What's Wrong with Rights? (Paperback)

Radha D'Souza

ISBN 10: 0745335411 / ISBN 13: 9780745335414

Published by Pluto Press, London, 2018

About this Item

Paperback. Through mapping the rights discourse and the transformations in transnational finance capitalism since the world wars, and interrogating the connections between the two, Radha D'Souza examines contemporary rights in theory and practice through the lens of the struggles of the people of the Third World, their experiences of national liberation and socialism and their aspirations for emancipation and freedom. Social movements demand rights to remedy wrongs and injustices in society. But why do organisations like the World Bank and IMF, the G7 states and the World Economic Forum want to promote rights? Activists and activist scholars are critical of human rights in their diagnosis of problems. But in their prognosis, they reinstate human rights and bring back through the backdoor what they dismiss through the front. Why are activists and activist scholars unable to 'let go' of human rights? Why do indigenous peoples find the need to invoke the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People to make their claims sound reasonable? Are rights in the 20th and 21st centuries the same as rights in the 17th and 18th centuries? This book examines what is entailed in reducing rights to 'human' rights and in the argument 'our understandings of rights are better than theirs' that is popular within social movements and in critical scholarship. A critique of liberal rights exposing the paradox between 'good' capitalism and the reality of its actions. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780745335414

Bibliographic Details

• Title: What's Wrong with Rights? (Paperback)
• Publisher: Pluto Press, London
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0745335411
• ISBN 13: 9780745335414
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Rights occupy a strange position in global politics. On the one hand, they’re used by business and governments as a justification for globalization—if the spread of corporate capitalism also helps lead to improvements in human rights, then globalization must be good, right? At the same time, though, even those on the left who are skeptical of that discourse tend to hew to a belief in rights themselves, like the right to food, medicine, housing, free speech, assembly, and religion.
            How can these conflicting attitudes towards rights be reconciled? Radha D’Souza lays out the problem and the solution in this book, applying legal thought to human rights to bridge the gap between rights in the abstract and their institutional context. Through close looks at real struggles, D’Souza shows how the left around the world can develop new strategies and tactics to achieve the goals embodied by rights discourse without giving cover to globalization.

About the Author

Radha D’Souza teaches law at the University of Westminster, London.