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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Human rights > General
Examining the erosion of people's democratic rights and the potential catastrophic dangers of neglecting civil liberties, this book explores the endemic danger of the enlarged power of the state and the central role of Government in undermining personal freedoms through the use of state force in the name of the protection of security.
Human rights film festivals have been steadily growing in number in recent years. They are all bound by a common thread, human rights, and yet show distinctly different films. What leads them to be so different, and how is the universalism of human rights made sense by each?
The Sacred Men's Club examines the global struggle of religious conservatism against women's rights, and the ways in which a rise in the power of organised religions in western countries in the last two decades affects the lives of women. Institutionalised religion is, as feminist theorist Mary Daly points out, a sacred men's club'. The rise of religious ideals and movements in world politics can be understood as representing a movement focusing on men's rights and power. Contrary to this lies the marginalisation of women in religion and religious power structure. The book explores and provides: * a feminist critique of the politics of religion * a view that the contemporary rise of religion endangers the rights of women in two ways: on the world stage through the United Nations, and in western democracies through multifaithism and desecularisation. * concrete examples of the ways in which the rise of religion affects women's status by looking at polygamy and dress practices. Following on from The Industrial Vagina, Sheila Jeffrey's incisive and often controversial views provide a polemical and radical re-envisioning of some of the most important issues in the fields of religion, politics and gender studies.
The American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born played a major role in legal matters pertaining to deportation, naturalization, and immigration. This study provides the first thorough examination of its work, from the Depression decade of the 1930s, when the committee defended prominent labor activists such as Harry Bridges, through the war years and into the 1950s, when it served as a legal bulwark for the Communist Party. In 1955 the ACPFB itself became a defendant-as the pilot case before the Subversive Activities Control Board. Cautious and rational, the Board reached the correct conclusion that the organization was a Communist Party front. Indeed, in its fidelity to American communism, the ACPFB pursued a political agenda that often violated its stated mandate. It not only failed to protect Japanese-Americans during World War II, but it actually supported their internment. During the closing years of the war, it attempted to influence ethnic communities for the benefit of the Communist Party. False agendas, undemocratic internal controls, and duplicity drove liberal sympathizers away from the ACPFB by the early 1950s, when the pressures of the second Red Scare threatened both it and its host. The story of the ACPFB ultimately sheds new light on the nature of American communism itself-demonstrating anew its nature as a political movement in pursuit of power.
Traces the influences of lesbian, gay and bisexual voters in American elections In the half century since the Stonewall riots in New York City's Greenwich Village launched the national gay-rights movement in earnest, LGB voters have steadily expanded their political influence. The Lavender Vote is the first full- length examination of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals as a factor in American elections. Mark Hertzog here describes the differences in demographics, attitudes, and voting behavior between self-identified bisexuals and homosexuals and the rest of the voting population. He shows that lavender self-identifiers comprise a distinctive voting bloc equal in numbers to Latino voters, more liberal across the board on domestic social issues (though not necessarily on economic or national security issues) than non-gay voters, and extremely unified in high-salience elections. Further, lavender voters, contrary to popular belief, are up for grabs between the two major parties. Offering a clear and thorough explanation of LGB voting tendencies, this volume will be must-reading for elected officials, candidates for office, and all those interested in learning about LGB voters.
Mills focuses on one of the most significant parts of the sovereignty debate on human rights and humanitarian issues and raises three interrelated questions. First, how are empirical processes and practices undermining traditional notions of sovereignty? These include actions by the United Nations and other organizations on behalf of human rights, such as humanitarian intervention, the movements of refugees and others across the borders, and increasing calls for communal self-determination. Second, taking into account the above question, and examining these issues from a normative political theory perspective, what should be the relationship between individuals, groups, states, and the international community with respect to the twin aspects of power and authority inherent in sovereignty? Third, what new or modified international institutions may be needed in the future to deal with these humanitarian issues?
How can women's rights be seen as a universal value rather than a Western value imposed upon the rest of the world? Addressing this question, Eileen Hunt Botting offers the first comparative study of writings by Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. Although Wollstonecraft and Mill were the primary philosophical architects of the view that women's rights are human rights, Botting shows how non-Western thinkers have revised and internationalized their original theories since the nineteenth century. Botting explains why this revised and internationalized theory of women's human rights-grown out of Wollstonecraft and Mill but stripped of their Eurocentric biases-is an important contribution to thinking about human rights in truly universal terms.
"This book shows why contests over intellectual property rights and access to affordable medicines emerged in the 1990s and how they have been resolved so far. It argues that the current arrangement mainly ensures wealth for some rather than health for all, and points to broader concerns related to governing intellectual property solely as capital"--Provided by publisher.
