Reconstructing human rights

In the early 2000s, the emergence of a subprime mortgage market in the United States enabled many people without a stable income and with very little collateral to finance home purchases. What seemed at first a boon to lower-income individuals soon became a nightmare. When house prices in the US collapsed in 2006, some were unable to refinance their initial loans, resulting in foreclosures and homelessness. This crisis appears, at first glance, disconnected from the theory and practice of human rights. Joe Hoover provides a corrective to this view, demonstrating in a carefully argued and richly theorized account, that housing should be seen as a core human right. More importantly, Hoover argues that this is not a right to be entrusted to international legal instruments or domestic constitutions; rather, the right to housing, along with all human rights, requires continued political contestation and global activism. Truth be told, the book is not about the financial crisis or housing. Rather, it is an effort to redefine human rights through an engagement with a range of different theorists. Hoover walks readers through the various efforts to justify human rights, which usually seek to find a stable ground from which to promote a rights agenda. These grounds have ranged from human nature to the divine, to assumptions about liberalism and freedom. Hoover carefully takes apart these efforts, highlighting pluralism as a core challenge

Collateral · Human rights · Law and economics · Liberalism · Pluralism (philosophy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Pragmatism · Sociology · Law · Political Philosophy and Ethics

• From discourse to legitimacy

  Armağan Gözkaman•Global Discourse•2025

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