Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T22:48:08.017Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Unsettling times for human rights: remarks on ‘The politics of rights’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 December 2020

Jennifer M. Welsh*
Affiliation:
Research Chair in Global Governance and Security, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: Jennifer.Welsh@mcgill.ca

Abstract

This commentary focuses on Kratochwil's observation about the gap between the pervasiveness of human rights language and its susceptibility to perverse effects and abuse. After demonstrating that Kratochwil shares much of the contemporary skepticism about the alleged foundations and legitimacy of human rights, the comment elaborates on his claims that human rights were and are particularistic and that ‘rights talk’ produces unintended consequences for the individuals whose autonomy was meant to flourish. He questions but ultimately does not answer whether the broader anthropocentric ethos that underpins Western societies, and legal systems, may one day be superseded by ‘non-rightist’ approaches.

Type
Symposium: In the Midst of Theory and Practice: Edited by Hannes Peltonen and Knut Traisbach
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arendt, Hannah. 1976. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace and Co.Google Scholar
Borger, Julian. 2017. “Rex Tillerson: ‘America First’ Means Divorcing Our Policy from Our Values.” The Guardian, 4 May 2017. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/03/rex-tillerson-america-first-speech-trump-policy. Accessed 1 July 2020.Google Scholar
Hopgood, Stephen. 2018. “Human Rights on the Road to Nowhere.” In Human Rights Futures, edited by Hopgood, Stephen, Snyder, Jack and Vinjamuri, Leslie, 283310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hopgood, Stephen, Snyder, Jack, and Vinjamuri, Leslie. 2018. “Introduction: Human Rights Past, Present, and Future.” In Human Rights Futures, edited by Hopgood, Stephen, Snyder, Jack and Vinjamuri, Leslie, 123. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jensen, Steven L. B. 2016. The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keys, Barbara. 2014. Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kratochwil, Friedrich. 2014. The Status of Law in World Society: Meditations on the Role and Rule of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moyn, Samuel. 2010. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Moyn, Samuel. 2018. “Human Rights and the Crisis of Liberalism.” In Human Rights Futures, edited by Hopgood, Stephen, Snyder, Jack and Vinjamuri, Leslie, 261–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Roth, Kenneth. 2017. “We Are on the Verge of Darkness.” Foreign Policy, 12 January 2017. Available at https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/12/we-are-on-the-verge-of-darkness-populism-human-rights-democracy/. Accessed 1 July 2020.Google Scholar
Sikkink, Kathryn. 2017. Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strangio, Sebastian. 2017. “Welcome to the Post-Human Rights World.” Foreign Policy, 7 March 2017. Available at https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/07/welcome-to-the-post-human-rights-world/. Accessed 1 July 2020.Google Scholar