Sociology and Human Rights

A Bill of Rights for the Twenty-First Century

Judith Blau, Mark Frezzo, Judith Blau, Mark Frezzo

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781412991384
• eBook ISBN: 9781452238593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

A unique volume designed to provoke an ongoing dialogue about fundamental human rights in our society

Edited by renowned scholars, Judith Blau and Mark Frezzo, this groundbreaking anthology examines the implications that human rights have for the social sciences. The book provides readers with a wide-ranging collection of articles, each written by experts in their fields who argue for an expansion of fundamental human rights in the United States. To provide an international context, the volume covers the human rights treaties that have been incorporated into the constitutions of many countries throughout the world, including wealthy nations such as Spain and Sweden and impoverished countries such as Bolivia and Croatia.

PART I

What Are Universal
Human Rights?

1

Introduction

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Mark Frezzo

The Definition of Human Rights

We begin with the most fundamental question in the field: What are human rights? By definition, human rights are a set of protections and entitlements held by all members of the human species—irrespective of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural background, or national origin. If membership in the human community is the only precondition for human rights, then the same protections and entitlements should be available across the global system. In appealing to universalism—the regulative idea that all humans have the same fundamental needs, deserts, and aspirations—rights discourse stresses the importance of eliminating inequalities not only within nation-states, but also between them. In light of its intrinsic and irreducible universalism, rights discourse has a direct bearing on the policies and practices of intergovernmental organizations, nation-states, transnational corporations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), community groups, and individuals. In short, human rights norms constrain and facilitate the undertakings of both state and nonstate actors; offer inspiration to scholars, policymakers, and activists; and provide a grammar and vocabulary for the articulation of demands and the settlement of disputes.

What kinds of protections do human beings have? In principle, human beings are supposed to be protected from abuse or exploitation imposed by national governments, corporations, organizations, groups, and individuals. Known as “negative rights”—that is, rights that may not be denied by state or nonstate actors—these protections include the rights to life, bodily integrity, dignity, due process of law, association, assembly, free speech, religious affiliation (or nonaffiliation), and representation in government. Taken together, these civil and political rights guarantee not only the individual’s safety, security, personality, and conscience but also his or her participation in public life and freedom from undue interference on the part of the state.

What kinds of entitlements do human beings have? In principle, human beings are entitled to economic structures and social programs that provide them with access to the means of subsistence, allow them to develop their bodies and minds, facilitate access to trades and professions, provide them with leisure time, and protect them from a range of catastrophes (including fluctuations of the market, human-made crises, and natural disasters). Known as “positive rights”—that is, rights that must be provided by public authorities—these entitlements include the rights to food, clothing, housing, health care, an education, employment, unemployment and disability insurance, social security, and a minimum standard of living. Taken together, these economic and social rights promote longevity and self-actualization among individuals. Alternatively, the objectives of longevity and self-actualization can be conceptualized as “rights bundles”—packages of rights that imply or necessitate one another. While the objective of longevity—the ability to lead a long, healthy life—presupposes access to food, water, shelter, proper hygiene, a clean environment, and health care, the objective of self-actualization—the ability to develop one’s talents, personality, interests, and tastes—presupposes access to education, training, information, and a range of choices in defining one’s identity. Far from being exclusively economic and social in character, both rights bundles—longevity and self-actualization— are filtered through culture.

What does culture—defined as a collection of shared values, symbols, and practices within a group or society—have to do with human rights? The category of positive rights includes cultural rights, as well as economic and social rights. In principle, all human beings—whether in the Global North or the Global South and irrespective of social standing within nation-states—are entitled to have a culture; to inhabit ancestral lands (where applicable); to affirm the rituals, practices, and customs of their ethnic group, tribe, or clan (where applicable); and to learn and speak a minority language in school (where applicable). By design, these entitlements promote the preservation of the world’s cultural diversity—a crucial objective in a globalized age marked by the deepening of consumerism, the homogenization of cultures, and grave threats to the life-ways of indigenous peoples and peasants, as well as to racial, ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities. While globalization—defined as increased interdependency among the world’s peoples—has produced new opportunities for transnational cooperation in the name of human rights, social justice, and peace, it has also endangered the world’s cultural diversity. For this reason, sociologists of human rights—following the example of their counterparts in anthropology—have devoted considerable attention to cultural rights.

The Foundation of Human Rights

Having defined the basic forms of human rights, we can proceed to the next fundamental question in the field: Where do human rights—whether negative or positive, civil and political, economic and social, or cultural— come from? In answering this question, Turner (2006) advances the following argument:

The study of human rights places the human body at the center of social and political theory, and it employs the notion of embodiment as a foundation for defending universal human rights. My argument is based on four fundamental philosophical assumptions: the vulnerability of human beings as embodied agents, the dependency of humans (especially in their early childhood development), the general reciprocity and interconnectedness of social life, and, finally, the precariousness of social institutions. (P. 25)

In a nutshell, the foundation of human rights can be found in the human body and its fundamental needs. Though nurtured differently according to culture and geography, the human body—in its intrinsic vulnerability— constitutes the basis for universalism.

In answering the question of the foundation of human rights from a different angle, Ishay (2008) advances the following argument:

Human rights are rights held by individuals because they are members of the human species. They are rights shared equally by everyone regardless of sex, race, nationality, and economic background. They are universal in content. Across the centuries, conflicting political traditions have elaborated different components of human rights or differed over which elements have priority. In our day, the manifold meanings of human rights reflect the process of historical continuity and change that helped shape their present substance and helped form the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948. (P. 3)

Though consistent with Turner’s (2006) ontological approach, Ishay’s (2008) historical approach emphasizes the role of past struggles—on the part of workers in the socialist movement, women in the feminist movement, popular forces opposing colonialism, and a host of other activists—in expanding the scope of human rights. In effect, the human rights available to the inhabitants of the early twenty-first century—the civil and political, economic and social, cultural, and other forms of rights examined in this book—can be seen as the accumulation of social knowledge from previous generations. What is the origin of this social knowledge? Over time, social movements—in laying claim to Enlightenment doctrine while exposing the limitations of existing forms of government—have greatly expanded what are thinkable and realizable as human rights. Accordingly, in documenting the range of human rights available to the inhabitants of the United States, this book points to the need to reflect on the possibility of revising the Constitution in keeping with contemporary thinking in the field.

Sociology, Human Rights, and the U.S. Context

This volume is intended not only for undergraduate and graduate students in the social sciences but also for scholars, policymakers, and activists in the broader domain of human rights. As a contribution to the sociology of human rights—a growing academic field that analyzes the social conditions under which human rights norms emerge, evolve, and inspire the creation of laws, social programs, and institutions—this volume proposes a comprehensive revision of the U.S. Constitution (1787) to reflect recent innovations in civil and political rights, economic and social rights, nondiscrimination, the rights of vulnerable people, cultural rights, immigrants’ rights, environmental rights, and a range of other rights. While these innovations in rights thinking have been incubated largely outside of the United States (especially in Latin America, with the recent proliferation of social movements and the growth of the World Social Forum), they harbor profound ramifications for U.S. society, politics, and law. More to the point, the adoption of new conceptions of human rights represents the key to the deepening of democracy in the United States.

In tracing the practical applications of cutting-edge rights thinking for the U.S. context, this volume explains the conventional categories of rights (i.e., first-generation civil and political rights, second-generation economic and social rights, and third-generation cultural rights), while exploring the recently postulated right to a clean environment and other “fourth-generation” rights. At the same time, this volume affirms the indivisibility of rights: civil and political rights—including the freedoms of association, assembly, and speech, along with the right to vote—acquire considerably more substance when articulated with such economic and social rights as subsidized food and housing, medical care, education, disability and unemployment insurance, and social security; meanwhile, an expanded social safety net—though crucial to the promotion of longevity and self-actualization across the population (without regard to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin)—must be supplemented by the right to have a culture, the protection of indigenous practices, the right to inhabit an ancestral land, and the right to learn and speak a minority language in school. In sum, these rights form the basis of a pluralistic and participatory democracy—pluralistic insofar as the government protects the diversity of the U.S. cultural landscape and participatory insofar as the government brings more voices into the decision-making process (e.g., through federal, state, and local referenda on public policies). In short, though we may place rights in distinct categories for analytic and pedagogical purposes, we must also recognize the inextricability of rights in the “real world.”

Notwithstanding the powerful legacy of rights-oriented movements (organized by workers, women, African Americans, the LGBTQ community, environmentalists, and many other constituencies), along with previous proposals for an “Economic Bill of Rights” to advance the interests of poor and working-class citizens and an “Equal Rights Amendment” to advance the interests of women, U.S. scholars and activists alike have proved reluctant to embrace the idea of amending the Constitution to accommodate demands that would have been unimaginable in the time of the founders. Instead, scholars and activists have tended to support legislative change—the addition or subtraction of federal, state, and local laws in accordance with changing tides. Well documented by sociologists of law and social movement researchers, the legislative strategy—that is, the utilization not only of the voting booth but also of cyber-activism, public protests, building occupations and sit-ins, labor slowdowns and strikes, boycotts of prominent corporations, and other tactics to pressure elected officials in Congress, state legislatures, and city councils to (a) ratify laws that mitigate inequalities of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, and physical disability and (b) repeal laws that calcify or exacerbate such inequalities—would be more effective if it included a demand for constitutional amendments. Arguably, the aforementioned tactics would exert more influence if they were linked to an explicit demand for the revision of the Constitution.

Bringing Human Rights Back Home

One of the major arguments of this book is that lawmakers should craft constitutional amendments that render such United Nations (UN) treaties as the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) legally binding on U.S. soil. As the authors in this volume demonstrate, the constitutional strategy would serve three significant functions. First, it would cement the achievements of past movements in the United States. Second, it would create a platform—or, more precisely, a political opportunity structure—for future movements in the United States. Third, in keeping with a cosmopolitan vision that has been alternately nurtured and suppressed since the Enlightenment, a decision on the part of U.S. policymakers to adopt and enforce the ICCPR and the ICESCR would expand and intensify the connections between the inhabitants of the United States and their counterparts in the rest of the world.

Since the ratification of the ten amendments that compose the Bill of Rights in 1791, four amendments have testified to the existence of political opportunity structures or conjunctions between movements in civil society and progressive forces in the federal government: the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in 1865, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal protection under the law in 1868, the Fifteenth Amendment granting African Americans and other racial minorities the right to vote in 1870, and the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote in 1920. Subsequently, the New Deal, the civil rights movement, the Great Society, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part I: What are Universal Human Rights?
• Part II: Citizenship, Identity, and Human Rights
• Part III: Vulnerability and Human Rights
• Part IV: The Global and the Local
• Index
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors