1. Moral Authority in a Godless World 1. - 2. The Church of Human Rights 24. - 3. The Holocaust Metanarrative 47. - 4. The Moral Architecture of Suffering 69. - 5. Human Rights and American Power 96. - 6. Human Rights Empire 119. - 7. Of Gods and Nations 142. - 8. The Neo-Westphalian World 166
This title presents a powerful argument for the continued relevance of the state to our understanding of international relations. Drawing on detailed primary research, the author examines the key role central state officials have played in formulating American foreign environmental policy, and concludes that claims for the diminishing domestic-international divide, and the erosion of state sovereignty are overstated.
This title presents a powerful argument for the continued relevance of the state to our understanding of international relations. Drawing on detailed primary research, the author examines the key role central state officials have played in formulating American foreign environmental policy, and concludes that claims for the diminishing domestic-international divide, and the erosion of state sovereignty are overstated
Since their emergence in the late eighteenth century, doctrines of universal individual rights have been variously criticized as philosophically confused, politically inefficacious, ideologically particular, and Eurocentric. Nevertheless, today the discourse of universal human rights is more internationally widespread and influential than ever. In Evidence for Hope, leading international relations scholar Kathryn Sikkink argues that this is because human rights laws and institutions work. Sikkink rejects the notion that human rights are a Western imposition and points to a wide range of evidence that she claims demonstrates the effectiveness of human rights in bringing about a world that is appreciably improved in many ways from what it was previously. We have invited a broad range of scholars to assess Sikkink's challenging claims.
Capitalist modernity's paradox is to erode explicitly the social capital it relies on implicitly to mobilize people to act in concert when they share neither an identity nor an interest. Monetization and rules are the exemplary mechanisms for realizing modernity's aim of commensurability between all social qualities. Simmel helps us see this. But these abstractions create an authority vacuum. The experience of Amnesty International, emblem of modernity, is an example of efforts to overcome this. A close analysis of Amnesty shows that its authority is derived not from Kantian universalism but from a representation of the sacred that serves as a non-modern foundation for modernity. Even as attempts are made to profane this moral authority through commodification and politicization, we can see in the universalization of the Holocaust narrative a renewed effort at creating a singular global memory for humanity as a whole.
For the first time in one collected volume, mainstream and critical human rights scholars together examine the empirical and normative debates around the future of human rights. They ask what makes human rights effective, what strategies will enhance the chances of compliance, what blocks progress, and whether the hope for human rights is entirely misplaced in a rapidly transforming world. Human Rights Futures sees the world as at a crucial juncture. The project for globalizing rights will either continue to be embedded or will fall backward into a maelstrom of nationalist backlash, religious resurgence and faltering Western power. Each chapter talks directly to the others in an interactive dialogue, providing a theoretical and methodological framework for a clear research agenda for the next decade. Scholars, graduate students and practitioners of political science, history, sociology, law and development will find much to both challenge and provoke them in this innovative book.