Sociology Of Human Rights Research Articles

Traditional values, family, homeschooling: The role of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church in transnational moral conservative networks and their efforts at reshaping human rights

Abstract In the last two decades, Russian state actors and the Russian Orthodox Church have come to play an increasingly important role in the undermining of established understandings of international human rights law by reinterpreting its aims and repurposing its institutions, in particular the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the European Court of Human Rights. Russian state and church leaders have appropriated and coopted the language of human rights in order to advance an illiberal and nationalist agenda that undercuts democratic values and targets particular groups and their rights and freedoms—most notably liberal civil society, political opposition, and the LGBTIQ+ community. Written from the angle of a constructivist sociology of human rights, this article brings together three case studies of Russian rights appropriation around the topics of traditional values, family, and homeschooling and draws six lessons on the (mis)appropriation of human rights for illiberal purposes. The analysis of Russia’s rights appropriation sheds light on the background and build-up for current events in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The Life and Times of Human Rights Organizations: Organizational Biographies and the Sociology of Human Rights

The Life and Times of Human Rights Organizations: Organizational Biographies and the Sociology of Human Rights

Sexual and Reproductive Rights

This essay focuses the historically changing of sexual and reproductive rights, and discusses how the framework of sexual rights fills in the absence of human rights in the field of sexual topics and benefits the universality of human rights discourse. The discussion of contemporary sexuality is embedded into the larger political framework of global capitalism, neocolonialism, militarism and ethnic conflict, and the gender hierarchies that exist everywhere. In this frustrating context, issues related to sexual and reproductive rights have also begun to emerge, and this essay will address these issues in four parts. The first section analyses the concept of human rights and the sociology of human rights; the second part retains the right to patriarchal male domination of the family and it questions the 'reproductive and sexual rights' of human rights; the third part presents the feminist critique that liberalism does not grant all individuals freedom;the fourth section discusses several issues related to global political processes and the struggle for reproductive and sexual rights, especially in the case of the LGBT rights.

‘Recognizing’ Human Rights: an Argument for the Applicability of Recognition Theory Within the Sociology of Human Rights

‘Recognizing’ Human Rights: an Argument for the Applicability of Recognition Theory Within the Sociology of Human Rights

Interrupting the Human Rights Expansion Narrative

In the growing field of the sociology of human rights, the notion that human rights might best be understood as the expansion and/or supersession of citizenship rights has taken root, as has the more generalized taken for granted “backstories” to the effect that human rights are the product of a unique postwar consensus. In this article, I argue that these assumptions are more encumbrance than assistance when it comes time to sociologically grasping what human rights are, how they emerged, and, more importantly, what they might be able to achieve. In the first half of the article, I demonstrate that the tropes of expansion and supersession of citizenship rights are central to two seminal sociological analyses of human rights—those of Bryan S. Turner (1993, 2006) and Yasemin N. Soysal (1994, 2012) —and that they fail to provide a social-relational and historical account of the emergence of human rights. In the second part, I pull together new historical and sociolegal scholarship that is recalibrating our understanding of human rights. Drawing attention to the 1970s as the more persuasive social-relational origin of contemporary human rights, I argue, allows a more nuanced appraisal of human rights’ (in)efficacy.

Marxism and human rights: new thoughts on an old debate

ABSTRACTThis paper revives the debate as to whether Marxism is compatible with a commitment to human rights, but, in presenting a defence of such a compatibility, seeks to extend that debate beyond the confines of philosophical analysis to incorporate the contributions of Marxist theory to the sociology of human rights. It suggests that Marxist theory enables us to re-evaluate the priorities of human rights as a political project, and that in doing so it complements the social constructionist approach prevalent within the sociology of human rights. Taken together, a Marxist theory of social structure and a social constructionist theory of human rights enable a fuller realisation of the possibility of an emancipatory politics.

The right to commemoration and “ideal victims”: the puzzle of victim dissatisfaction with State-led commemoration after 9/11 and 3/11

ABSTRACTThis article explores the puzzle of victim dissatisfaction with State-led commemoration following 9/11 and 3/11 by offering a cross-national case study through which to view key areas of theoretical debate in the sociology of human rights, cultural trauma and collective memory, and the politics of victimhood. Although State-led commemorative processes are often highly contested, we would expect them to be less so in the cases of 9/11 and 3/11, given broad social consensus about the victims’ right to commemoration and the traumatic nature of the events, and especially the “ideal nature” of the victims who as symbolic representatives of the State are conferred with great moral authority. Drawing on primary and secondary data on the commemoration of the attacks of 11th September 2001 and 11th March 2004 we find that despite sharp differences between commemorative processes, three common key areas of contestation and dissatisfaction for victims emerge: political instrumentalisation, hierarchies of worth and exclusion. We show how the status of ideal victimhood for victims of transnational terrorism carries within it an inherent paradox which provides the key to their dissatisfaction, namely the moral authority conferred on them as representatives of the State simultaneously depersonalises them, excluding them as individuals with rights and needs.

