Human Rights

Abstract

Abstract Human rights and globalization are usually juxtaposed as being antithetical to one another, and they are so in ways that recall other antithetical oppositions: the right to self‐determination vs. colonial domination; racial equality vs. white supremacy; workers' rights vs. capitalist exploitation; women's rights vs. patriarchy; and the integrity of nature vs. environmental exploitation. Such juxtapositions, even when simplified, have had powerful implications, both practical and conceptual, serving as the point of departure for transformative movements and intellectual insights and analysis, only to cite as examples: W.E.B. Du Bois, Franz Fanon, Paulo Freire, Martin Luther King, Jr, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Marx, E.P. Thompson, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Human rights and globalization are described here in similar terms – as being in fundamental opposition to inequalities and human freedoms – and this entry moves on to highlight how human rights can temper economic globalization so that globalization benefits the world's peoples.