The Greening of Human Rights in Iran PDF Download

Author: Azita Ranjbar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
What counts as human rights, and whose human rights count? These questions are at the center of my dissertation, which analyzes how social justice movements in Iran strategically frame rights narratives for local and international audiences. Conceptually, human rights are a powerful rhetorical tool, which are often used by social movements as a means of political mobilization. However, states can also appropriate rights discourse to justify violent interventions, severely curtailing spaces of political speech. My analysis of contemporary Iranian social movements explains the limitations of using a human rights framework to address environmental degradation and political repression. Several months of qualitative research in Iran informs my study of the ways in which environmental and pro-democracy activists have greened human rights discourse. First, the case of the Orumiyeh environmental justice movement reveals the ways in which environmental conservation is used to make broader human rights claims against the Iranian government. Second, through an analysis of silent protests organized by the Green Movement, I examine how performative silence makes visible both the limits of political speech and resistance to conditions of precarity experienced by Iranian citizens. Through the study of two social justice movements, I argue that international recognition of rights plurality is key to achieving social justice in political contexts where it is challenging to speak openly about human rights.This research draws upon and advances scholarly literatures on human rights, environmental justice, and transnational and postcolonial feminist theory within geography and related disciplines. My research engages with environmental justice scholarship through an examination of how and why environmental concerns are implicated with human rights claims in Iran. Drawing from transnational and postcolonial feminist theory, I examine the ways in which global structures and state practices create conditions that make it difficult for citizens to speak to certain conditions of human insecurity - particularly those experienced by marginalized populations - thus problematizing universal human rights as the normative basis of rights recognition. Findings from my study has significant implications for the ways in which rights are enforced globally by questioning how rights claims are recognized when they are made outside of the normative framework of universal rights, particularly when claims reflect culturally and contextually specific circumstances. My case studies demonstrate the critical importance of not only recognizing and engaging with rights plurality, but ultimately the need for new normative bases for addressing human vulnerability that extends beyond singular, universal notions of human rights and justice.