Sociology and human rights: confrontations, evasions and new engagements

Abstract

Sociologists have struggled to negotiate their relationship to human rights, yet human rights are now increasingly the focus of innovative sociological analysis. This opening contribution to ‘Sociology and Human Rights: New Engagements’ analyses how the relationship between sociology and human rights could be better conceptualised and taken forward in the future. The historical development of the sociology of human rights is first examined, with emphasis on the uneasy distancing of sociology from universal rights claims from its inception, and on radical repudiations influenced by Marx. We discuss how in the post-war period T.H. Marshall's work generated analysis of citizenship rights, but only in the past two decades has the sociology of human rights been developed by figures such as Bryan Turner, Lydia Morris and Anthony Woodiwiss. We then introduce the individual contributions to the volume, and explain how they are grouped. We suggest the need to deepen existing analyses of what sociology can offer to the broad field of human rights scholarship, but also, more unusually, that sociologists need to focus more on what human rights related research can bring to sociology, to renew it as a discipline. Subsequent sections take this forward by examining a series of themes including: the relationship between the individual and the social; the need to address inequality; the challenge of social engagement and activism; and the development of interdisciplinarity. We note how authors in the volume contribute to each of these. Finally we conclude by summarising our proposals for future directions in research.

Keywords:

• sociology of rights
• human rights
• disciplinarity
• equality

Notes

Human rights scholarship broadly covers everything from analysis of human rights norms in international law and their violation, to discussions over the exact nature of the normative concept of human rights, to the whole range of knowledge regimes through which human rights emerge in social practice, see the summary of Goodale's work on this last area in Damien Short, ‘Sociological and Anthropological Perspectives on Human Rights’, in Human Rights, Politics and Practice, ed. Mark Goodhart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 92–108.

C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959).

Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Durham, MD: Duke University Press, 2004).

Short, ‘Sociological and Anthropological Perspectives on Human Rights’, 92–108.

Gertrud Lenzer, Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998).

Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (New York: Free Press, 1966).

Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1 (London: Pelican Books, 1976).

Ibid.

Karl Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’, German-French Annals, February 1844, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/index.htm (accessed June 6, 2010); Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1952).

Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’.

Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 61–2.

Bryan S. Turner, ‘Outline of a Theory of Human Rights’, Sociology 27, no. 3 (1993): 489–512.

Ibid.

Anthony Woodiwiss, ‘Can We Get More of the Social into the Sociology of Human Rights?’ (conference papers, Human Rights and the Social: Making a New Knowledge, Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University, 5–6 November 2009), 202–03.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (London: Vintage, 1997), 124, 689.

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (London: Penguin, 1792).

Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (London: Abacus, 1972).

Sonia Corrêa, Rosalind Petchesky and Richard Parker, Sexuality, Health and Human Rights (New York: Routledge, 2008).

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Tavistock Publications, 1970).

Harvie Ferguson, Phenomenological Sociology: Experience and Insight in Modern Society (London: Sage, 2006), 27.

Although labour movements, child rights movements and women's suffrage are among the other forms of normative mobilisation that also fed into the post-WWII response.

Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).

T.H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950).

Ibid., 28.

B.S. Turner, ‘Outline of a Theory of Citizenship’, Sociology 24, no. 2 (1990): 189–217.

Lydia Morris, ed., Rights: Sociological Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2006); Lydia Morris, Asylum, Welfare and the Cosmopolitanism Ideal: A Sociology of Rights (Oxon: Routledge-Cavendish, 2010).

Bryan S. Turner, ‘Outline of a Theory of Human Rights’, (cf. note 12).

R. Morgan and B.S. Turner, eds, Interpreting Human Rights: Social Science Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2009).

Bryan S. Turner, Vulnerability and Human Rights (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University State Press, 2006).

Bryan S. Turner and Chris Rojek, ‘Rights’, in Society and Culture: Principles of Scarcity and Solidarity, ed. Bryan S. Turner and Chris Rojek (London: Sage, 2001), 109–29.

