Together, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights comprise the constitutional foundation of the United States. These-the oldest governing documents still in use in the world-urgently need an update, just as the constitutions of other countries have been updated and revised. Human Rights Of, By, and For the People brings together lawyers and sociologists to show how globalization and climate change offer an opportunity to revisit the founding documents. Each proposes specific changes that would more closely align US law with international law. The chapters also illustrate how constitutions are embedded in society and shaped by culture. The constitution itself sets up contentious relationships among the three branches of government and between the federal government and each state government, while the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments begrudgingly recognize the civil and political rights of citizens. These rights are described by legal scholars as "negative rights," specifically as freedoms from infringements rather than as positive rights that affirm personhood and human dignity. The contributors to this volume offer "positive rights" instead. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), written in the middle of the last century, inspires these updates. Nearly every other constitution in the world has adopted language from the UDHR. The contributors use intersectionality, critical race theory, and contemporary critiques of runaway economic inequality to ground their interventions in sociological argument.

Institutions--like education, family, medicine, culture, and law--, are powerful social structures shaping how we live together. As members of society we daily express our adherence to norms and values of institutions as we consciously and unconsciously reject and challenge them. Our everyday experiences with institutions not only shape our connections with one another, they can reinforce our binding to the status quo as we struggle to produce social change. Institutions can help us do human rights. Institutions that bridge nation-states can offer resources, including norms, to advance human rights. These institutions can serve as touch stones to changing minds and confronting human rights violations. Institutions can also prevent us from doing human rights. We create institutions, but institutions can be difficult to change. Institutions can weaken, if not outright prevent, human rights establishment and implementation. To release human rights from their institutional bindings, sociologists must solve riddles of how institutions work and determine social life. This book is a step forward in identifying means by which we can loosen human rights from institutional constraints.

At an earlier time, sociologists C. Wright Mills, W. E. Du Bois, and Jane Addams loudly protested injustices and inequities in American society, provided critiques and analyses of systems of oppression, and challenged sociologists to be responsible critics and constructive commentators. These giants of American sociology would have applauded the 2004 meetings of the American Sociological Association. The theme of the meetings, Public Sociology, presided over by President Michael Burawoy, sparked lively debate and continues to be a spur for research and theory, and a focal point of ongoing discussions about what sociology is and should be. This volume advances these discussions and debates, and proposes how they can be further sharpened and developed. Some authors in this volume clarify the distinctive roles that Public Sociologists can play in the discipline, in the classroom, and in larger society. Others provide critical analyses, focusing, for example, on aspects of American society and institutions, global corporate actors, sweatshop practices, international neoliberal organizations, migration policies, and U.S. environmental policies. Others advance new ways of thinking about global interdependencies that include indigenous groups, peasants, as well as societies in industrialized and developing states, and international organizations. Still others propose visions of transformative processes and practices that are progressively affirmative, even activist -- in the spirit of 'A Better World is Possible!!' This volume provides an overview of some of the major debates in sociology today and places emphasis on the importance of human rights in the 'One (globalized) World' we live in today. Authors engage these debates with spirited enthusiasm and write exceptionally clearly about those topics that may be new to American readers.

At an earlier time, sociologists C. Wright Mills, W. E. Du Bois, and Jane Addams loudly protested injustices and inequities in American society, provided critiques and analyses of systems of oppression, and challenged sociologists to be responsible critics and constructive commentators. These giants of American sociology would have applauded the 2004 meetings of the American Sociological Association. The theme of the meetings, Public Sociology, presided over by President Michael Burawoy, sparked lively debate and continues to be a spur for research and theory, and a focal point of ongoing discussions about what sociology is and should be. This volume advances these discussions and debates, and proposes how they can be further sharpened and developed. Some authors in this volume clarify the distinctive roles that Public Sociologists can play in the discipline, in the classroom, and in larger society. Others provide critical analyses, focusing, for example, on aspects of American society and institutions, global corporate actors, sweatshop practices, international neoliberal organizations, migration policies, and U.S. environmental policies. Others advance new ways of thinking about global interdependencies that include indigenous groups, peasants, as well as societies in industrialized and developing states, and international organizations. Still others propose visions of transformative processes and practices that are progressively affirmative, even activist -- in the spirit of "A Better World is Possible!!" This volume provides an overview of some of the major debates in sociology today and places emphasis on the importance of human rights in the "One (globalized) World" we live in today. Authors engage these debates with spirited enthusiasm and write exceptionally clearly about those topics that may be new to American readers.

As sociologists deepen their examinations of human rights in their teaching, research, and thinking, it is essential that such work is conducted in a manner that is both mindful and critical of the knowledge we are building upon in sociology and human rights. As the authors of this volume reveal, creating sociological knowledge that examines human rights for the expansion of human rights is something that sociologists are well equipped to undertake, whether through the use of mathematics, comparative-historical analysis, the study of emotions, conversations, or social psychology. In these chapters you will find the roots of the study of human rights deep within sociological research and thinking as well as emerging techniques that will push the discipline as it seeks to expand understanding of human rights together with so many other aspects of the social condition.

As sociologists deepen their examinations of human rights in their teaching, research, and thinking, it is essential that such work is conducted in a manner that is both mindful and critical of the knowledge we are building upon in sociology and human rights. As the authors of this volume reveal, creating sociological knowledge that examines human rights for the expansion of human rights is something that sociologists are well equipped to undertake, whether through the use of mathematics, comparative-historical analysis, the study of emotions, conversations, or social psychology. In these chapters you will find the roots of the study of human rights deep within sociological research and thinking as well as emerging techniques that will push the discipline as it seeks to expand understanding of human rights together with so many other aspects of the social condition.

Together, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights comprise the constitutional foundation of the United States. These-the oldest governing documents still in use in the world-urgently need an update, just as the constitutions of other countries have been updated and revised. Human Rights Of, By, and For the People brings together lawyers and sociologists to show how globalization and climate change offer an opportunity to revisit the founding documents. Each proposes specific changes that would more closely align US law with international law. The chapters also illustrate how constitutions are embedded in society and shaped by culture. The constitution itself sets up contentious relationships among the three branches of government and between the federal government and each state government, while the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments begrudgingly recognize the civil and political rights of citizens. These rights are described by legal scholars as "negative rights," specifically as freedoms from infringements rather than as positive rights that affirm personhood and human dignity. The contributors to this volume offer "positive rights" instead. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), written in the middle of the last century, inspires these updates. Nearly every other constitution in the world has adopted language from the UDHR. The contributors use intersectionality, critical race theory, and contemporary critiques of runaway economic inequality to ground their interventions in sociological argument.

Institutions--like education, family, medicine, culture, and law--, are powerful social structures shaping how we live together. As members of society we daily express our adherence to norms and values of institutions as we consciously and unconsciously reject and challenge them. Our everyday experiences with institutions not only shape our connections with one another, they can reinforce our binding to the status quo as we struggle to produce social change. Institutions can help us do human rights. Institutions that bridge nation-states can offer resources, including norms, to advance human rights. These institutions can serve as touch stones to changing minds and confronting human rights violations. Institutions can also prevent us from doing human rights. We create institutions, but institutions can be difficult to change. Institutions can weaken, if not outright prevent, human rights establishment and implementation. To release human rights from their institutional bindings, sociologists must solve riddles of how institutions work and determine social life. This book is a step forward in identifying means by which we can loosen human rights from institutional constraints.

How do people work together to advance human rights? Do people form groups to prevent human rights from being enforced? Why? In what ways do circumstances matter to the work of individuals collectively working to shape human rights practices? Human society is made of individuals within contexts-tectonic plates not of the earth's crust but of groups and individuals who scrape and shift as we bump along, competing for scarce resources and getting along. These movements, large and small, are the products of actions individuals take in communities, within families and legal structures. These individuals are able to live longer, yet continue to remain vulnerable to dangers arising from the environment, substances, struggles for power, and a failure to understand that in most ways we are the same as our neighbors. Yet it is because we live together in layers of diverse communities that we want our ability to speak to be unhindered by others, use spirituality to help us understand ourselves and others, possess a space and objects that are ours alone, and join with groups that share our values and interests, including circumstances where we do not know who our fellow neighbor is. For this reason sociologists have identified the importance of movements and change in human societies. When we collaborate in groups, individuals can change the contours of their daily lives. Within this book you will find the building blocks for human rights in our communities. To understand why sometimes we enjoy human rights and other times we experience vulnerability and risk, sociologists seek to understand the individual within her context. Bringing together prominent sociologists to grapple with these questions, Movements for Human Rights: Locally and Globally, offers insights into the ways that people move for (and against) human rights.

How do people work together to advance human rights? Do people form groups to prevent human rights from being enforced? Why? In what ways do circumstances matter to the work of individuals collectively working to shape human rights practices? Human society is made of individuals within contexts-tectonic plates not of the earth's crust but of groups and individuals who scrape and shift as we bump along, competing for scarce resources and getting along. These movements, large and small, are the products of actions individuals take in communities, within families and legal structures. These individuals are able to live longer, yet continue to remain vulnerable to dangers arising from the environment, substances, struggles for power, and a failure to understand that in most ways we are the same as our neighbors. Yet it is because we live together in layers of diverse communities that we want our ability to speak to be unhindered by others, use spirituality to help us understand ourselves and others, possess a space and objects that are ours alone, and join with groups that share our values and interests, including circumstances where we do not know who our fellow neighbor is. For this reason sociologists have identified the importance of movements and change in human societies. When we collaborate in groups, individuals can change the contours of their daily lives. Within this book you will find the building blocks for human rights in our communities. To understand why sometimes we enjoy human rights and other times we experience vulnerability and risk, sociologists seek to understand the individual within her context. Bringing together prominent sociologists to grapple with these questions, Movements for Human Rights: Locally and Globally, offers insights into the ways that people move for (and against) human rights.