Human Rights: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction: thinking about human rightsRealities, Concepts, The social sciences, Beyond human rights law, ConclusionChapter 2 Origins: the rise and fall of natural rightsWhy history? On rights and tyrants, Justice and rights, Natural rights, The age of revolutions, The decline of natural rights Chapter 3 After 1945: the new age of rightsThe UN and the human rights revival, The Universal Declaration, From theory to practice: (a)The Cold War, (b)After the Cold War, ConclusionChapter 4 Theories of human rightsWhy theory? Human rights theory: (a) Rights (b) Other values (c) Human nature (d) Conflicts of rights (e) Democracy (f) ConclusionChapter 5 The role of the social sciencesIntroduction: human rights and social science, The dominance of law, Political science, Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, International relations, ConclusionChapter 6 Universality, diversity and difference: culture and human rights The problem of cultural imperialism, Cultural relativism, Minority rights, Indigenous peoples, The right to self-determination, The rights of women Chapter 7 Idealism, realism and repression: the politics of human rightsThe real politics of human rights, The boomerang theory, The national politics of human rights, The statistics of human rights, NGOs in world politicsChapter 8 Development and Globalization: economics and human rightsDevelopment versus human rights? The right to development, Globalization, International financial institutions, Economic and social rightsChapter 9 Conclusion: human rights in the twenty-first centuryLearning from history, Objections to human rights, Problems of intervention, Concluding remarksReferences Index