Sociology Of Rights Research Articles

Rights Projects: A Relational Sociology of Rights in Globalization

Building on and extending relational sociology, this article establishes a relational sociology of rights. I argue that rights should not be viewed as substances but as social constructs that derive their meanings and significance within a relational setting. To illustrate how rights are constructed relationally, I introduce a new analytic concept: the rights project, the context-specific endeavor of marginalized communities to envision, claim, and achieve rights on their own terms and in their own ways. The relational construction of rights projects occurs locally, regionally, and globally. The concept of the rights project demonstrates how marginalized communities undertake diverse political and cultural endeavors tailored to specific relational contexts, developing distinct goals, priorities, and strategies in the name of rights. A relational sociology of rights allows us to gain a more nuanced understanding of the conditions of possibility for marginalized communities beyond the Euro-American registers of rights.

Sociology of rights: "I am therefore I have rights": human rights in Islam between universalistic and communalistic perspectives

Sociology of rights: "I am therefore I have rights": human rights in Islam between universalistic and communalistic perspectives

Outline of a social theory of rights

This article articulates a neo-pragmatist theory of human rights by drawing and expanding upon the American classical pragmatism of G.H. Mead. It characterizes this neo-pragmatist theory of rights by its anti-foundationalist, relational, fictive, and constitutive nature, and begins by providing a reconstruction of Mead’s social pragmatist approach to rights, a contribution systematically ignored by contemporary sociologists of rights. Next, it details the cost of this disciplinary oblivion by examining how much neo-pragmatism, critical theory, and legal consciousness studies have meanwhile gained by engaging with Mead’s work on rights. Finally, it discusses the contributions of this historical-theoretical exercise to the rapidly growing sociology of rights, and shows that by supplementing the neo-Meadian approach with a recent interpretation of Hobbes’s fictional theory of politics, there appear to be substantive gains in the empirical study of the origins, consequences, meaning, and denial of rights.

Special Issue: New Directions in the Sociology of Human Rights Foreword

New Directions in the Sociology of Human Rights is a contribution to both sociology and to human rights research, particularly where these are oriented to challenging power relations and inequalities in contemporary societies. It expands and develops the sociology of human rights as a sub-field of sociology and of interdisciplinary human rights scholarship. The volume suggests new directions for the use of social and sociological theories to analyse issues such as torture and genocide; and addresses a range of issues and themes which have not previously been a sustained focus in the sociology of human rights literature, ranging from climate change and the human rights of soldiers to corporate social responsibility and children’s rights in relation to residential care. The collection is thus multi-dimensional, examining a range of specific empirical contexts, and also considering relationships between sociological analysis and human rights scholarship and activism. Hence in a variety of ways it points the way for future analyses, and also for human rights activism and practices. It is intended to widen our field of vision in the sociology of human rights, and to spark both new ideas and new forms of political engagement. We have co-edited this volume as conveners of the British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Rights Study Group. 1 New Directions in the Sociology of Human Rights is a successor to our previous special issue of the International Journal of Human Rights, titled ‘Sociology and Human Rights: New Engagements’, which was published in November 2010 and edited by the same team. 2 That original volume included an introductory article outlining the history of the relationship between sociology and human rights and the state of our sub-field as we saw it, 3 together with contributions by members of the study group, on a wide range of themes. The collection was subsequently published as a book of the same title. 4 More recently we have co-edited the annual special issue of the British Sociological Association’s journal Sociology, presenting a volume titled The Sociology of Human Rights which was published in October 2012. 5 That volume originated with a Call for Papers which received 83 submissions, and we were informed this was the highest number in the recent history of Sociology, demonstrating a huge appetite for the development of the sociology of human rights as a field. ‘The Sociology of Human Rights’ included a range of articles which delineated and engaged with the major analytical axes and conceptual parameters of the sociology of human rights, as suggested in a substantial editorial foreword; it thus offered an extensive map of the field in theoretical terms, while simultaneously including research from a number of empirical contexts internationally. New Directions in the Sociology of Human Rights by comparison is distinctive for opening up and addressing a wide range of substantive issues, empirical contexts and topics in the sociology of human rights, with a somewhat greater emphasis on examining the application of human rights in practice, while also pressing forward sociological analysis in areas where its deployment is underdeveloped. The collection addresses the place of human rights in relation to key social

On the Sociology of Human Rights: Theorising the Language-structure of Rights

This article defends the claim that human rights is a legitimate subject of inquiry for sociologists, and proceeds to present the case for a particular application of sociological theory to the understanding of gross human rights violations. Sociology, it claims, is equipped to study the dynamics of social institutions – socially constructed language-structures within which social action is framed – and since the mid-20th century, human rights has become such an institution. The article advocates an intellectual project for the sociology of rights, drawing on a diverse range of sources, that recognises how human rights abuses are made possible when the very concept of the ‘human’ is subtly redefined through these language-structures.

