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Widespread adoption of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) represents a puzzle. It cannot be described as serving the interests of any state as understood in conventional theories of international relations because it commits countries to radical social change. Yet all but six UN member states have ratified it. We argue that the case can only be explained by reference to Waltz' first image, the individual level. We invoke Giddens' notion of structuration to explain how a small group of like-minded women, many of them diplomats, were able to work within existing structures of international diplomacy to create institutions that embedded their ideals in international law. These women were critical actors, positioned simultaneously in activist organizations and government and diplomatic institutions, giving them leverage to institutionalize new norms. The case shows the importance of analysis at the individual level to explain normative change in the international system.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Observing Human Rights in an Age of Globalization -- Part I. The Struggle to Control the Human Rights Regime -- 1. Who Owns Our Culture? Intellectual Property, Human Rights, and Globalization -- 2. The Consequences of a Constructed Universal: Democracy and Civil Rights in the Modern State -- 3. Reflections on the Intersections of Environment, Development, and Human Rights in the Context of Globalization -- 4. Translating a Liberal Feminism: Revisiting Susan Okin on Freedom, Culture, and Women's Rights -- Part II. The Dynamics and Counterdynamics of Globalization -- 5. The Politics of Culture and Human Rights in Iran: Globalizing and Localizing Dynamics -- 6. Outside Actors and the Pursuit of Civil Society in China: Harnessing the Forces of Globalization -- 7. Globalization and Human Rights for Workers in China: Convergence or Collision? -- 8. Localizing Human Rights in an Era of Globalization: The Case of Hong Kong -- Part III. Setting the Terms of Debate: Pursuing Global Consensus -- 9. The Challenges to International Human Rights -- 10. Obstacles on the Road to an Overlapping Consensus on Human Rights -- 11. Globalizing Cultural Values: International Human Rights Discourse as Moral Persuasion -- 12. Suffering as Common Ground -- Conclusion: Reconstructing Human Rights in the Global Society -- About the Contributors -- Index.

Both human rights and globalization are powerful ideas and processes, capable of transforming the world in profound ways. Notwithstanding their universal claims, however, the processes are constructed, and they draw their power from the specific cultural and political contexts in which they are constructed. Far from bringing about a harmonious cosmopolitan order, they have stimulated conflict and opposition. In the context of globalization, as the idea of human rights has become universal, its meaning has become one more terrain of struggle among groups with their own interests and goals. Part.