Re-imagining the theory of human rights

Abstract

This article seeks to address the concern that the language of human rights has become increasingly problematic and susceptible to distortion from its intended meaning. This is in part due to three problems which are identified and interrogated, these being the implicit reduction of human rights discourse to Western individualism, universalism, and legalism. It proceeds to present a sociological defence of human rights discourse as the articulation of general desires in the building of a ‘good society’, and specifies eight such general desires which form the basis of this discourse.