Author: Nicola Perugini
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199365032
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215
Book Description
At the turn of the millennium, a new phenomenon emerged: conservatives, who just decades before had rejected the expanding human rights culture, began to embrace human rights in order to advance their political goals. In this book, Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon account for how human rights--generally conceived as a counter-hegemonic instrument for righting historical injustices--are being deployed to further subjugate the weak and legitimize domination. Using Israel/Palestine as its main case study, The Human Right to Dominate describes the establishment of settler NGOs that appropriate human rights to dispossess indigenous Palestinians and military think-tanks that rationalize lethal violence by invoking human rights. The book underscores the increasing convergences between human rights NGOs, security agencies, settler organizations, and extreme right nationalists, showing how political actors of different stripes champion the dissemination of human rights and mirror each other's political strategies. Indeed, Perugini and Gordon demonstrate the multifaceted role that this discourse is currently playing in the international arena: on the one hand, human rights have become the lingua franca of global moral speak, while on the other, they have become reconstrued as a tool for enhancing domination.
The Human Right to Dominate
Author: Nicola Perugini
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199365032
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215
Book Description
At the turn of the millennium, a new phenomenon emerged: conservatives, who just decades before had rejected the expanding human rights culture, began to embrace human rights in order to advance their political goals. In this book, Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon account for how human rights--generally conceived as a counter-hegemonic instrument for righting historical injustices--are being deployed to further subjugate the weak and legitimize domination. Using Israel/Palestine as its main case study, The Human Right to Dominate describes the establishment of settler NGOs that appropriate human rights to dispossess indigenous Palestinians and military think-tanks that rationalize lethal violence by invoking human rights. The book underscores the increasing convergences between human rights NGOs, security agencies, settler organizations, and extreme right nationalists, showing how political actors of different stripes champion the dissemination of human rights and mirror each other's political strategies. Indeed, Perugini and Gordon demonstrate the multifaceted role that this discourse is currently playing in the international arena: on the one hand, human rights have become the lingua franca of global moral speak, while on the other, they have become reconstrued as a tool for enhancing domination.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199365032
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215
Book Description
At the turn of the millennium, a new phenomenon emerged: conservatives, who just decades before had rejected the expanding human rights culture, began to embrace human rights in order to advance their political goals. In this book, Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon account for how human rights--generally conceived as a counter-hegemonic instrument for righting historical injustices--are being deployed to further subjugate the weak and legitimize domination. Using Israel/Palestine as its main case study, The Human Right to Dominate describes the establishment of settler NGOs that appropriate human rights to dispossess indigenous Palestinians and military think-tanks that rationalize lethal violence by invoking human rights. The book underscores the increasing convergences between human rights NGOs, security agencies, settler organizations, and extreme right nationalists, showing how political actors of different stripes champion the dissemination of human rights and mirror each other's political strategies. Indeed, Perugini and Gordon demonstrate the multifaceted role that this discourse is currently playing in the international arena: on the one hand, human rights have become the lingua franca of global moral speak, while on the other, they have become reconstrued as a tool for enhancing domination.
Human Shields
Author: Dr. Neve Gordon
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520972287
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
A chilling global history of the human shield phenomenon. From Syrian civilians locked in iron cages to veterans joining peaceful indigenous water protectors at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, from Sri Lanka to Iraq and from Yemen to the United States, human beings have been used as shields for protection, coercion, or deterrence. Over the past decade, human shields have also appeared with increasing frequency in antinuclear struggles, civil and environmental protests, and even computer games. The phenomenon, however, is by no means a new one. Describing the use of human shields in key historical and contemporary moments across the globe, Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini demonstrate how the increasing weaponization of human beings has made the position of civilians trapped in theaters of violence more precarious and their lives more expendable. They show how the law facilitates the use of lethal violence against vulnerable people while portraying it as humane, but they also reveal how people can and do use their own vulnerability to resist violence and denounce forms of dehumanization. Ultimately, Human Shields unsettles our common ethical assumptions about violence and the law and urges us to imagine entirely new forms of humane politics.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520972287
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
A chilling global history of the human shield phenomenon. From Syrian civilians locked in iron cages to veterans joining peaceful indigenous water protectors at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, from Sri Lanka to Iraq and from Yemen to the United States, human beings have been used as shields for protection, coercion, or deterrence. Over the past decade, human shields have also appeared with increasing frequency in antinuclear struggles, civil and environmental protests, and even computer games. The phenomenon, however, is by no means a new one. Describing the use of human shields in key historical and contemporary moments across the globe, Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini demonstrate how the increasing weaponization of human beings has made the position of civilians trapped in theaters of violence more precarious and their lives more expendable. They show how the law facilitates the use of lethal violence against vulnerable people while portraying it as humane, but they also reveal how people can and do use their own vulnerability to resist violence and denounce forms of dehumanization. Ultimately, Human Shields unsettles our common ethical assumptions about violence and the law and urges us to imagine entirely new forms of humane politics.
