Human Rights as Social Construction

Benjamin Gregg

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781107015937
• eBook ISBN:
  9781139211758
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Most conceptions of human rights rely on metaphysical or theological assumptions that construe them as possible only as something imposed from outside existing communities. Most people, in other words, presume that human rights come from nature, God, or the United Nations. This book argues that reliance on such putative sources actually undermines human rights. Benjamin Gregg envisions an alternative; he sees human rights as locally developed, freely embraced, and indigenously valid. Human rights, he posits, can be created by the average, ordinary people to whom they are addressed, and that they are valid only if embraced by those to whom they would apply. To view human rights in this manner is to increase the chances and opportunities that more people across the globe will come to embrace them.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Human Rights as Social Construction
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Human Rights as Local Constructions of Limited but Expandable Validity
• PART I: THIS-WORLDLY NORMS: LOCAL NOT UNIVERSAL
• PART II: THIS-WORLDLY RESOURCES FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AS SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
• PART III: THIS-WORLDLY MEANS OF ADVANCING THE HUMAN RIGHTS IDEA
• PART IV: HUMAN RIGHTS, FUTURE TENSE: HUMAN NATURE AND POLITICAL COMMUNITY RECONCEIVED
• Coda: What Is Lost, and What Gained, by Human Rights as Social Construction
• References
• Index