Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction: thinking about human rightsRealities, Concepts, The social sciences, Beyond human rights law, ConclusionChapter 2 Origins: the rise and fall of natural rightsWhy history? On rights and tyrants, Justice and rights, Natural rights, The age of revolutions, The decline of natural rights Chapter 3 After 1945: the new age of rightsThe UN and the human rights revival, The Universal Declaration, From theory to practice: (a)The Cold War, (b)After the Cold War, ConclusionChapter 4 Theories of human rightsWhy theory? Human rights theory: (a) Rights (b) Other values (c) Human nature (d) Conflicts of rights (e) Democracy (f) ConclusionChapter 5 The role of the social sciencesIntroduction: human rights and social science, The dominance of law, Political science, Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, International relations, ConclusionChapter 6 Universality, diversity and difference: culture and human rights The problem of cultural imperialism, Cultural relativism, Minority rights, Indigenous peoples, The right to self-determination, The rights of women Chapter 7 Idealism, realism and repression: the politics of human rightsThe real politics of human rights, The boomerang theory, The national politics of human rights, The statistics of human rights, NGOs in world politicsChapter 8 Development and Globalization: economics and human rightsDevelopment versus human rights? The right to development, Globalization, International financial institutions, Economic and social rightsChapter 9 Conclusion: human rights in the twenty-first centuryLearning from history, Objections to human rights, Problems of intervention, Concluding remarksReferences Index

About the Author

Michael Freeman is Reader in Government at the University of Essex.

Reviews

"Human rights' is not a thing, but a concept, a way of thinking and making claims about certain events. These claims derive from moral rules and are expressed in legal terms or United Nations dialect. Michael Freeman's excellent book provides a patient unravelling of how these distinctive claims have emerged and how to reconceptualize them in terms of social science and political theory. Current public discourse and the massive new wave of academic interest just assume that human rights is 'a concept whose time has come'. Freeman gives this audience a most valuable, reliable and clear answer to his own question: 'But what is it precisely that has come?" Stan Cohen, Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics "Michael Freeman's Human Rights, An Interdisciplanary Approach is a unique five star Baedecker to an expanding landscape of serious research introducing the reader to the diverse ways academic fields of scolarship come to grips with the important topic of human rights....it will attract bright and inquiring minds who will want to dig more deeply into the literature to which they have been so gracefully initiated" Richard Pierre Claude, Human Rights Quarterly "The treatment of the background concepts and theories as well of the different issues is up to date, substantially focussed and presented in a balanced way. In this Freeman succeeds in presenting the complexity of the discussions without demanding prior knowledge" Mikael Spang, Ethnic and Racial Studies "'Human rights,' states Freeman with justifiable certainty in the Introduction to this excellent book, 'is an interdisciplinary concept par excellence'. ...Throughout this engaging text, Freeman is sensitive to the debates but wholly committed to the issues. ...What a gift this is for students of various disciplines interested in human rights but intimidated by the complex legal and philosophical jargon contained in much of the literature." Darren J. O'Byrne, University of Surrey Roehampton "Human Rights is an introductory text that is both innovative and challenging. [...] In this unique interdisciplinary approach, Michael Freeman emphasizes the complex ways n which the experiences of the victims of human rights violations are related to legal, philosophical and socio-scientific approaches to human rights." Philosophical Inquiry