Liberty and Security
Author: Conor Gearty
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745669980
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 108
Book Description
All aspire to liberty and security in their lives but few people truly enjoy them. This book explains why this is so. In what Conor Gearty calls our 'neo-democratic' world, the proclamation of universal liberty and security is mocked by facts on the ground: the vast inequalities in supposedly free societies, the authoritarian regimes with regular elections, and the terrible socio-economic deprivation camouflaged by cynically proclaimed commitments to human rights. Gearty's book offers an explanation of how this has come about, providing also a criticism of the present age which tolerates it. He then goes on to set out a manifesto for a better future, a place where liberty and security can be rich platforms for everyone's life. The book identifies neo-democracies as those places which play at democracy so as to disguise the injustice at their core. But it is not just the new 'democracies' that have turned 'neo', the so-called established democracies are also hurtling in the same direction, as is the United Nations. A new vision of universal freedom is urgently required. Drawing on scholarship in law, human rights and political science this book argues for just such a vision, one in which the great achievements of our democratic past are not jettisoned as easily as were the socialist ideals of the original democracy-makers.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745669980
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 108
Book Description
All aspire to liberty and security in their lives but few people truly enjoy them. This book explains why this is so. In what Conor Gearty calls our 'neo-democratic' world, the proclamation of universal liberty and security is mocked by facts on the ground: the vast inequalities in supposedly free societies, the authoritarian regimes with regular elections, and the terrible socio-economic deprivation camouflaged by cynically proclaimed commitments to human rights. Gearty's book offers an explanation of how this has come about, providing also a criticism of the present age which tolerates it. He then goes on to set out a manifesto for a better future, a place where liberty and security can be rich platforms for everyone's life. The book identifies neo-democracies as those places which play at democracy so as to disguise the injustice at their core. But it is not just the new 'democracies' that have turned 'neo', the so-called established democracies are also hurtling in the same direction, as is the United Nations. A new vision of universal freedom is urgently required. Drawing on scholarship in law, human rights and political science this book argues for just such a vision, one in which the great achievements of our democratic past are not jettisoned as easily as were the socialist ideals of the original democracy-makers.
Not Enough
Author: Samuel Moyn
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067498482X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
“No one has written with more penetrating skepticism about the history of human rights.” —Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal “Moyn breaks new ground in examining the relationship between human rights and economic fairness.” —George Soros The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. While state violations of political rights have garnered unprecedented attention in recent decades, a commitment to material equality has quietly disappeared. In its place, economic liberalization has emerged as the dominant force. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn considers how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of broader social and economic justice. Moyn places the human rights movement in relation to this disturbing shift and explores why the rise of human rights has occurred alongside exploding inequality. “Moyn asks whether human-rights theorists and advocates, in the quest to make the world better for all, have actually helped to make things worse... Sure to provoke a wider discussion.” —Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal “A sharpening interrogation of the liberal order and the institutions of global governance created by, and arguably for, Pax Americana... Consistently bracing.” —Pankaj Mishra, London Review of Books “Moyn suggests that our current vocabularies of global justice—above all our belief in the emancipatory potential of human rights—need to be discarded if we are work to make our vastly unequal world more equal... [A] tour de force.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067498482X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
“No one has written with more penetrating skepticism about the history of human rights.” —Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal “Moyn breaks new ground in examining the relationship between human rights and economic fairness.” —George Soros The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. While state violations of political rights have garnered unprecedented attention in recent decades, a commitment to material equality has quietly disappeared. In its place, economic liberalization has emerged as the dominant force. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn considers how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of broader social and economic justice. Moyn places the human rights movement in relation to this disturbing shift and explores why the rise of human rights has occurred alongside exploding inequality. “Moyn asks whether human-rights theorists and advocates, in the quest to make the world better for all, have actually helped to make things worse... Sure to provoke a wider discussion.” —Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal “A sharpening interrogation of the liberal order and the institutions of global governance created by, and arguably for, Pax Americana... Consistently bracing.” —Pankaj Mishra, London Review of Books “Moyn suggests that our current vocabularies of global justice—above all our belief in the emancipatory potential of human rights—need to be discarded if we are work to make our vastly unequal world more equal... [A] tour de force.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
The Human Right to Dominate
Author: Nicola Perugini
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199365016
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 215
Book Description
