The idea of universal human rights has been perhaps the most contentious concept of the twentieth century. Originally presented as a response to the atrocities of the past and an attempt to stifle the potential ills of the future, the concept has been under heated assault by adherents to the concept of 'cultural relativism.' The basic conflict between these two extreme perspectives lies with the degree to which either should be the primary consideration when dealing with the great diversity of peoples worldwide. While proponents of universal human rights believe that a fundamental group of human rights exist and can be applied uniformly throughout the world, cultural relativists are primarily concerned with protecting and understanding, usually in functionalist terms, the diversity of cultures worldwide. This overarching conflict is the underlying focus of Cultural Relativism in the Face of the West. Billet examines the debate between the uniform application of universal human rights and cultural relativism. In so doing, Billet outlines the foundations of both schools of thought and provides a history of their evolution. The book also examines case studies that involve either women or children and are typically viewed by the West as violations of fundamental human rights.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act confirmed the central role of the Department of Justice in the national battle against racial discrimination. Congress had established the department's Civil Rights Division in 1957 with a staff of a dozen to combat racial discrimination in voting; its current staff of 500 now prosecutes many forms of discrimination in employment, housing, education, and other areas.

"In Enforcing Civil Rights," a former member of the CRD focuses on the role of that agency in combating the racial caste system in America. Brian Landsberg's overview of civil rights enforcement reveals the political realities and national priorities that shaped it; the moral, practical, and political forces that have influenced it; and the roles of the federal government, executive branch, and Attorney General in implementing it.

Drawing on case law, legislative histories, Justice Department archives, and his own years of service, Landsberg provides a reflective insider's view of how the CRD has enforced civil rights. He tells how Congress broadened its mandate-from authority to sue state and local governments to jurisdiction over individuals and companies-and how the CRD weathered Washington's shifting political winds. He also conveys the challenges that came with the responsibility of enforcing legislation for an entire nation and describes the roles of law, politics, and historical forces in the CRD's setting of priorities and litigation policy.

In addition, Landsberg addresses conflicts between career civil servants and political appointees, studies the consequences of its litigation positions, and considers whether the structure of enforcement should be changed. He offers some sensible recommendations for rationalizing and strengthening the federal civil rights enforcement structure.

The CRD has done much to eliminate America's racial caste system, but Landsberg cautions that we must take care to ensure that it does not become a tool of narrow interests. His book provides the understanding we need to safeguard against that risk, while offering a new perspective on the civil rights movement in America.

Why is it that human rights are considered inviolable norms of justice at local and global scales although the number of their violations has steadily increased in modern history? On the surface, this paradox seems to be reducible to a straightforward discrepancy between idealism and reality in humanitarian affairs, but Imagining Human Rights complicates the picture by offering interdisciplinary perspectives on the imaginary status of human rights. By that the contributors mean not merely subject to imagination, open to interpretation or far too abstract, but also formative of a social imaginary with emphatic identifications and shared values. From a variety of disciplinary perspectives, they explore critical ways of engaging in rigorous interdisciplinary conversations about the origin and language of human rights, personal dignity, redistributive justice, and international solidarity. Together, they show how and why a careful examination of the intersection between disciplinary investigations is essential for imagining human rights at large. Examples range from the legitimacy of land ownership rights and the inadequacy of human faculty to make sense of mass violence in visual representation to the stewardship of human rights promoters and the genealogy of human rights.

Increased levels of immigration sparked scholary and public debate about its consequences for immigrants, liberal democracies, sovereignty and rights in both Europe and North America. This book addresses questions such as: Do nation-states act to facilitate or limit immigration and integration, how and why? How do nation-states themselves transform in understanding and interpreting rights respond to immigration? Does the European Union make a difference in terms of how immigrants are perceived or how they act as stakeholders in liberal democracies? Through a collection of rich theoretical and empirical contributions diverse and intriguing responses are provided with case studies from Europe and North America.