Wayne Morgan, ‘Queering International Human Rights Law’, in Sexuality in the Legal Arena, ed. Carl Stychin and Didi Herman (London: The Athlone Press, 2000), 208–25. Matthew Waites, ‘Critique of “Sexual Orientation” and “Gender Identity” in Human Rights Discourse: Global Queer Politics beyond the Yogyakarta Principles’, in Contemporary Politics 15, no. 1 (March 2009): 137–56 (Special Issue: ‘The Global Politics of LGBT Human Rights’, eds. Kelly Kollman and Matthew Waites).

Malcolm Waters, ‘Human Rights and the Universalisation of Interests: Towards a Social Constructionist Approach’, Sociology 30, no. 3 (1996): 593–600, 593.

Damien Short, ‘The Social Construction of “Native Title” Land Rights in Australia’, Current Sociology 55 (2007): 857; Damien Short, Reconciliation and Colonial Power: Indigenous Rights in Australia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).

Anthony Woodiwiss, Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2005).

Short, ‘The Social Construction of “Native Title” Land Rights in Australia’; Short, Reconciliation and Colonial Power.

Short, ‘Sociological and Anthropological Perspectives on Human Rights’, 92–108.

Mills, The Sociological Imagination.

Although the 1970s and 1980s saw grassroots mobilisation that utilised human rights talk and arguably influenced the creation of such legal norms as the UN Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women 1979 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989, at the inter-state level the remnants of Cold War politics were still evident. Moreover, The European Convention on Human Rights is still the only human rights body with an enforcement mechanism that enable it to make judgements on the behaviour of states towards their citizens, and few countries were incorporating human rights into domestic legislation so that they could filter more fully into the societal mainstream.

J. Donnelly, International Human Rights (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993).

De Feyter, ‘Law Meets Sociology in Human Rights’, 33.

On this point idea see Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998); and Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink, eds, The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Rhiannon Morgan, ‘Advancing Indigenous Rights at the United Nations: Strategic Framing and its Impact on the Normative Development of International Law’, Social and Legal Studies 13, no. 4 (2004): 481–501.

See for example two recent offerings: R. Morgan and B.S. Turner, eds, Interpreting Human Rights: Social Science Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2009); and Morris, Asylum, Welfare and the Cosmopolitan Ideal: A Sociology of Rights.

Damien Short, ‘Sociological and Anthropological Perspectives on Human Rights’, 92–108.

Human Rights and the Social: Making a New Knowledge, Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University, 5–6 November 2009.

Bryan Turner, ed. The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 517.

Susanne Karstedt,‘Human Rights’, in George Ritzer, ed., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Sociology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007).

Edgar F. Borgatta and Rhonda V. Montgomery, eds, The Encyclopedia of Sociology (New York: MacMillan Gate Group, 2000), 1240–2.

Mathieu Deflem, Sociology of Law, Visions of a Scholarly Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 2.

Ibid., 276.

Woodiwiss, ‘Can We Get More of the Social into the Sociology of Human Rights?’, 215.

Anthony Woodiwiss, ‘What Could it Mean to Take Human Rights Seriously?’ in Interpreting Human Rights: Social Science Perspectives, eds, R. Morgan and B.S. Turner (London: Routledge, 2009), 104.

Ibid.

Woodiwiss, ‘Can We Get More of the Social into the Sociology of Human Rights?’, 107.

Woodiwiss, ‘What Could it Mean to Take Human Rights Seriously?’, 104. The relationship between individual and community is also discussed by Sang-Jin Han, ‘Individual Sovereignty, Confucian Challenge and Human Rights Community: Why do we need a new Sociological Imagination?’ Conference Papers, Human Rights and the Social: Making a New Knowledge, Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University, 5–6 November 2009.

Ibid., 106.

Borgatta and Montgomery, The Encyclopedia of Sociology.

Ibid., 1240.

Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 12–13.

Morris, Asylum, Welfare and the Cosmopolitan Ideal: A Sociology of Rights.

Wendy Bottero, Stratification: Social Division and Inequality (London: Routledge, 2005), 19, 33–51.

Ceri Goddard, acting director, British Institute of Human Rights, ‘Human Rights Approaches to Equality – From Principles to Practice’ (Conference: Conceptualising and Achieving Equality and Human Rights, organised by the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, 17 June 2009), http://www.creid.ed.ac.uk/projects/ke/KE_finalreport.pdf (accessed June 19, 2010).