At the turn of the millennium, a new phenomenon emerged: conservatives, who just decades before had rejected the expanding human rights culture, began to embrace human rights in order to advance their political goals. In this book, Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon account for how human rights--generally conceived as a counter-hegemonic instrument for righting historical injustices--are being deployed to further subjugate the weak and legitimize domination. Using Israel/Palestine as its main case study, The Human Right to Dominate describes the establishment of settler NGOs that appropriate human rights to dispossess indigenous Palestinians and military think-tanks that rationalize lethal violence by invoking human rights. The book underscores the increasing convergences between human rights NGOs, security agencies, settler organizations, and extreme right nationalists, showing how political actors of different stripes champion the dissemination of human rights and mirror each other's political strategies. Indeed, Perugini and Gordon demonstrate the multifaceted role that this discourse is currently playing in the international arena: on the one hand, human rights have become the lingua franca of global moral speak, while on the other, they have become reconstrued as a tool for enhancing domination.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199365016
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 215
Book Description
At the turn of the millennium, a new phenomenon emerged: conservatives, who just decades before had rejected the expanding human rights culture, began to embrace human rights in order to advance their political goals. In this book, Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon account for how human rights--generally conceived as a counter-hegemonic instrument for righting historical injustices--are being deployed to further subjugate the weak and legitimize domination. Using Israel/Palestine as its main case study, The Human Right to Dominate describes the establishment of settler NGOs that appropriate human rights to dispossess indigenous Palestinians and military think-tanks that rationalize lethal violence by invoking human rights. The book underscores the increasing convergences between human rights NGOs, security agencies, settler organizations, and extreme right nationalists, showing how political actors of different stripes champion the dissemination of human rights and mirror each other's political strategies. Indeed, Perugini and Gordon demonstrate the multifaceted role that this discourse is currently playing in the international arena: on the one hand, human rights have become the lingua franca of global moral speak, while on the other, they have become reconstrued as a tool for enhancing domination.
Gridlock
Author: Thomas Hale
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745670105
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate. But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms. The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global policy issues penetrate ever more deeply into core domestic concerns. Existing institutions, created for a different world, also lock-in pathological decision-making procedures and render the field ever more complex. All of these processes - in part a function of previous, successful efforts at cooperation - have led global cooperation to fail us even as we need it most. Ranging over the main areas of global concern, from security to the global economy and the environment, this book examines these mechanisms of gridlock and pathways beyond them. It is written in a highly accessible way, making it relevant not only to students of politics and international relations but also to a wider general readership.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745670105
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate. But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms. The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global policy issues penetrate ever more deeply into core domestic concerns. Existing institutions, created for a different world, also lock-in pathological decision-making procedures and render the field ever more complex. All of these processes - in part a function of previous, successful efforts at cooperation - have led global cooperation to fail us even as we need it most. Ranging over the main areas of global concern, from security to the global economy and the environment, this book examines these mechanisms of gridlock and pathways beyond them. It is written in a highly accessible way, making it relevant not only to students of politics and international relations but also to a wider general readership.
Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice
Author: Jack Donnelly
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801487767
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
(unseen), $12.95. Donnelly explicates and defends an account of human rights as universal rights. Considering the competing claims of the universality, particularity, and relativity of human rights, he argues that the historical contingency and particularity of human rights is completely compatible with a conception of human rights as universal moral rights, and thus does not require the acceptance of claims of cultural relativism. The book moves between theoretical argument and historical practice. Rigorous and tightly-reasoned, material and perspectives from many disciplines are incorporated. Paper edition Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801487767
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
(unseen), $12.95. Donnelly explicates and defends an account of human rights as universal rights. Considering the competing claims of the universality, particularity, and relativity of human rights, he argues that the historical contingency and particularity of human rights is completely compatible with a conception of human rights as universal moral rights, and thus does not require the acceptance of claims of cultural relativism. The book moves between theoretical argument and historical practice. Rigorous and tightly-reasoned, material and perspectives from many disciplines are incorporated. Paper edition Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Realm of Lesser Evil
Author: Jean-Claude Michea
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745646204
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 159
Book Description
Winston Churchill said of democracy that it was ‘the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’ The same could be said of liberalism. While liberalism displays an unfailing optimism with regard to the capacity of human beings to make themselves ‘masters and possessors of nature’, it displays a profound pessimism when it comes to appreciating their moral capacity to build a decent world for themselves. As Michea shows, the roots of this pessimism lie in the idea – an eminently modern one – that the desire to establish the reign of the Good lies at the origin of all the ills besetting the human race. Liberalism’s critique of the ‘tyranny of the Good’ naturally had its costs. It created a view of modern politics as a purely negative art – that of defining the least bad society possible. It is in this sense that liberalism has to be understood, and understands itself, as the ‘politics of lesser evil’. And yet while liberalism set out to be a realism without illusions, today liberalism presents itself as something else. With its celebration of the market among other things, contemporary liberalism has taken over some of the features of its oldest enemy. By unravelling the logic that lies at the heart of the liberal project, Michea is able to shed fresh light on one of the key ideas that have shaped the civilization of the West.
