Human Rights. Michael Freeman. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Michael Freeman
Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited
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Жанр произведения: Социальная психология
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781509546053
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particular societies, and from other desirable social objectives.

      What are ‘rights’, and how do ‘human rights’ differ from other kinds of rights? The concept of ‘rights’ is closely connected to that of ‘right’. Something is ‘right’ if it conforms with a standard of rightness. All societies have such standards, but it is often said that many cultures have no conception of people ‘having rights’. The idea of everyone having ‘human rights’ is said to be especially alien to most cultures.

      For many years after the adoption of human rights by the UN they were treated mainly by lawyers. In this period, social scientists neglected the concept, in part because, influenced by the social prestige of the natural sciences, they were wary of legal or moral ideas. However, the rise of the non-governmental human-rights movement and the increasing importance of the concept in national and international politics have brought about an ever-increasing literature in various social sciences. The explanation of variations in respect for human rights in different societies has become an object of extensive social-scientific investigation. It is sometimes said that gross human-rights violations – such as genocide – are ‘irrational’ and beyond scientific explanation. There is, however, a body of knowledge about state behaviour, ethnic diversity, repression, rebellion and social conflict that may explain a great deal about such actions. There is much controversy about theories and methodology in the social sciences, but there is no reason why behaviour that violates or respects human rights should be less explicable than other complex social phenomena. Those who assert that the worst human-rights violations are inexplicable conflate extreme immorality with scientific unintelligibility.

      Just as social scientists, with their aspiration to be scientific, neglected human rights until recently, so too the academic discipline of international relations showed little interest in the idea, since the discipline was concerned with states and their relations with each other, to which human rights were considered to be at most marginal. An influential theory was that of Realism, which has been primarily concerned with the interests and power of states rather than with such ethical issues as those of human rights. But as human rights played an increasing role in real international relations, so it entered the academic discipline. Some international relations scholars have challenged the Realist school by emphasizing the role of ideas in general, and of human-rights ideas in particular, in international politics, and there are several alternative theoretical approaches in the field (Jackson, Sørensen and Møller 2018). Realism, however, still presents a strong challenge to human rights (Donnelly and Whelan 2020: 40–2).

      The Western tradition of political theory has produced many formidable critics of such rights (see chapter two). This presents a strong challenge to the political science of human rights, especially since the classical critics are echoed by contemporary theorists. Underlying any social science of human rights, therefore, are a number of controversial philosophical assumptions. This does not, however, distinguish the social science of human rights from other branches of social science, such as the politics of democracy or the sociology of inequality. Nevertheless, it requires the social scientist of human rights to be aware of these philosophical controversies.

      There have recently been increased contributions to human-rights studies by sociologists and anthropologists. The impact of the global economy on the protection of human rights has also increasingly become a subject of study. This has been accompanied by an interest in ‘the human-rights movement’ as a transnational social movement. The social science of human rights has therefore picked up momentum.

      The implementation of the UN’s human-rights principles was delayed for many years by the Cold War between the democratic, capitalist West and the authoritarian, Communist East, and by disagreements between the West and the new, postcolonial states. The UN proclaimed human rights but did little to implement them. The cost of proclaiming human rights is low, and many governments thought that they had much to lose by respecting the human rights of their sometimes highly discontented citizens. What is at first sight surprising is the development, albeit slow, of international human-rights law, and of a movement of NGOs to campaign for its