Human rights / Anthony Woodiwiss.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Woodiwiss, Anthony.

Series:

Key ideas

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human rights.

Physical Description:

xvii, 174 pages ; 20 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2005.

Summary:

Are human rights part of the problem or part of the solution in the current 'clash of civilisations'?

Drawing on a neglected body of work in classical social theory, and combining it with ideas derived from Barrington Moore, Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault, Anthony 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 so doing, Woodiwiss explains how and why rights discourse developed in the distinctive ways it did in four key sites: Britain, the United States, Japan and the UN. On this basis he provides, for the first time, a general sociological account of the development of international human rights discourse. This account represents a striking challenge to current thinking and policy in this increasingly fraught but nonetheless critical area of global concern.

Contents:

Introduction: Rights and Power xi

Part I Making rights 1

1 The paradox of human rights 3

2 Towards a sociology of rights 16

3 From rights to liberty in England and the United States 33

4 The comparative sociology of rights regimes 44

5 From liberty to the 'rule of (property) law' in the United States 51

6 Japan, the rule of law and the absence of liberty 65

Part II Righting the world? 77

7 The United States and the invention of human rights 79

8 The Warren Court: setting the international human rights agenda 92

9 The United Nations and the internationalisation of American rights discourse 102

10 Making an example of Japan 111

11 The desire for equality and the emergence of a sociology for human rights 121

Conclusion: for a new universalism 136.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [153]-168) and index.

ISBN:

0415360684

0415360692

OCLC:

58997857