Revisiting the origins of human rights / edited by Pamela Slotte and Miia Halme-Tuomisaari.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Slotte, Pamela, editor.

Halme-Tuomisaari, Miia, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human rights.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xx, 398 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

System Details:

text file

PDF

Summary:

Did the history of human rights begin decades, centuries or even millennia ago? What constitutes this history? And what can we really learn from 'the textbook narrative' - the unilinear, forward-looking tale of progress and inevitable triumph authored primarily by Western philosophers, politicians and activists? Does such a distinguishable entity as 'the history of human rights' even exist, or are efforts to read evidence in past events of the later 'evolution' of human rights mere ideology? This book explores these questions through a collective effort by scholars of history, law, theology and anthropology. Rather than entities with an absolute, predefined 'essence', this book conceptualizes human rights as open-ended and ambiguous. It taps into recent 'revisionist' debates and asks: what do we really know of the history of human rights?

Contents:

Foreword : history of human rights as a political intervention in the present / Martti Koskenniemi

Revisiting the origins of human rights : introduction / Miia Halme-Tuomisaari and Pamela Slotte

Part 1. Foundations : antiquity to the Enlightenment: Human rights in antiquity? Revisiting anachronism and Roman law / Jacob Giltaij and Kaius Tuori

Medieval natural rights discourse / Virpi Mäkinen

Human rights and the Thomist tradition / Annabel Brett

Part 2. Pluralities of discourse and rights : the Enlightenment and single-issue causes in the nineteenth century: Revolutionary rights / Lynn Hunt

Giuseppe Mazzini in (and beyond) the history of human rights / Samuel Moyn

Constituting the imperial community : rights, common good and authority in Britain's Atlantic empire, 1607-1815 / Lauren Benton and Aaron Slater

Human rights discourse in women's rights conventions in the United States, 1848-70 / Kathryn Kish Sklar

The peace movement in human rights / Martin Ceadel

Socialism and the language of rights : the origins and implications of economic rights / Gregory Claeys

Part 3. Institutional practices and relations of rights : towards the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: André Mandelstam and the internationalization of human rights (1869-1949) / Dzovinar Kévonian

From League of Nations mandates to decolonization : a brief history of rights / Taina Tuori

'Blessed are the peacemakers' : Christian internationalism, ecumenical voices and the quest for human rights / Pamela Slotte

Lobbying for relevance : American internationalists, French civil libertarians and the UDHR / Miia Halme-Tuomisaari

The Cold War and the rise of an American conception of human rights, 1945-8 / Olivier Barsalou

Afterword / Conor Gearty.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 11 Nov 2015).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781316228074

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.