Human Rights and Agents of Change in Iran

Human Rights and Agents of Change in Iran PDF Author: Rebecca Barlow
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811088241
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
This volume extends debates on the interaction between universal human rights and the political experiences of Iranians, through a conceptual analysis of ‘theories of change’. It assesses the practical processes by which individuals, organizations and movements can reform or impact the structural, theological and political challenges faced in the Iranian context. Contributors to this volume investigate how structures, institutions, and agents in Iran maneuver for influence and power at the state level, through the law, in international corridors, at the grassroots, and by implementing multiple and complex methods. The chapters provide distinct but interrelated analysis of key drivers of change in Iran. A number of those operate primarily through top-down approaches, such as the political reform movement, lawyers pursuing legislative change, and international human rights monitoring bodies. Others take a bottom-up approach, including local movements and campaigns such as the women’s movement, the labor movement, the student movement, and ethnic minority groups. By prompting drivers of change to think about causation, influence, sequencing, prioritization, roles and relationships, a theory of change ultimately makes the work more effective. Through rigorous analysis of these issues for drivers of change in the Islamic State, this volume is an important contribution to human rights in Iran. In an era of escalating tensions in the Middle East, it amplifies voices of reform and freedom, filling a crucial gap in our understanding of this region.

Human Rights and Agents of Change in Iran

Human Rights and Agents of Change in Iran PDF Author: Rebecca Barlow
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811088241
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume extends debates on the interaction between universal human rights and the political experiences of Iranians, through a conceptual analysis of ‘theories of change’. It assesses the practical processes by which individuals, organizations and movements can reform or impact the structural, theological and political challenges faced in the Iranian context. Contributors to this volume investigate how structures, institutions, and agents in Iran maneuver for influence and power at the state level, through the law, in international corridors, at the grassroots, and by implementing multiple and complex methods. The chapters provide distinct but interrelated analysis of key drivers of change in Iran. A number of those operate primarily through top-down approaches, such as the political reform movement, lawyers pursuing legislative change, and international human rights monitoring bodies. Others take a bottom-up approach, including local movements and campaigns such as the women’s movement, the labor movement, the student movement, and ethnic minority groups. By prompting drivers of change to think about causation, influence, sequencing, prioritization, roles and relationships, a theory of change ultimately makes the work more effective. Through rigorous analysis of these issues for drivers of change in the Islamic State, this volume is an important contribution to human rights in Iran. In an era of escalating tensions in the Middle East, it amplifies voices of reform and freedom, filling a crucial gap in our understanding of this region.

Islamic Feminisms

Islamic Feminisms PDF Author: Roja Fazaeli
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 131541144X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
This book explores the contentious topic of women’s rights in Muslim-majority countries, with a specific focus on Iran and the Iranian women’s movement from 1906 to the present. The work contextualizes the authorial self through the use of personal narrative and interviews. A new critique of Islamic law is produced through an in-depth study of the Iranian Constitution, civil and criminal codes. The work presents a novel reconceptualization of the term "Islamic feminism" by revisiting the arguments of various scholars and through analysis of interviews with Iranian women’s rights activists. It is contended that the feminist movements can play a critical role in Islamic law reform and consequently the eventual implementation of international human rights law in Muslim-majority countries. What emerges from this study is not only a feminist critique of two major regimes of law, but also the identification of possibilities for reform in the future. The study transitions from the Iranian national context to the international by way of a comparative legal study of international human rights laws and Islamic laws. The book will appeal both to academics and human rights practitioners.

Agents of Change

Agents of Change PDF Author: Ben Laurence
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067425841X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
An incisive argument for the relevance of political philosophy and its possibility of effecting change. The appeal of political philosophy is that it will answer questions about justice for the sake of political action. But contemporary political philosophy struggles to live up to this promise. Since the death of John Rawls, political philosophers have become absorbed in methodological debates, leading to an impasse between two unattractive tendencies: utopians argue that philosophy should focus uncompromisingly on abstract questions of justice, while pragmatists argue that we should concern ourselves only with local efforts to ameliorate injustice. Agents of Change shows a way forward. Ben Laurence argues that we can combine utopian justice and the pragmatic response to injustice in a political philosophy that unifies theory and practice in pursuit of change. Political philosophy, on this view, is not a purely normative theory disconnected from practice. Rather, political philosophy is itself a practiceÑan exercise of practical reason issuing in action. Laurence contends that this exercise begins in ordinary life with the confrontation with injustice. Philosophy draws ideas about justice from this encounter to be pursued through political action. Laurence shows that the task of political philosophy is not complete until it asks the question ÒWhat is to be done?Ó and deliberates actionable answers.