S. Walby, J. Armstrong and S. Strid, ‘Intersectionality and the Quality of Equality Architecture in Britain’ (Paper 47/49, IWM Vienna, European Commission/QUING [Quality in Gender and Equality Policies], 2009).

John Baker, Kathleen Lynch, Sara Cantillon and Judy Walsh, Equality: From Theory to Action, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 33.

Ibid., 32.

See for example the work of Floya Anthias, ‘Thinking Through the Lens of Translocational Positionality: An Intersectionality Frame for Understanding Identity and Belonging’, Translocations: Migration and Social Change 2008, at http://www.translocations.ie/vol_4_Issue_1_Floya_Anthias.pdf (accessed 8 September 2010).

R. Bhavnani, H.S. Mirza and V. Meetoo, Tackling the Roots of Racism: Lessons for Success (Bristol: Policy Press, 2005).

Morris, Asylum, Welfare and the Cosmopolitan Ideal: A Sociology of Rights.

A. Bloch, ‘The Right to Rights? Undocumented Migrants from Zimbabwe Living in South Africa’, Sociology 44, no 2 (April 2010), 233–250.

Mark Goodale, ‘Anthropology and Human Rights in a New Key’, American Anthropologist, 108, no. 1 (2006): 1–8, cited in Short, ‘Sociological and Anthropological Perspectives on Human Rights’, 102.

Rhiannon Morgan, ‘Introduction: Human Rights Research and the Social Sciences’, in Interpreting Human Rights: Social Science Perspectives, eds. Rhiannon Morgan and Bryan Turner (Oxford: Routledge, 2009), 2.

Sociologists without Borders/Sociólogos Sin Fronteras, http://www.sociologistswithoutborders.org/ (accessed 20 June 20, 2010).

ASA website, at http://www.asanet.org/sections/humanrights.cfm (accessed 1 September 2010).

See for example, Judith R. Blau, and Alberto Moncada, Freedoms and Solidarities: In Pursuit of Human Rights (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007); and Judith R. Blau, and Alberto Moncada, Human Rights: Beyond the liberal vision (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000).

Patricia Langerman and Gillian Neibridge, ‘Thrice Told: Narratives of Sociology's Relation to Social Work’, in Sociology in America: A History, ed. Craig Calhoun (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 66.

Aldon D. Morris, ‘Sociology of Race and W E B Dubois’, in Sociology in America: A History, ed. Craig Calhoun (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007), 527.

The distinction is important here as the term ‘social’ justice can be inadequate in post-conflict situations as it can deny recourse to retribution, restitution and the other dimensions of what is now called ‘transitional justice’. Social justice is often used to refer to equality of opportunity, health and welfare provision and the like and does not directly cover claims derived from such things as human rights violations. See generally Short, Reconciliation and Colonial Power: Indigenous Rights in Australia on the implications of the erroneous use of the concept in the Australian national reconciliation process.

Woodiwiss, ‘What Could it Mean to Take Human Rights Seriously?’, 112.

Ibid.

Shannon Speed, ‘At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology: Towards a Critically Engaged Activist Research’, American Anthropologist, 108, no. 1 (2006): 66–67.

Patricia Hynes, ‘New Issues in Refugee Research’ (Working Paper No. 98: ‘The Issue of ‘Trust’ or ‘Mistrust’ in Research with Refugees: Choices, Caveats and Considerations for Researchers’, School of Health and Social Sciences, Middlesex University, November 2003).

Darren O'Byrne, Human Rights (New York: Longman, 2003).

Koen De Feyter and George Pavlakos, ‘In Defence of a Multi-disciplinary Approach to Rights’, in The Tension between Group Rights and Human Rights (Oxford and Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2008), 13.

Koen De Feyter, Law Meets Sociology in Human Rights (conference papers, Human Rights and the Social: Making a New Knowledge, Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University, 5–6 November 2009), 39.

Ibid.

Klein notes that the most common forms of interdisciplinarity are: (1) borrowing; (2) solving problems; (3) increased consistency of subjects or methods; and (4) the emergence of an interdiscipline. See Julie T. Klein, Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 64.

Noberto Bobbio, The Age of Rights (Oxford: Polity, 1999).