A Latin American Sociopolitical Conceptualization of Human Rights

Abstract

Unlike their counterparts in Asia and Africa, many Latin American human rights scholars have passively accepted the supposed cultural relevance of the liberal discourse of human rights and have limited academic studies to the sphere of legal analysis. Nevertheless, the work of the social sciences in the region has enriched human rights thought and the practices of social movements have enriched human rights practice. This article proposes that the study of human rights in Latin America needs to move beyond the comfortable limits of European liberalism and enter the field of political sociology that studies precisely where violations occur and the construction of hemispheric defense by social movements. This suggests that a truly Latin American notion of human rights would be sociopolitical rather than legal as the major contribution of the region to discourse has been its philosophy of action and the practice of social movements inspired by this philosophy. More specifically, the article proposes a way to conceptualize human rights from a sociopolitical and Latin American perspective in such a way that it recovers the historical legacy of social struggles from a discursive perspective, relying in particular on ideas of genealogy and intertextuality and is based on the thought of Latin American, Asian, and African theorists and philosophers who have moved beyond the confines of liberalism.