Sociology and Human Rights: New Engagements is the first collection to focus on the contribution sociological approaches can make to analysis of human rights. Taking forward the sociology of human rights which emerged from the 1990s, it presents innovative analyses of global human rights struggles by new and established authors. The collection includes a range of new work addressing issues such as genocide in relation to indigenous peoples, rights-based approaches in development work, trafficking of children, and children 's rights in relation to political struggles for the decriminalisation of same-sex sexual activity in India. It examines contexts ranging from Rwanda and South Korea to Northern Ireland and the city of Barcelona. The collection as a whole will be of interest to students and academics working in various disciplines such as politics, law and social policy, and to practitioners working on human rights for various governmental and non-governmental organisations, as well as to sociologists seeking to develop understanding of the sociology of human rights. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of Human Rights.
This volume offers a selection of the works of one of the most persuasive and sophisticated theorists of the free economy and the free society, Arthur Asher Shenfield. Arthur Asher Shenfield was a classical liberal and an astute critic of misguided government intervention in a free economy. He produced sophisticated refutations of both full-blooded socialism and the milder varieties of collectivism and welfarism pioneered in Scandinavia and Western Europe. He was a keen observer of American affairs and included here is a selection of his essays on constitutionalism and law in the United States. These essays trace the decline in legal protection that America has given economic agents and examine the rise of socialist influences in the American judiciary system. Shenfield also offers a robust account of the legal and economic effect of US and European anti-trust law, as well as discussing the adverse effect on economic efficiency caused by trade unions. In these essays, Arthur Asher Shenfield has made the law and economics of a free society accessible to businessmen and policymakers as well as to scholars and students of classical liberal philosophy and law.
Violence, war and internal conflicts have assumed a new intensity with the decline of the Cold War. There are over 32 civil wars going on today. The world may well witness 100 million refugees in the year 2000 as a direct result of internal wars. This volume consists of case studies and theory-orientated papers dealing with Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Taken together, they spell out implications of wide general interest, providing a comparative basis for a systematic approach to conflict transformation. The author has also written "Conflict Resolution in Uganda" and "Ethnic Conflicts and Human Rights".
This book addresses an essential gap in the regulatory regime, which provides legislation, statements and guidelines on airlines, airports, air navigation services providers and States in the field of aviation, but is notably lacking when it comes to the rights of the airline passenger, and the average citizen who is threatened by military air strikes. It addresses subjects such as international resolutions on human rights and other human rights conventions related to aviation that impact both air transport consumers and people on the ground who are threatened by air strikes through drone attacks; disabled and obese airline passengers; compensation for delayed carriage and the denial of carriage; noise and air pollution caused by aviation and their effects on human health and wellbeing; prevention of death or injury to passengers and attendant compensatory rights; risk management; relief flights; and racial profiling. These subjects are addressed against the backdrop of real case studies that include but are not limited to instances of drone attacks, and contentious flights in the year 2014 such as MH 370, MH 17 and QZ 8501.
Between 2009 and 2014, an anti-homosexuality law circulating in the Ugandan parliament came to be the focus of a global conversation about queer rights. The law attracted attention for the draconian nature of its provisions and for the involvement of US evangelical Christian activists who were said to have lobbied for its passage. Focusing on the Ugandan case, this book seeks to understand the encounters and entanglements across geopolitical divides that produce and contest contemporary queerphobias. It investigates the impact and memory of the colonial encounter on the politics of sexuality, the politics of religiosity of different Christian denominations, and the political economy of contemporary homophobic moral panics. In addition, Out of Time places the Ugandan experience in conversation with contemporaneous developments in India and Britain-three locations that are yoked together by the experience of British imperialism and its afterlives. Intervening in a queer theoretical literature on temporality, Rahul Rao argues that time and space matter differently in the queer politics of postcolonial countries. By employing an intersectional analysis and drawing on a range of sources, Rao offers an original interpretation of why queerness mutates to become a metonym for categories such as nationality, religiosity, race, class, and caste. The book argues that these mutations reveal the deep grammars forged in the violence that founds and reproduces the social institutions in which queer difference struggles to make space for itself.
From the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to the assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh to the London transportation bombings, dramatic events of recent years have generated security concerns about Muslim communities in the West. These have added an additional layer to the tensions surrounding Muslim immigrant integration and have generated heated discussions about how governments should address such challenges. This collection assembles leading scholars to address four central themes related to the interactions between Muslims and states in contemporary Europe and North America. Its authors investigate the timing of Muslims? emergence as a perceived security risk; they review the variety of actions undertaken in response to the new concerns; they assess the effectiveness of different kinds of policies in managing the security and social challenges that governmental actors observe; and they identify relevant Muslim sub-groups and their highly divergent views on recent developments. This book thus serves as a foundation for understanding an issue of critical importance and as a touchstone for advancing public, policy, and scholarly debate about Muslim-state interactions. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.
