the American Political Science Association, the European Consortium for Political Research, the International Political Science Association are pleased to announce the third joint international conference on human rights, on the theme “Human Rights and Justice ” to take place 8-10 June 2015 at The Hague Institute for Global Justice. The conference will take place immediately before the annual meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (11 – 13 June), also in The Hague.
Contemporary human rights research and promotion encompasses the application and implementation of international human rights norms, standards as well as legal and political binding treaties. Yet, this is only one side of the coin of what we often claim human rights to achieve: justice. Apart from being a complex concept based on human rights and the rule of law, justice is closely linked to the full development, promotion and fulfilment of human rights and people. It moreover depends on the procedures of good governance and equal access mechanisms installed that can realize justice on a daily basis. Justice is a general notion that can be achieved through, i.e. a human rights based approach or legal and political instruments and mechanism.
This joint conference will ask researchers and policymakers from academia, think tanks, IOs and NGOs to deal with various aspects of justice and human rights. Papers should highlight how and to what extent human rights in all aspects and levels of governance, law and decision making allow or deny access to justice. This may include questions regarding whether and to what extent the international human rights regime can address adequately the challenges of human rights implementation and justice, as well as how regional, national, and local mechanisms may address human rights challenges. Paper and panel proposals that also address the issues such as climate justice, transitional justice or cyber justice as well as access to justice and global distributive justice are welcome. Some of the questions to be addressed at the conference include:
• Are human rights and justice always compatible?
• How do we conceptualize the relationship between human rights and justice?
• What role does global distributive justice play in advancing human rights?
• How do we ensure that domestic justice systems address a wide range of human rights issues?
• Are international justice institutions (e.g. International Criminal Court, European Court of Human Rights, Inter-American Court, African Court on Human and People’s Rights) adequate for addressing human rights issues?
• How have norms regarding justice and human rights evolved?
The conference format will be a mixture of small panels with plenary keynote sessions. We hope that small panels will facilitate discussion and interchange among the participants, and the overall conference format will contribute to an intimate and relaxed experience.
Consideration will be given to publishing an edited volume with some of the papers from the conference.
Submissions will open shortly. Please note that proposals must relate to the theme of the conference in some manner to be considered. Each full panel proposal should include exactly 4 papers plus a chair and discussant. The deadline for submissions is 14 November 2014. Notification of acceptances will be sent by e-mail by 20 December 2014.
A link to the submission system will be found here by mid-September:
http://global-human-rights.org/HRJ.html
This conference is being held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System, which will have as its theme “The United Nations at 70: Guaranteeing Security and Justice.” Individuals registering for one conference will be eligible for a 20% discount on registration for the other conference. More information will be provided.
Conference Chairs
Anja Mihr, The Hague Institute for Global Justice & Utrecht University
Kurt Mills, University of Glasgow
Program Committee
Alison Brysk, University of California, Santa Barbara
Melissa Labonte, Fordham University
For more information please contact:
Program: HumanRightsandJusticeProgram@gmail.com
Registration: HumanRightsandJusticeReg@gmail.com
Other conference questions: HumanRightsandJustice2015@gmail.com

Decolonial Strategies and Dialogue in the Human Rights Field: A Manifestomore by Jose-Manuel Barreto

Human Rights from a Third World Perspective: Critique, History and International Law

Edited by José-Manuel Barreto

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012

Globalization, interdisciplinarity, and the critique of the Eurocentric canon are transforming the theory and practice of human rights. This collection takes up the point of view of the colonized in order to unsettle and supplement the conventional understanding of human rights. Putting together insights coming from Decolonial Thinking, the Third World Approach to International Law (TWAIL), Radical Black Theory and Subaltern Studies, the authors construct a new history and theory of human rights, and a more comprehensive understanding of international human rights law in the background of modern colonialism and the struggle for global justice. An exercise of dialogical and interdisciplinary thinking, this collection of articles by leading scholars puts into conversation important areas of research on human rights, namely philosophy or theory of human rights, history, and constitutional and international law. This book combines critical consciousness and moral sensibility, and offers methods of interpretation or hermeneutical strategies to advance the project of decolonizing human rights, a veritable tool-box to create new Third-World discourses of human rights.

To Download the book.