Genealogy Of Rights Research Articles

The politics of women's rights in Iran

Preface ix Acknowledgments xvii INTRODUCTION: Human and Cultural Practice 1 CHAPTER ONE: A Genealogy of Rights in Iran 20 CHAPTER TWO: Producing States: Women's Participation and the Dialogics of 42 CHAPTER THREE: Qur'anic Meetings: Doing the Cultural Work 75 CHAPTER FOUR: Courting Rights: Talk in Islamico-Civil Family Court 108 CHAPTER FIVE: Practice and Effect: Writing/Righting the Law 138 CHAPTER SIX: Human Rights: The Politics and Prose of Discursive Sites 166 CONCLUSION: Rights as Exhibition at the Brink of War 200 APPENDIX: The Iranian Marriage Contract 209 Notes 211 Glossary 227 Bibliography 231 Index 251

WOLTERSTORFF, RIGHTS, WRONGS, AND THE BIBLE

ABSTRACTAccording to Wolterstorff, an accurate genealogy of rights begins, not with the late Middle Ages and the Enlightenment, but with the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. The Gospel of Luke, Wolterstorff says, provides especially important witness, and he gives it considerable attention. Wolterstorff's careful analysis of Luke is both lexical and narratological. This paper argues that the lexical data of the Gospel of Luke does indeed lend some support to Wolterstorff's case. But the support is qualified since, in Luke, a critical word group—the dikaio‐family—is used in a way that emphasizes relationship to God rather than obligations to neighbor. The most important narratives and teachings of the Gospel lend similarly qualified support to Wolterstorff's genealogy. The paper concludes that while nothing in the Gospel of Luke is incompatible with the observation and defense of human rights, the program Luke sketches has another focus that a comprehensive reading of that Gospel must keep in view.