This book examines the dynamic process of political transition and indigenous (adat) revival in newly decentralized Indonesia. The political transition in May 1998 set the stage for the passing of Indonesia's framework decentralization laws. These laws include both political and technocratic efforts to devolve authority from the centre (Jakarta) to the peripheries. Contrary to expectations, enhanced public participation often takes the form of adat revivalism - a deliberate, highly contested and contingent process linked to intensified political struggles throughout the Indonesian archipelago. The author argues adat is aligned with struggles for recognition and remedial rights, including the right to autonomous governance and land. It cannot be understood in isolation, nor can it be separated from the wider world. Based on original fieldwork and using case studies from Sulawesi to illustrate the key arguments, this book provides an overview of the key analytical concepts and a concise review of relevant stages in Indonesian history. It considers struggles for rights and recognition, focusing on regulatory processes and institutional control. Finally, Tyson examines land disputes and resource conflicts. Regional and local conflicts often coalesce around forms of ethnic representation, which are constantly being renegotiated, along with resource allocations and entitlements, and efforts to preserve or reinvent cultural identities. This will be valuable reading for students and researchers in Political Studies, Development Studies, Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies and Politics.
The book presents an analysis of the concept of rights and provides an illuminating expression of socialist ideals. The author outlines an analysis of fundamental human rights compatible with historical relativism and applies this to the political right of freedom of expression and the economic right to work. Finally he deploys the proposed analysis of socialist rights to explain the ambivalence of socialist thinkers towards welfare rights in contemporary capitalist states and to analyze the logic of assertions that welfare law is often counter-productive.
Hardly a week goes by without some world event relating to the burgeoning field of religion and human rights. Whether attacks carried out in the name of religion by individuals or states, violations of the rights of individuals or communities due to their religious or other beliefs, or clashes between religious and other competing rights (most notably, freedom of speech), matters relating to religion and human rights are not only an area of expert and academic interest, but also of increasing interest to policy-makers, governments, international organizations, and NGOs. This new four-volume Major Work collection from Routledge examines the background, history, and nature of human rights both individual and collective as well as economic, social, and cultural rights; and also civil and political rights. Standards, mechanisms, and jurisprudence at international and national levels are included, and form part of the discussion of the conflict of rights and freedom of religion or belief. Religions featured include Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and African religions, and the persecution or discrimination of religious or belief communities are discussed. Relevant human rights documents are also included. The range of subject areas that contribute to discussions on religion and human rights are many, and include: political science; law; international relations; anthropology; philosophy; religious studies; sociology of religion; and theology. Students, scholars, teachers, and practitioners from these and other disciplines will welcome this collection as a vital one-stop compendium of the very best canonical and cutting-edge research.
This book explores how Islam in western Europe has developed from early immigration and settlement to the point where a native generation is developing ways of being European and Muslim. England is given special attention as a case study, but as the discussion moves into the present and the future, reference is made to all of western Europe. Factors in this process not only arise from the Muslim communities themselves but also from the inherited structures of European society and state. Although the issues are complex and tense, the author is generally optimistic about the outcome.
The relationship between the processes of economic development and international human rights standards has been one of parallel and rarely intersecting tracks of international action. In the last decade of the 20th century, development thinking shifted from a growth-oriented model to the concept of human development as a process of enhancing human capabilities. The intrinsic links between development and human rights began to be more readily acknowledged. Specifically, it has been proposed that if strategies of development and policies to implement human rights are united, they reinforce one another in processes of synergy and improvement of the human condition. Such is the premise of the Declaration on the Right to Development, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1986. This book explores the meaning and practical implications of the right to development and the related term of human rights-based approaches to development. It asks what these conceptions may add to our understanding and thinking about human and global development. Opening with an essay by Amartya Sen - Nobel Laureate in Economic Science - the book contains a score of chapters on the conceptual underpinnings of development as a human right, the national dimensions of this right, and the role of international institutions. This second edition also includes a new Foreword by Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The contributors reflect the disciplines of philosophy, economics, international law, and international relations.