The Sociology of Human Rights: An Introduction by Mark Frezzo

Reviewed by: The Sociology of Human Rights: An Introduction by Mark Frezzo Alex Workman (bio) and Tinashe Dune (bio) Mark Frezzo, The Sociology of Human Rights: An Introduction (Polity Press, 2015), ISBN 978–0–7456–6011–0, 192 pages. The Sociology of Human Rights: An Introduction offers an alternative perspective to the traditional approaches and understanding from the growing complexities of human rights as a field of study. As such, this book is well situated to help transform this field. Within each chapter, [End Page 1054] Mark Frezzo provides a comprehensive discussion of the many dimensions related to human rights. In addition, Frezzo suggests that, until recently, sociology and human rights have not been investigated together. Due to the growing complexities and challenges facing the world, Frezzo insists that it is important to place the study of human rights within a sociological framework. For example, though human rights belong to every person, the equal distribution of rights is not always plausible. Frezzo claims that a sociological investigation of this type of problem will create new knowledge in regards to the utility and deployment of human rights. Additionally, Frezzo further claims that if human rights are to be maintained on a global scale, a globally binding framework for human rights can exist. That said, cultural pluralism protects the worlds many cultures, and human rights must consider the dichotomy between western and non-western, and secular and non-secular. Notably, this field of study, (being the sociology of human rights) as described by Frezzo, uses a pluralistic framework drawing on various theoretical and methodological underpinnings to explore human rights from diverse sociological perspectives. Frezzo postulates that both quantitative and qualitative methodologies can be utilized to effectively engage with this new school of thought.1 Therefore, the overall structure of this book review will follow the logical sequence as outlined within The Sociology of Human Rights: An Introduction. This book is rich in detail that is achieved by breaking down broad concepts into their understandable components, and providing an exceptionally thorough terminology section at the end of the book. Furthermore, this book steps away from a traditional approach to human rights, utilizing sociology to both evaluate and critique how human rights are executed and adopted between the global "North" and "South." Chapter One provides a general overview of the book. The historical context of sociology is discussed by highlighting the founding "fathers": Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber. This chapter also gives a detailed contextual framework for each of the subsequent chapters by briefly discussing the historical origins of each topic, as well as how they can be viewed through a sociological lens. Chapter Two explores and critiques how human rights have been compounded into similar categories, such as negative (i.e., governmental overreach; or as mandatory sentencing for first-time offenders) and positive (i.e., services to which citizens are entitled), individual and collective, and generational; where the first generation of rights are civil and political, the second are economic and social, and the third and most recent are collective, cultural, and environmental rights. Frezzo refers to this classification system as the three-genreations framework and highlights both similarities and differences between these categories.2 Collective and individual human rights are critiqued as Frezzo points out how conflicting ideologies between nation-states and cultures become problematic. With regards to rights claims, Frezzo discusses how such claims both benefit and hinder individuals, and also vary drastically from one nation-state and cultural context to another depending on the priorities of dominant groups. For example, a cultural group may be hindered [End Page 1055] when a sovereign nation-state promotes a set of rights which privilege one culture over another.3 Frezzo uses examples to show how discrepancies between the implementation of human rights and the sovereign nation-state create complex systems in which human rights become selectively applied, with some people's rights being expanded, contracted, or even abolished entirely. In Chapter Three, Frezzo discusses the ways that the civil and political rights enshrined by documents generated during the European Enlightenment are "significant not only as ends-in-themselves, but as means to further ends."4 Frezzo considers these civil and political...

Human Rights and Capabilities: A Program for a Critical Sociology of Law

This article sets out the fecundity of the Capability Approach for a sociology of human rights. The author endeavors to show that four difficulties can be successfully overcome. (1) The first is epistemological in nature. Human rights are often presented as legal norms. By relying on the Putman/Habermas debate, the author maintains that Sen’s epistemology is Putnamian, allowing us to treat human rights a system of values (rather than as a system of norms), thereby enabling the construction of a system of evaluation (the “goal rights system”) that is neither consequentialist nor deontological. This system is open to public deliberation and can thus take into account the systems of evaluation of participants (in addition to that of the observer). This epistemological basis serves to remove the other obstacles. (2) By defining the individual in terms of “capabilities”, Sen avoids a methodological individualism that would produce an under-socialized version of the individual. (3) He includes social, economic, and cultural rights in the list of human rights, whereas liberal philosophies tend to exclude these. (4) He allows for the thematization of the specific conversion factors that condition the transformation of formal rights into real freedoms (internormative culture, civilian legal intermediaries, access to resources and the capabilities to use them). Avoiding formalism, the capability approach is a valuable instrument for a critical sociology of human rights.

Human rights or social justice? The problem of rights inflation

ABSTRACTThis article debates a paradox in politics, law and social practice: Whereas human rights has become an effective strategy for framing grievances, the increasing appropriation of rights-talk to frame any and all grievances is undermining attempts to successfully address systemic social problems. I argue that issues such as poverty should be framed as social justice rather than human rights. In an attempt to further develop a sociology of human rights, I explore how framing a grievance as a human right shapes the way people understand both the problem and the solution, and the limits to framing social problems as rights violations. Canadians, in particular, typify a broader global experience of increasingly asserting rights-claims in everyday life, from the environment to bullying at school.