Passionate Uprisings

Passionate Uprisings PDF Author: Pardis Mahdavi
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804758565
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Investigates the emerging, new sexual culture of Iranian youth, in which sexuality represents freedom and engaging in sex can be considered political activism.

Political Participation in Iran from Khatami to the Green Movement

Political Participation in Iran from Khatami to the Green Movement PDF Author: Paola Rivetti
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030322017
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
This book examines the unintended consequences of top-down reforms in Iran, analysing how the Iranian reformist governments (1997–2005) sought to utilise gradual reforms to control independent activism, and how citizens responded to such a disciplinary action. While the governments successfully ‘set the field’ of permitted political participation, part of the civil society that took shape was unexpectedly independent. Despite being a minority, independent activists were not marginal: without them, in fact, the Green Movement of 2009 would not have taken shape. Building on in-depth empirical analysis, the author explains how autonomous activism forms and survives in a semi-authoritarian country. The book contributes to the debate about the implications of elite-led reforms for social reproduction, offering an innovative interpretation and an original analysis of social movements from a political science perspective.

Iran

Iran PDF Author: Human Rights Watch (Organization)
Publisher: Human Rights Watch
ISBN: 1564324133
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 47

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Book Description
"Human Rights Watch calls on the Iranian government to amend or abolish its security laws, press laws, and other legislation that allow the government to suppress rights to peaceful expression and association. Human Rights Watch also urges the Iranian government to respect its international obligations, as well as Iran's constitution, in granting and respecting the social, cultural, and religious rights of the country's Kurdish minority"--Cover, p. [4].

Rescuing Human Rights

Rescuing Human Rights PDF Author: Hurst Hannum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108417485
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Focuses on understanding human rights as they really are and their proper role in international affairs.

Mother Persia

Mother Persia PDF Author: Zhinia Noorian
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031645839
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description


Iran Awakening

Iran Awakening PDF Author: Shirin Ebadi
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812975286
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The moving, inspiring memoir of one of the great women of our times, Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize and advocate for the oppressed, whose spirit has remained strong in the face of political persecution and despite the challenges she has faced raising a family while pursuing her work. Best known in this country as the lawyer working tirelessly on behalf of Canadian photojournalist, Zara Kazemi—raped, tortured and murdered in Iran—Dr. Ebadi offers us a vivid picture of the struggles of one woman against the system. The book movingly chronicles her childhood in a loving, untraditional family, her upbringing before the Revolution in 1979 that toppled the Shah, her marriage and her religious faith, as well as her life as a mother and lawyer battling an oppressive regime in the courts while bringing up her girls at home. Outspoken, controversial, Shirin Ebadi is one of the most fascinating women today. She rose quickly to become the first female judge in the country; but when the religious authorities declared women unfit to serve as judges she was demoted to clerk in the courtroom she had once presided over. She eventually fought her way back as a human rights lawyer, defending women and children in politically charged cases that most lawyers were afraid to represent. She has been arrested and been the target of assassination, but through it all has spoken out with quiet bravery on behalf of the victims of injustice and discrimination and become a powerful voice for change, almost universally embraced as a hero. Her memoir is a gripping story—a must-read for anyone interested in Zara Kazemi’s case, in the life of a remarkable woman, or in understanding the political and religious upheaval in our world. Praise for Shirin Ebadi and Iran Awakening “This is the riveting story of an amazing and very brave woman living through some quite turbulent times. And she emerges with head unbowed.”—Archbishop Desmond Tutu “The safety and freedom of citizens in democracies is irretrievably bound with the safety and freedom of people like Shirin Ebadi who are fighting to reassert the best achievements of mankind: universal human rights. One of the staunchest advocates for human rights in her country and beyond, Ms. Ebadi, herself a devout Muslim, represents hope for many in Muslim societies that Islam and democracy are indeed compatible.”—Azar Nafisi “A moving portrait of a life lived in truth.”—The New York Times Book Review “A riveting account of a brave, lonely struggle . . . [Iran Awakening] reads like a police thriller, its drama heightened by Ebadi’s determination to keep up the quotidian aspects of her family life.”—The Washington Post Book World “A must read . . . may be the most important book you could read this year.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The Last Utopia

The Last Utopia PDF Author: Samuel Moyn
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674256522
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.