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745646204
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 159
Book Description
Winston Churchill said of democracy that it was ‘the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’ The same could be said of liberalism. While liberalism displays an unfailing optimism with regard to the capacity of human beings to make themselves ‘masters and possessors of nature’, it displays a profound pessimism when it comes to appreciating their moral capacity to build a decent world for themselves. As Michea shows, the roots of this pessimism lie in the idea – an eminently modern one – that the desire to establish the reign of the Good lies at the origin of all the ills besetting the human race. Liberalism’s critique of the ‘tyranny of the Good’ naturally had its costs. It created a view of modern politics as a purely negative art – that of defining the least bad society possible. It is in this sense that liberalism has to be understood, and understands itself, as the ‘politics of lesser evil’. And yet while liberalism set out to be a realism without illusions, today liberalism presents itself as something else. With its celebration of the market among other things, contemporary liberalism has taken over some of the features of its oldest enemy. By unravelling the logic that lies at the heart of the liberal project, Michea is able to shed fresh light on one of the key ideas that have shaped the civilization of the West.
Freedom from Want
Author: George Kent
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9781589013254
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
There is, literally, a world of difference between the statements "Everyone should have adequate food," and "Everyone has the right to adequate food." In George Kent's view, the lofty rhetoric of the first statement will not be fulfilled until we take the second statement seriously. Kent sees hunger as a deeply political problem. Too many people do not have adequate control over local resources and cannot create the circumstances that would allow them to do meaningful, productive work and provide for themselves. The human right to an adequate livelihood, including the human right to adequate food, needs to be implemented worldwide in a systematic way. Freedom from Want makes it clear that feeding people will not solve the problem of hunger, for feeding programs can only be a short-term treatment of a symptom, not a cure. The real solution lies in empowering the poor. Governments, in particular, must ensure that their people face enabling conditions that allow citizens to provide for themselves. In a wider sense, Kent brings an understanding of human rights as a universal system, applicable to all nations on a global scale. If, as Kent argues, everyone has a human right to adequate food, it follows that those who can empower the poor have a duty to see that right implemented, and the obligation to be held morally and legally accountable, for seeing that that right is realized for everyone, everywhere.
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9781589013254
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
There is, literally, a world of difference between the statements "Everyone should have adequate food," and "Everyone has the right to adequate food." In George Kent's view, the lofty rhetoric of the first statement will not be fulfilled until we take the second statement seriously. Kent sees hunger as a deeply political problem. Too many people do not have adequate control over local resources and cannot create the circumstances that would allow them to do meaningful, productive work and provide for themselves. The human right to an adequate livelihood, including the human right to adequate food, needs to be implemented worldwide in a systematic way. Freedom from Want makes it clear that feeding people will not solve the problem of hunger, for feeding programs can only be a short-term treatment of a symptom, not a cure. The real solution lies in empowering the poor. Governments, in particular, must ensure that their people face enabling conditions that allow citizens to provide for themselves. In a wider sense, Kent brings an understanding of human rights as a universal system, applicable to all nations on a global scale. If, as Kent argues, everyone has a human right to adequate food, it follows that those who can empower the poor have a duty to see that right implemented, and the obligation to be held morally and legally accountable, for seeing that that right is realized for everyone, everywhere.
Queer Wars
Author: Dennis Altman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745698727
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 120
Book Description
The claim that 'LGBT rights are human rights' encounters fierce opposition in many parts of the world, as governments and religious leaders have used resistance to 'LGBT rights' to cast themselves as defenders of traditional values against neo-colonial interference and western decadence. Queer Wars explores the growing international polarization over sexual rights, and the creative responses from social movements and activists, some of whom face murder, imprisonment or rape because of their perceived sexuality or gender expression. This book asks why sexuality and gender identity have become so vexed an issue between and within nations, and how we can best advocate for change.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745698727
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 120
Book Description
The claim that 'LGBT rights are human rights' encounters fierce opposition in many parts of the world, as governments and religious leaders have used resistance to 'LGBT rights' to cast themselves as defenders of traditional values against neo-colonial interference and western decadence. Queer Wars explores the growing international polarization over sexual rights, and the creative responses from social movements and activists, some of whom face murder, imprisonment or rape because of their perceived sexuality or gender expression. This book asks why sexuality and gender identity have become so vexed an issue between and within nations, and how we can best advocate for change.