On today's menu of remedies for our social and economic ills, empowerment has become immensely popular. The scholarly literature abounds with it: computerized searches yield thousands of citations in myriad disciplines. The education profession seems intoxicated by it; it infuses the entire political spectrum--from Marxists to feminists, from Black Power advocates to conservatives. As Weissberg points out, all assume, typically with more hope than proof, that if only people seized control of their lives, betterment would surely ensue. Allegedly, empowerment will cure everything from personal disorders to declining city centers. Weissberg conducts an FDA-like inquiry across numerous academic disciplines to assess the worthiness of this cure. He balances a close reading of the underlying theoretical foundations with empirically demonstrated effectiveness. Entire chapters are devoted to empowerment as a cure for personal problems ranging from health to homelessness, education, community development, and the problems afflicting African Americans. Despite all the promises, however, evidence of accomplishment is not forthcoming. Indeed, as Weissberg demonstrates, much of the evidence is twisted to disguise failure. Worse, much of this helpfulness is merely admonitions for greater dependency and misdirection away from cures of proven utility. Given that almost all this advice emanates from academics, the discrepancy between promise and result raises some troubling issues about today's academy. Clearly, professors do not suffer from ill-conceived remediation though their careers may flourish from publications about uplifting. Bound to be controversial, DEGREESIThe Politics of Empowerment DEGREESR is a tonic for social scientists, policy makers, and citizens concerned with America's myriad sociopolitical problems.
This book traces the rise of contemporary populism in Western democracies, marked by the return of would-be 'strong men' politicians. It seeks to make sense of the resultant nature, origins, and consequences -as expressed, for example, in the startling rise of the social movement surrounding Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK and the remarkable spread of ideologies that express resistance to "facts," science, and expertise. Uniquely, the book shows how what began as a form of penal populism in the early 1990s transformed into a more wide ranging populist politics with the potential to undermine or even overthrow the democratic order altogether; examines the way in which the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted on these forces, arguing it threw the flailing democratic order an important lifeline, as Vladimir Putin has subsequently done with his war in Ukraine. The book argues that contemporary political populism can be seen as a wider manifestation of the earlier tropes and appeal of penal populism arising under neo-liberalism. The author traces this cross over and the roots of discontent, anxiety, anti-elites sentiment and the sense of being forgotten, that lie at the heart of populism, along with its effects in terms of climate denial, 'fake news', othering, nativism and the denigration of scientific and other forms of expertise. In a highly topical and important extension to the field the author suggests that the current covid pandemic might prove to be an 'antidote' to populism, providing the conditions in which scientific and medical expertise, truth telling, government intervention in the economy and in health policy, and social solidarity, are revalorised. Encompassing numerous subject areas and crossing many conventional disciplinary boundaries, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology and criminal justice, sociology, political science, law, and public policy.
This is the first attempt to provide an in-depth moral assessment of the heart of the modern human rights enterprise: the system of international legal human rights. It is international human rights law-not any philosophical theory of moral human rights or any "folk" conception of moral human rights-that serves as the lingua franca of modern human rights practice. Yet contemporary philosophers have had little to say about international legal human rights. They have tended to assume, rather than to argue, that international legal human rights, if morally justified, must mirror or at least help realize moral human rights. But this assumption is mistaken. International legal human rights, like many other legal rights, can be justified by several different types of moral considerations, of which the need to realize a corresponding moral right is only one. Further, this volume shows that some of the most important international legal human rights cannot be adequately justified by appeal to corresponding moral human rights. The problem is that the content of these international legal human rights-the full set of correlative duties-is much broader than can be justified by appealing to the morally important interests of any individual. In addition, it is necessary to examine the legitimacy of the institutions that create, interpret, and implement international human rights law and to defend the claim that international human rights law should "trump" the domestic law of even the most admirable constitutional democracies.
Originally published in 1983. The nineteenth century was a time of great economic, social and political change. As Europe modernized, previously ignorant and apathetic elements in the population began to demand political freedoms. There was pressure also for a freer press, for the rights of assembly and association. The apprehension of the existing elites manifested itself in an intensification of often brutal form of political repression. The first part of this book summarizes on a pan-European basis, the major techniques of repression such as the denial of popular franchise and press censorship. This is followed by a chronological survey of these techniques from 1815 ? 1914 in each European country. The book analyzes the long and short-term importance of these events for European historical development in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Publication of this complete edition of The Movement is an important contribution to popular understanding of the social movements of the 1960s. No other periodical provided such extensive coverage of the transformation of the civil rights movement into the diverse radical movements of the late 1960s. Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and Huey Newton are among the many black militant leaders who are discussed in The Movement. Its insightful and sympathetic coverage, including participants' accounts, of a wide range of community organizing activities such as anti-war/anti-draft protests and Cesar Chavez's National Farm Workers Association and grape workers' strike in Delano, California. It covers national and international events, with articles on revolutionary movements in Cuba, Vietnam, and Africa. It is an excellent source of information regarding the social change activities of the late 1960s. As such, it is invaluable to students of the New Left, contemporary race relations, African-American history and Black Studies. |
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