As governments across the world increasingly adopt information and communication technology to improve their efficiency and effectiveness, they are gradually providing opportunities for citizen participation and engagement online. The use of Internet technologies raises the possibility for large-scale e-democracy and enhances the degree and quality of public participation in government. Active Citizen Participation in E-Government: A Global Perspective focuses on the issues and challenges involving adoption and implementation of online civic engagement initiatives globally and will serve as a valuable guide to governments in their efforts to enable active citizen participation. This book details the efforts of governments and public agencies in providing proper channels for engaging their citizens and presents a wide range of research on approaches undertaken by governments across the world in facilitating active citizen participation online.

Citizenship implies exclusion of non-members. Migrations, processes and policies of first admission and incorporation of ethnically and culturally diverse newcomers are among the most hotly contested political issues, especially in a world of gross inequalities. This comparative and interdisciplinary collection sees distinguished moral and political philosophers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists from America, Australia and Europe criticize existing institutions and increasingly restrictive policies and look for alternatives more in line with principles and constitutions of liberal democratic welfare states.

Citizenship between Past and Future brings together some of the most prominent scholars in the field of citizenship studies to assess, critically and contextually, the ongoing significance of citizenship as an object of study. The authors reflect on the major issues and debates that have emerged in the field of citizenship studies over the last decade as well as to point out some of the new challenges ahead. The book recasts traditional thinking about citizenship beyond issues of legal status and investigates it rather as a strategic concept that is central in the analysis of identity, participation, human rights, and emerging forms of political life. Seeking to broaden the debate on the meaning, significance, and practices of citizenship, the authors engage with an impressive and challenging array of theoretical and substantive issues. Citizenship is investigated in terms of debates over inclusion and exclusion, statism and cosmopolitanism, status and rights, gender and race, and multiculturalism and global inequality. The book revitalizes the debate over a key political concept and offers new ways of thinking about citizenship that take into account contemporary challenges.

Human rights occupy a key place in international law and relations. Understanding their significance involves knowing what the current guarantees of human rights are, and how the arrangements for protecting them work. This text offers a broad survey outlining the main human rights instruments and describing how they are implemented in the United Nations, through regional institutions, in specialized agencies and elsewhere. It covers many recent developments and shows that, despite important limitations, human rights law has significant achievements and even greater potential. Substantially rewritten and updated to take into account the ending of the Cold War, this fourth edition includes such issues as the War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the convention on the Rights of the Child and the role of UN Commissioner for Human Rights. -- .

Did the Bush administration fundamentally harm the international human rights system through its rejection of human rights norms? This is the central question explored within US Human Rights Conduct and International Legitimacy, which analyses the practices of legitimacy between the Bush administration, states, and international organizations in cases of torture, habeas corpus, and rendition. Vincent Keating argues that despite the material power of the United States, there is little evidence that the Bush administration gravely damaged international norms on torture and habeas corpus as few nations have followed in America's footsteps, and that the Bush administration's deviation from international norms has served to reaffirm worldwide commitment to human rights.

Informal Justice in Divided Societies examines the ways in which paramilitary and vigilante activity are linked with controlling community crime in both Northern Ireland and South Africa. Drawing upon original research, Colin Knox and Rachel Monaghan analyze the agents of informal justice, its victims, and why communities endorse this form of retribution. They conclude the book with a wider debate of the abuse of human rights suffered by many victims of community crime and tentatively highlight future policy implications.

The African American struggle for advancement since the late 19th century has had an enormous impact on American society in general. This examination of African American development looks at group progress in four critical areas of national life: economic, political, educational, and social. Determined to forge a new identity based upon principles of equality, African American leadership and the liberal whites who supported them have achieved many goals in their attempts to forge a new role for African Americans in the political development of the nation. Mungazi includes discussion of important watershed events and key individuals who helped to redefine our nation's history.

A determined leadership contributed greatly to many victories. Such leaders sought assistance from the United States Supreme Court as one means to improve the plight of African Americans. Mungazi considers the Court's rulings on the question of race and the impact that these decisions have had on subsequent political and economic advancement. While African American advocates risked, in some cases, their very lives for their efforts, their commitment to the cause left them unwilling to compromise their basic operational principles and beliefs. Lingering racial prejudice and recent attacks on affirmative action have damaged interracial cooperation in many areas of the country; however, the struggle to reach the Promised Land continues.

The revival of authoritarianism is one of the most important forces reshaping world politics today. However, not all authoritarians are the same. To examine both resurgence and variation in authoritarian rule, Karrie J. Koesel, Valerie J. Bunce, and Jessica Chen Weiss gather a leading cast of scholars to compare the most powerful autocracies in global politics today: Russia and China. The essays in Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes focus on three issues that currently animate debates about these two countries and, more generally, authoritarian political systems. First, how do authoritarian regimes differ from one another, and how do these differences affect regime-society relations? Second, what do citizens think about the authoritarian governments that rule them, and what do they want from their governments? Third, what strategies do authoritarian leaders use to keep citizens and public officials in line and how successful are those strategies in sustaining both the regime and the leader's hold on power? Integrating the most important findings from a now-immense body of research into a coherent comparative analysis of Russia and China, this book will be essential for anyone studying the foundations of contemporary authoritarianism.

Highlighting the contributions of feminist media history to media studies and related disciplines, this book focuses on feminist periodicals emerging from or reacting to the Edwardian suffrage campaign and situates them in the context of current debates about the public sphere, social movements, and media history.

The most dramatic change in American society in the last forty years has been the explosive growth of personal rights. This "Rights Revolution" is currently under attack by both mainstream conservatives and intellectual liberals as undermining traditional values of community. In replying to the critics, Samuel Walker details the history of the rise of rights in American society, from the birth of the civil rights movement to today, and provides a spirited defense of its success in actually enlarging and enriching our sense of community in the USA.

The debate about languages of instruction in Africa and Asia involves an analysis of both the historical thrust of national government and also development aid policies. Using case studies from Tanzania, Nigeria, South Africa, Rwanda, India, Bangladesh and Malaysia, Zehlia Babaci-Wilhite argues that the colonial legacy is perpetuated when global languages are promoted in education. The use of local languages in instruction not only offers an effective means to contextualize the curriculum and improve student comprehension, but also to achieve quality education and rights in education.

Those seeking social change confront the centrality of power on a daily basis. What precisely is power and how does it manifest itself? And how are radical and progressive strategies shaped by the ways in which we conceptualize it?

Drawing on feminist, poststructuralist, and Marxist theory, Davina Cooper develops an innovative framework for understanding power relations in forms as diverse as reproductive technology, queer activism, municipal politics, and the regulation of lesbian reproduction. "Power in Struggle" explores the relationship between power, sexuality, and the state and ultimately provides a radical re-thinking of these concepts and their interactions. Sexual politics, Cooper posits, must recognize the sexualization of everyday life and should not be exclusively the concern of a young, educated elite, nor should sex be shuttered as a private affair.

Concluding with an important and original discussion of how an ethics of empowerment can inform political strategy, Power in Struggle is a must-read for activists, scholars, and lawyers interested in understanding the role of power in the state.

A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 'I can't stop talking about this book' Jamie Klingler, co-founder #ReclaimTheseStreets 'What a gem. ... Makes you look at the world, and yourself, afresh.' Minna Salami, author of Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone 'A generous combination of passion and practicality that is not easily resisted. A rare book that might actually change our minds' Daniel Hahn OBE 'A book at once vigorous and generous, pleasurable and galvanising' Sophie Hughes, International Booker Prize-shortlisted translator What does it really mean to speak freely? A wise, beautifully written book that explores the way language shapes our lives and how we see the world - and what happens when we learn new words, and new ways of speaking to each other. Language opens up our world, and in the same instant, limits it. What does it mean to exist in a language that was never meant for you to speak? Why are we missing certain words? How can we talk about our communal problems without fuelling them? What does it actually mean to speak freely? As a writer and activist fighting for equality, Kubra Gumusay has been thinking about these questions for many years. In this book she explores how language shapes our thinking and determines our politics. She shows how people become invisible as individuals when they are always seen as part of a group, and the way those in the minority often have to expend energy cleaning up the messy thinking of others. But she also points to how we might shape conversations to allow for greater ambiguity and individuality, how arguments might happen in a space of learning and vulnerability without sacrificing principles - how we might all be able to speak freely.

This book offers a revealing look at Rosa Parks, whose role as an activist and struggle with racism began long before her historic 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, bus ride. Rosa Parks: A Biography captures the story of this remarkable woman like no other biography of her before it. It examines the entire scope of Rosa Parks's life, from her birth in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama to her 1943 enrollment in the Montgomery NAACP to the dramatic events of the 1960s, and her continuing work up to her death in 2005. Each chapter provides an exploration of a period in Parks's life, portraying the people, places, and events that shaped and were shaped by her. Readers will see in Parks, not an inadvertent tripwire of history, but a woman whose lifelong struggle against racism led her inexorably to a moment where she took a courageous stand by sitting down and not moving. Includes a timeline of critical people and events in Rosa Parks's life Offers a bibliography of archival, newspaper, documentary, secondary, and internet resources

This book sheds light on the processes that have transformed national citizenship of the European Union's member states and explains the legislative changes that have taken place since the mid-1980s in Germany, Hungary and Poland.

In an increasingly mobile world with mounting concerns about the states' control of borders and migration, passports and citizenship rights matter more than ever. This book asks what citizenship ceremonies can tell us about how citizenship is understood through empirical research in the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Ireland.

Plagued by geographic isolation, poverty, and acute shortages of health professionals and hospital beds, the South was dubbed by Surgeon General Thomas Parran "the nation's number one health problem." The improvement of southern, rural, and black health would become a top priority of the U.S. Public Health Service during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.

Karen Kruse Thomas details how NAACP lawsuits pushed southern states to equalize public services and facilities for blacks just as wartime shortages of health personnel and high rates of draft rejections generated broad support for health reform. Southern Democrats leveraged their power in Congress and used the war effort to call for federal aid to uplift the South. The language of regional uplift, Thomas contends, allowed southern liberals to aid blacks while remaining silent on race. Reformers embraced, at least initially, the notion of "deluxe Jim Crow"--support for health care that maintained segregation. Thomas argues that this strategy was, in certain respects, a success, building much-needed hospitals and training more black doctors.

By the 1950s, deluxe Jim Crow policy had helped to weaken the legal basis for segregation. Thomas traces this transformation at the national level and in North Carolina, where "deluxe Jim Crow reached its fullest potential." This dual focus allows her to examine the shifting alliances--between blacks and liberal whites, southerners and northerners, activists and doctors--that drove policy. "Deluxe Jim Crow" provides insight into a variety of historical debates, including the racial dimensions of state building, the nature of white southern liberalism, and the role of black professionals during the long civil rights movement.

What are the prospects and means of achieving development through a democratic politics of socio-economic rights? Starting from the position that socio-economic rights are as legally and normatively valid as civil and political rights, this anthology explores the politics of acquiring and transforming socio-economic rights in South Africa. The book brings together an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars in an examination of the multifaceted politics of social and economic policy-making, rights-based political struggles and socio-economic rights litigations. The post-apartheid South African experience shows that there is no guarantee that democracy will eliminate poverty or reduce social inequality, but also that democratic institutions and politics may provide important means for asserting interests and rights in regard to development. Thus it is argued that democratic politics of socio-economic rights may democratise development while also developing democracy.

In Freedom of Religion and Its Regulation in Nigeria: Analysis of Preaching Board Laws in Some States of Northern Nigeria, Ahmed Salisu Garba provides an account of how states in Northern Nigeria have enacted laws to regulate religious preaching in the spheres of influence. The work examines the debates surrounding the laws and how the state in collaboration with dominant religious groups persecuted members of minority religious in the states. The author applied an argumentative approach to raise and analyse issues relating to the reasonability of the laws in Nigeria, reasons for their enactment, judicial review mechanisms employed in the determination of the reasonability of the laws in democracies, and how they accord with the freedom of religion clause in the Nigerian Constitution.

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.