Riddle of Human Rights - Hardcover

Gary Teeple

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1551930412 ISBN 13: 9781551930411

Publisher: Garamond Press, 2002

Synopsis

In The Riddle of Human Rights Gary Teeple makes the case that human rights are peculiar to a historically given mode of production; in other words, they comprise a public declaration of the principles of the prevailing property relations in a given time and place. Although human rights are proclaimed as absolute and universal, the reality is that nowhere in the world are they upheld as either absolute or universal—the ability to exercise the rights spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is everywhere circumscribed and relative to the imperatives of the powers that be.

Teeple also explores the effects of globalization on the current and future exercise of human rights. He argues that the entire range of civil, political, and social rights is becoming subordinate to global corporate interests. In the wake of September 11, 2001, Teeple suggests that the threat of terrorism serves as an excuse for the arbitrary abrogation of established rights and the violation of international law to further the demands of global capital.

About this title

About the Author

Gary Teeple teaches in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Review

[... makes the reader aware of the human longings and needs which are the other part of human rights. One is able to recognize the fundamental ambivalence which characterizes all the 'theories' on and the practices of human rights in the West.

(Wolf-Dieter Narr, Freie Universitaet Berlin)

Edition details

• Publisher: Garamond Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1551930412
• ISBN 13: 9781551930411
• Binding: Hardcover