Synopses & Reviews
Human rights activism is often associated with international organizations that try to affect the behavior of abusive states around the globe. In Barrancabermeja, Colombia, argues Luis van Isschot in
The Social Origin of Human Rights, the struggle for rights has emerged more organically and locally, out of a long history of civil and social organizing. He offers deep insight into the lives of home-grown activists in a conflict zone, against the backdrop of major historical changes that shaped Latin America in the twentieth century.
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Built by Standard Oil in 1919, and home to the largest petroleum refinery in the country, Barrancabermeja has long been a critical battleground in Colombiaandrsquo;s armed conflict. One of the most militarized urban areas on earth, the city has been a regional base for the Colombian armed forces as well as for leftist guerrillas and a national paramilitary movement. In the midst of a dirty war in which the majority of victims were civilians, urban and rural social movements from Barrancabermeja and the surrounding area came together to establish a human rights movement. These frontline activists called upon the Colombian state to protect basic human rights and denounced the deeper socioeconomic inequalities they saw as sources of conflict. Through close study of the complex dynamics at work in Barrancabermeja, van Isschot shows how the efforts we describe as andldquo;human rightsandrdquo; activism derive in large part from these lived experiences of authoritarianism, war, poverty, and social exclusion. Through its social and historical approach, his analysis both complements and challenges the work of scholars who look at rights issues primarily through a legal lens.
Review
A deeply penetrating critique of dominant trends in the human rights literature. This volume poses a persuasive challenge to those scholars who overlook the uneven and nonlinear development of human rights.”Victor Peskin, author of
International Justice in Rwanda and the BalkansReview
The contributors illustrate well the complexity of analyzing specific situations and defining strategies for action, as well as the relevance of context, history, and politics.”Susana Kaiser, University of San Francisco
Review
and#147;A major contribution to scholarship on Colombian violence and human rights, and a substantial contribution to the historiography on human rights more generally.and#8221;and#151;Nancy Appelbaum, Binghamton University
Review
and#147;A nuanced history of human rights organizing in one of the most contentious and violent cities in Colombia, documenting the deep roots of such activism in the social struggles of the past century. Luis van Isschot illuminates the critical role human rights organizations play in making violence known, and more importantly, analyzing the causes and consequences of such violence. Essential reading for anyone concerned with Colombiaand#8217;s past and present.and#8221;and#151;Winifred Tate, Colby College
Synopsis
By identifying and embracing the paradox that human rights are at once a transcendent value belonging to all and a reality forged by particular people rooted in specific places,
The Human Rights Paradox advances a new way to understand the history, contemporary politics, advocacy, and future prospects of human rights.
Synopsis
Human rights are paradoxical. Advocates across the world invoke the idea that such rights belong to all people, no matter who or where they are. But since humans can only realize their rights in particular places, human rights are both always and never universal.
The Human Rights Paradox is the first book to fully embrace this contradiction and reframe human rights as history, contemporary social advocacy, and future prospect. In case studies that span Africa, Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and the United States, contributors carefully illuminate how social actors create the imperative of human rights through relationships whose entanglements of the global and the local are so profound that one cannot exist apart from the other. These chapters provocatively analyze emerging twenty-first-century horizons of human rightson one hand, the simultaneous promise and peril of global rights activism through social media, and on the other, the force of intergenerational rights linked to environmental concerns that are both local and global. Taken together, they demonstrate how local struggles and realities transform classic human rights concepts, including victim,” truth,” and justice.”
Edited by Steve J. Stern and Scott Straus, The Human Rights Paradox enables us to consider the consequencesfor history, social analysis, politics, and advocacyof understanding that human rights belong both to humanity” as abstraction as well as to specific people rooted in particular locales.
Synopsis
Offering deep insight to the lives of human rights activists in a conflict zone, against the backdrop of major historical changes that shaped Latin America in the twentieth century, this book illuminates the critical role of human rights organizations in bringing violence to public attention and analyzing its causes and consequences.
About the Author
Steve J. Stern is the Alberto Flores Galindo and Hilldale Professor of History at the University of WisconsinMadison. He received the Bolton-Johnson Prize from the Conference in Latin American History in 2007 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. Scott Straus is a professor of political science and international studies at the University of WisconsinMadison. He is the author of
The Order of Genocide and a coeditor of
Remaking Rwanda.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Embracing Paradox: Human Rights in the Global Age
Steve J. Stern and Scott Straus
Part I. Who Makes Human Rights?
1 Human Rights History from the Ground Up: The Case of East Timor
Geoffrey Robinson
2 Rights on Display: Museums and Human Rights Claims
Bridget Conley-Zilkic
3 Civilian Agency in Times of Crisis: Lessons from Burundi
Meghan Foster Lynch
Part II. Interrogating Classic Concepts
4 Consulting Survivors: Evidence from Cambodia, Northern Uganda, and Other Countries Affected by Mass Violence
Patrick Vinck and Phuong N. Pham
5 "Memoria, Verdad y Justicia": The Terrain of Post-Dictatorship Social Reconstruction and the Struggle for Human Rights in Argentina
Noa Vaisman
6 The Paradoxes of Accountability: Transitional Justice in Peru
Jo-Marie Burt
Part III. New Horizons
7 The Aporias of New Technologies for Human Rights Activism
Fuyuki Kurasawa
8 The Human Right to Water in Rural India: Promises and Challenges
Philippe Cullet
9 A Very Promising Species: From Hobbes to the Human Right to Water
Richard P. Hiskes
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index