The Politics of Human Rights - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1859843735 ISBN 13: 9781859843734

Publisher: Verso Books, 2002

Synopsis

This volume sets out to describe the political and philosophical underpinnings of the idea of human rights by bringing together a collection of original essays by a group of highly distinguished theorists. Recognizing that Western insistence on the universality of the concept of human rights can also function as a diplomatic cover for post-colonial interventions, it insists that the campaign for human rights must take into account the varied social and economic environments in different nation states that affect the ways such demands can be implemented. This campaign is most effective when demonstrating international solidarity with those whose basic rights are jeopardized or denied.

About this title

About the Authors

The Belgrade Circle, a non-governmental organization, was founded in February 1992 by a group of independent and dissident intellectuals. It gained an international reputation through its courageous struggle against the nationalism, xenophobia and politics of war which spread dramatically through Serbian society during the collapse of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1999.
Among many other activities it has published more than forty books, including titles by Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor. It also publishes regular editions of the Belgrade Circle Journal.

Anthony Giddens is a world-renowned social theorist who has written over thirty scholarly works, including Runaway World. He has written on just about every major topic in sociology and is known for his work on modernization theory and globalization.

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) began teaching sociology at the Université de Paris-X in 1966. He retired from academia in 1987 to write books and travel until his death in 2007. His many works include Simulations and Simulacra, America, The Perfect Crime, The System of Objects, Passwords, The Transparency of Evil, The Spirit of Terrorism, and Fragments, among others.

Jürgen Habermas was born in 1929, and grew up in Gummersbach, Germany. He was educated at the Universities of Gottingen, Bonn, and Zurich, after which he worked for a while as a freelance journalist. In 1956 he became Adorno's assistant at the University of Frankfurt. From 1961 to 1964 he taught philosophy in Heidelberg, and from 1964 to 1971, philosophy and sociology in Frankfurt. From 1971 to 1983 he was Director of the Max Planck Institute for Research into the Life Conditions of the Scientific-Technical World, in Sternberg. Among his influential publications in English are: Knowledge and Human Interests (1971), Theory and Practice (1973), The Theory of Communicative Action (1984/1987), and Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1990).

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona, and the author of more than one hundred books.

Edition details

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1859843735
• ISBN 13: 9781859843734
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 370
• Editor: The Belgrade Circle The Belgrade Circle, Savic Obrad