Who is a Human Rights Defender? An Appraisal of Labour Practices in the Human Rights Economy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12930372 |
|---|---|
| Authors | F Richard Georgi (0000-0001-5407-1734, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 773-783 |
| Publication date | 2023-08-24 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Human Rights Practice (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1757-9619 • E-ISSN: 1757-9627 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jhuman/huad033 |
| OpenAlex | W4386127499 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 19 |
The last decades have witnessed a conceptual opening of human rights practices, hitherto prerogative of a chosen few legal experts, towards a multiplicity of subjectivities. This afforded human rights scholarship to address subaltern histories and reckon with past exclusions. Conversely, critical deconstruction and empirical diversification have aggravated the seemingly basic, yet thorny quest for defining human rights activism and identifying human rights defenders. This not only poses a challenge to research but, foremost, opens human rights concepts to abuse and undermines protection regimes. In this contribution to the Journal of Human Rights Practice’s Anniversary Issue, I trace the definition dilemma as it emerges from emancipatory developments in human rights practice scholarship. I am not pretending to solve this dilemma; rather, I offer ‘metaphorical dislocations’ changing the terms of discussion to elicit new avenues of thought. Taking common allusions to the economy of human rights as my point of departure, I pursue Marx’s critique of political economy as a metaphor to describe human rights activism as a labour practice that a) produces discursive value qua rendering violence legible and b) transforms activist cultures socio-politically. Hence, I encounter the subjectivity of human rights defenders in the tensions between the co-dependent dimensions of practice and its political representation. The aspiration of this think piece is to emphasize the importance of co-constructing common foundations in the research on human rights activism, and to provoke responses leading us out of the all-too-well known trenches of debate
Dilemma · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Human rights · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Prerogative · Scholarship · Sociology · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Human Rights and Development · International Law and Human Rights · Law
Progress in Postwar International Relations
Reinventing Human Rights
The Practice of Human Rights
In the Name of Womens Rights
The Power of Human Rights
Protesting for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
Towards a Radical Human Rights Theatre Practice
Entryism, mimicry and victimhood work
Towards developing a critical and ethical approach for better recognising and protecting human rights defenders
In-between Translation, Transformation and Contestation
Civil society at the turn of the millenium
What Metaphors Mean
How metaphors matter
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |