Human Rights and the Politics of Contestation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23248643 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Goodhart (0000-0001-6820-602X, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Pages | 30-44 |
| Publication date | 2014-04-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Human Rights at the Crossroads (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199376414.003.0002 |
| OpenAlex | W2493854077 |
| ISBN | 9780199376414 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
This chapter illuminates the politics of contestation engendered by human rights by offering an alternative ontology of human rights. It argues that human rights are not propositions about moral truth. To view them as such is to misapprehend what people do in claiming human rights and to mistake the struggles that these claims initiate for disputes about morality. Treating human rights as truth claims also makes it difficult to understand their global appeal and their sociocultural “origins”, and to grasp the distinctive ways in which they are sometimes (mis)used as tools of domination. It further argues that human rights are political demands—specifically, demands for emancipation, for an end to domination and oppression. As such they are highly partisan or ideological in character—a fact which is central to understanding the politics of contestation that frequently accompanies human rights and to resolving several important and seemingly intractable theoretical debates about them.
Appeal · Emancipation · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Fundamental rights · Human rights · Human rights movement · Law and economics · Mistake · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Right to property · Sociology · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,73 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2023 (9) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |