Human Rights Praxis and the Struggle for Survival

William T. Armaline, Davita Silfen Glasberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781032347301
• eBook ISBN: 9781040112991
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Geopolitics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Asserting a critical sociological perspective, Human Rights Praxis and the Struggle for Survival reveals the contested historical processes through which fundamental human needs are constructed as "rights" under international law, and how those rights are confronted by the ruling relations and crises inherent to contemporary global capitalism and the waning American hegemonic world order.

Put simply, the book explores why human rights as a formal legal project has failed to deliver on guaranteeing human survival, let alone universal human dignity. Rather than stopping at critique, the authors propose a specific, materialist intellectual and political agenda for the preservation of collective human survival that can achieve the historically unique notions of common humanity and human emancipation. The authors build on previous work, further developing the sociology of human rights as a distinct field at the intersection of Social Sciences and International Law. They take on several provocative theoretical debates, such as those over connections between racism and capitalism; the existence of a global or "transnational" police state; the control, growth, and exploitation of migrants/migration; and the complex relationship between political repression and various forms of domination.

Human Rights Praxis and the Struggle for Survival offers critical analysis of contemporary politics and options for students, scholars, organizers, and stakeholders to grapple with some of the most pressing social problems of human history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The Foreground Material Relations of Capitalist Society, Human Rights, and Crises of State Legitimacy
• 2. Contradiction, Crisis, and Overlapping Threats to Human Survival: The Background Relations of Capitalist Society
• 3. Confronting the Global Police State
• 4. Political Human Rights: Voter Suppression and Undermining Democracy in the US
• 5. Migrants, Legitimated Instability, and Human Rights*
• 6. Conclusion
• Appendix A: Unions in the US Issue Open Letter, “Calls for Ceasefire in Israel Palestine”
• Appendix B: UN Global Compact for Migration
• Index