What are human rights? Are human rights disputed ideological concepts? and how can they be defended, and extended? Wolf-Dieter Narr of the Free University of Berlin writes that through this book "one is able to recognize the fundamental ambivalence which characterises all the 'theories' on and the practices of human rights in the West." It, "makes the reader aware of human longings and needs which are the other part of human rights." This book challenges the concept of human rights, it shows that the contradictions that characterize human rights reflect the conflicts inherent in capitalist society, lead to the pervasive violation of those rights, and make respect for them impossible, particularly in this era of global capitalism. The author argues that human rights as spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not 'human' rights - but rather time-bound and relative to a particular mode of production.

This collection of original articles offers an up-to-date, critical review of the global political economy today, covering such topics as international finance, corporate governance, military power, international labour standards, global health, human rights, and more. Assembling a group of top scholars, the editors are able to provide a wide-ranging yet coherent survey of contemporary international institutions and how they are governed. In the process, they offer a useful basis for understanding the financial crisis of 2008.

"Relations of Global Power" is the only book available that examines the many different dimensions of the international regulatory structure across a range of issues, placing them all within the context of neoliberal globalization. It will be of interest to scholars of political science, sociology, policy studies, public administration, and global studies, and will also appeal to activists and members of alter-globalization movements.

Published Under the Garamond Imprint

Available in the US through Prometheus Books.

Demands for "human rights" and resistance to their violation are rarely out of the news. Yet their definition is far from a settled matter, their legal status is quite varied, their uses and defence widely inconsistent between jurisdictions, and respect for them is blatantly limited. If it is held that all humans are abstractly equal in the possession of these rights, there is little agreement on anything else about them. The "human rights" of the United Nations? Charter and Universal Declaration contain a host of inconsisA-tencies and a mixture of truths and untruths that contradict the assumptions of universality and timelessness.

Gary Teeple makes the case that "human rights" are peculiar to an historically given mode of production; they comprise the public declaration of the principles of the prevailing property relations. In that they are proclaimed absolute and universal is no different than similar declarations and beliefs about the nature of principles arising in different social formations. Although the tenets underlying "human rights" are distinct from pre-capitalist rights in several ways, there is one very significant distinguishing characteristic: implicit within them are goals that are qualitatively different from any relations yet realized in existing social formations.