Constructing Rights and Wrongs in Humanitarian Action: Contributions from a Sociology of Praxis

Human rights entered the language and practice of humanitarian aid in the mid-1990s, and since then they have worked in parallel, complemented or competed with traditional frameworks ordering humanitarianism, including humanitarian principles, refugee law, and inter-agency standards. This article positions the study of rights within a sociology of praxis. It starts from a premise that interpretation and realisation of international norms depends on actors’ social negotiation. We seek to contribute to the sociology of rights with insights from legal pluralism and to analyse human rights as a semi-autonomous field in a multiplicity of normative frameworks. Based on cumulative research into humanitarian aid in disaster response, refugee care and protracted crises, the article explores how humanitarian agencies evoke different normative frameworks to legitimate their presence and programmes. How aid is shaped through the ‘rights speak’ of aid workers and recipients alike is illuminated by cases of programmes promoting women’s rights against sexual abuse from Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Lydia Morris (2010), Asylum, Welfare and the Cosmopolitan Ideal: A Sociology of Rights. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. £75, pp. 171, hbk.

Lydia Morris (2010), Asylum, Welfare and the Cosmopolitan Ideal: A Sociology of Rights. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. £75, pp. 171, hbk.

Asylum, Welfare and the Cosmopolitan Ideal: A Sociology of Rights

Asylum, Welfare and the Cosmopolitan Ideal: A Sociology of Rights

Reframing Cultural Studies: Human Rights as a Site of Legal-cultural Struggles

In the twenty-first century, after more than 60 years of development1 since its rise to prominence worldwide, the modern human rights system has become a common, even popular, public and policy dis...

Toward a New Sociology of Rights: A Genealogy of “Buried Bodies” of Citizenship and Human Rights

Although a thriving social science literature in citizenship has emerged in the past two decades, to date there exists neither a sociology of rights nor a sociology of human rights. Theoretical obstacles include the association of rights with the philosophical discourse of normativity, the abstraction of universalism, and the individualism attributed to rights-bearers. Parallel historical obstacles dating from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 include American exceptionalism and racism, cultural relativism, the institutional primacy of sovereignty, and the privileging of civil rights over socioeconomic rights. Except in the United States, today human rights discourse is the lingua franca of global struggles*; building a sociology of rights as a collective project is now imperative. This article unearths and reconstructs 60 years of political clashes, intellectual debates, and struggles for inclusion and recognition surrounding human rights and citizenship—much of which has been hidden from history (especially African American human rights movements). We introduce a nascent but uncoordinated social science attention to rights and develop criteria for a new sociology of rights. At the nexus of human rights and citizenship rights we identify the public good of a “right to have rights,” which expresses the institutional, social, and moral preconditions for human recognition and inclusion. The concept offers a promising avenue of social science inquiry. [*Erratum]

Sociology of Rights: "I Am Therefore I Have Rights": Human Rights in Islam between Universalistic and Communalistic Perspectives

``I am therefore I have rights," argues this paper. Mere existence qualifies a human being for universal human rights. Yet human beings do not live in solitude; they are always embedded in a network of social relations which determines their rights and duties in its own terms. Consequently, the debate about the universality and relativism of human rights can be best understood by combining legal and sociological perspectives. Such an approach is used in this article to explore the tensions and contests around the universality of human rights in Islamic law. Whether all human beings or just citizens are qualified for the inviolability of human rights is a question which divided Muslim jurists into two schools: Universalistic School, emanating from Abu Hanifa, advocated for the universality of human rights, while Communalistic School, originating from Malik, Shafii and Ibn Hanbal, advocated for civil rights. Universalistic School was adopted by such great cosmopolitan empires as Umayyads, Abbasids, Mughals and Ottomans. It was also reformed by the Ottomans during the nineteenth century in the light of the new notions of universal human rights in Europe to purge remaining discriminatory practices against non-Muslim citizens and to justify constitutionalism and democracy. Yet the universalistic tradition in Islamic law has been forgotten as the chain of memory was broken after the collapse of Ottoman Empire. This article briefly unearths the forgotten universalistic approach in Islamic law to build upon it a modern universalistic human rights theory for which there is a pressing need at this age of globalization.

Outline of a Theory of Human Rights

Although the study of citizenship has been an important development in contemporary sociology, the nature of rights has been largely ignored. The analysis of human rights presents a problem for sociology, in which cultural relativism and the fact-value distinction have largely destroyed the classical tradition of the natural-law basis for rights discourse. This critique of the idea of universal rights was prominent in the work of Marx, Durkheim and Weber. However, recent developments in the organisation of nation states, the globalisation of political issues, the transformation of family life, and changes in medical technology in relation to human reproduction have brought the question of human rights to the forefront of social and political debate. The paper argues that a sociology of rights is important, because there are obvious limitations to the idea of citizenship, which is based on membership of a nation state. Existing conceptualisations of citizenship require the supplement of rights theory. It is argued that sociology can ground the analysis of human rights in a concept of human frailty, especially the vulnerability of the body, in the idea of the precariousness of social institutions, and in a theory of moral sympathy. These three analytical supports - ontological frailty, social precariousness, and moral sympathy - are partly derived from the philosophical anthropology of Arnold Gehlen, from Ulrich Beck's concept of the risk society, and Max Scheler's phenomenology of sympathy. Emodied frailty is a human universal condition, which is compounded by the risky and precarious nature of social institutions. Human vulnerability can be contained or ameliorated by the institution of rights which protect human beings from this ontological uncertainty. From a sociological perspective, rights are social claims for institutionalised protection. However, it is because of collective sympathy for the plight of others that moral communities are created which support the institution of rights. This thesis not only offers a sociological version of traditional notions of natural or inalienable rights, but also attempts to provide a sociological alternative to enlightenment theories of social contract and individual rights.