Mobilising for food sovereignty: the pitfalls of international human rights strategies and an exploration of alternatives

ABSTRACTThis article considers the role played by the language of human rights in a global campaign for food sovereignty. Led initially by the international peasants’ movement, Vía Campesina, the campaign opposes the globalisation of agricultural markets and neoliberal interventions in food production. Alongside other strategies, the campaign makes creative use of human rights and also seeks their institutionalisation in a UN Declaration on the rights of peasants. An examination of how the campaign employs human rights reveals a more complicated process than that suggested by the theoretical polarisation of ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ accounts of rights development in the sociology of human rights. It demonstrates both wariness of state power and attempts to harness the power of the state against international forces. It also shows that a desire for legal reform co-exists with the struggle for more radical social and political transformations.

LGBTI organizations navigating imperial contexts: the Kaleidoscope Trust, the Commonwealth and the need for a decolonizing, intersectional politics

This article presents the first sustained social analysis of the Kaleidoscope Trust, the UK’s leading social movement organization on LGBTI issues internationally, and its engagement with the Commonwealth – particularly through forming The Commonwealth Equality Network, comprising national NGOs. A contribution is made to sociological and critical analysis of transnational LGBTI movements, through argument for a new analytical framework combining the sociology of human rights with a decolonizing, intersectional approach – beyond the division between optimistic theories extending Western LGBTI progressive politics, or pessimistic postcolonial queer analyses. To investigate organizations’ strategies leading to the Malta 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the research utilizes sources of data including event observation and website sources, initiating analysis of online environments. The analysis deploys social movement theory to examine how and why Kaleidoscope selected the Commonwealth as a political opportunity structure to engage through strategies of framing and articulation of human rights. Invention of The Commonwealth Equality Network, shaped online and offline by imperial relations between core and periphery, is analysed via transnational public sphere and critical theories and argued to indicate a significant restructuring of global queer politics. It is contended that a consistently decolonizing and intersectional articulation of human rights is needed.

War and the Historical Sociology of Human Rights: Violent Entanglements

War and the Historical Sociology of Human Rights: Violent Entanglements

The political sociology of human rights

The language of human rights is the most prominent 'people-centred' language of global justice today. This textbook looks at how human rights are constructed at local, national, international and transnational levels and considers commonalities and differences around the world. Through discussions of key debates in the interdisciplinary study of human rights, the book develops its themes by considering examples of human rights advocacy in international organisations, national states and local grassroots movements. Case studies relating to specific organisations and institutions illustrate how human rights are being used to address structural injustices: imperialist geopolitics, authoritarianism and corruption, inequalities created by 'freeing' markets, dangers faced by transnational migrants as a result of the securitization of borders, and violence against women.

Human rights equals human survival?

This essay reviews two works that offer both similar and different visions of what the sociology of human rights should entail. Both offer accounts of how sociology, by being inherently interested in studying and uncovering power relations in society, is a particularly useful perspective through which to analyze human rights. While providing a rigorous analysis of a variety of global human rights issues, the authors point to some critical problems and challenges to human rights implementation. They also show how these can be overcome to ensure not only the observance of human rights but also human survival.

Towards a New Sociology of Human Rights? A Review Essay on Hans Joas' Sacredness of the Person

While disciplines such as law and history have now developed distinct sub-fields of human rights research, sociology only more recently started developing a clear research agenda with regard to human rights. work that is at the center of this article, sociologist Hans Joas' book The Sacredness of the Person, is an important addition to the new sociological research into human rights. In this essay, we outline the key thesis underlying the book, namely the social process of sacralization of human personhood and discuss it against advances in the sociology of human rights, notably the sociology of law, and recent historical scholarship on human rights.

Toward a New Sociology of Human Rights?

While disciplines such as law and history have now developed distinct subfields of human rights research, sociology only more recently started developing a clear research agenda with regard to human rights. The work reviewed in this article, sociologist Hans Joas’ book The Sacredness of the Person, is an important addition to the new sociological research into human rights. In this essay we outline the key thesis underlying the book, namely the social process of sacralization of human personhood and discusses it against advances in the sociology of human rights, notably the sociology of law, and recent historical scholarship on human rights.

Frezzo, Mark, The Sociology of Human Rights

Frezzo, Mark, The Sociology of Human Rights

Human rights enterprise: political sociology, state power, and social movements

Acknowledgements 1. The Human Rights Enterprise and a Critical Sociology of Human Rights 2. Power and the State: Global Economic Restructuring and the Global Recession 3. The Human Rights Enterprise: A Genealogy of Continuing Struggles 4. Private Tyrannies: Rethinking the Rights of Corporate Citizens 5. Current Contexts and Implications for Human Rights Praxis References

Remembering a sociology of 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. 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.