Remembering a sociology of Human Rights

Natan Sznaider,Daniel Levy

doi:10.3989/chdj.2014.013

Abstract

A sociology of human rights sounds almost like a contradiction in terms. Sociology is about social groups, about particular experiences, about how people, embedded in space and time, make sense of their lives and give meaning to their world. It deals with power and interest and the social bases of our experiences. On the other hand, human rights are about human beings in general, without temporal or spatial references, not about groups and their boundaries. Human rights are about humanity, located in the world and connected to an inviolable nature. Global media representations, among others, create new cosmopolitan memories , providing new epistemological vantage points and emerging moral-political interdependencies. As such, memories of the Holocaust contribute to the creation of a common European cultural memory based on the abstract notion of human rights. Sociologically, a theory of human rights has to show how universal and particular memories co-exist, are reconciled etc. and what it means for the recognition of the “other”, and the broadening of circles of solidarity.

Highlights

RESUMEN: Recordando una sociología de los derechos humanos.- Una sociología de los derechos humans suena casi como un oxímoron
Through the analytic prism of historical memories –which refers to shared understandings specific pasts carry for present concerns of a political community– we provide an explanation for both the salience of human rights norms as a globally available repertoire of legitimate claim making and the persistence of particular identities
Our intent is more conceptual, as we examine how changing perceptions of Holocaust memory are contributing to the abstraction that inheres in the unconditional demands of human rights claims

Summary

The tension between Sociology and Human Rights

A sociology of human rights sounds almost like a contradiction in terms. Sociology is about social groups, about particular experiences, about how people, embedded in space and time, make sense of their lives and give meaning to their world. Our central claim is that the social embeddedness of human rights is connected to memories of catastrophes, the changing representations of the extermination of the Jewish people during the Holocaust It was this particular experience that became the universal mirror onto which the precarious vulnerability of human beings has been projected. The commemoration of the Holocaust as a universal code for human rights abuses is about forgetting the particular experience and redirecting the focus on symbolic, political and cultural practices that underscore the “solution” offered by the Human Rights Regime rather than engaging with the “problem” in concrete fashion Too, it is the unbearable coping with particular forms of violations and violence that has to make room for our desire for security and protection. By extension the salience of human rights norms is a function of how abstract memories of violations and particular memories, as well as fears of violent death, are contending with each other

Theorizing Human Rights

Memories of Human Rights

Clash of Memories

The return of the New Leviathan