1. Introduction: Becoming Human Rights Subjects Through New Practices
Gabriel Blouin-Genest, Marie-Christine Doran, and Sylvie Paquerot
Part I - The Changing Nature of Human Rights and Their Political Boundaries: New Definitions, Longstanding Debates
2. Human Rights As Battlefields: Power Relations, Translations and Transformations – A Theoretical Framework
Gabriel Blouin-Genest, Marie-Christine Doran, and Sylvie Paquerot
3. The Gender of Human Rights: The French Debate Over “les Droits de l’Homme”
Charles Bosvieux-Onyekwelu
4. The Right to Water: The Political Function of Human Rights as an Expression of the Contradictions in Globalization
Sylvie Paquerot
5. Politics of Neutrality, Human Rights and Armed Struggles: The Turkey Example
Ozan Kamiloglu
Part II - Overcoming the Frontiers of Discrimination and Structural Violence: Intersectional Struggles of Human Rights From Below and Transformations of Political Space
6. Child Prisoners, Human Rights and Human Rights Activism: Beyond ‘Emergency’ and ‘Exceptionality’ - An Australian Case Study
Judith Bessant and Rob Watts
7. Who is a Child? The Politics of Human Rights, the Convention on the Right of the Child (CRC), and Child Marriage in Nigeria
Olabanji Akinola
8. Forcibly Sterilized: Peru’s Indigenous Women and the Battle for Rights
Ñusta Carranza Ko
9. Politicization of Rights-based Development and Marginalization of Human Rights from Below: The Case of Maternal Health Rights in India
Surma Das
Part III: Social Contestation and the Broadening of Human Rights’ Meanings
10. Indigenous Peoples in Chile: Contesting Violence, Building New Meanings for Rights and Democracy
Marie-Christine Doran
11. Improving HIV/AIDS Drugs Access: A Genealogy of the Human Right to Health From Below
Gabriel Blouin-Genest and Mikey Erb
12. Internet Access as Human Right: A Dystopian Critique from the Occupied Palestinian Territory
Fabio Cristiano
13. Conclusion: Changing Human Right Practices and the Battlefields of World Politics
Gabriel Blouin-Genest, Marie-Christine Doran, and Sylvie Paquerot
Gabriel Blouin-Genest is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech, USA.
Marie-Christine Doran is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada.
Sylvie Paquerot is Associate Professor of Political and Legal Studies at the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada.
This book examines human rights as political battlefields, spaces that are undergoing constant changes in which political conflicts are expressed by a translation process within networks of interactions. This translation, in turn, contributes to modifying the scope and understanding of human rights. Ultimately, these battlefields express the legitimacy encounter of different versions of human rights in contemporary political practices. The volume thus challenges both the tendency to minimize the changing nature of human rights as well as the struggles emerging from the use of human rights discourses as a legitimization tool. By shifting the focus on what stakeholders do instead of solely on the origin, nature or foundations of human rights, the authors reveal that human rights are not static objects: they are constantly transformed and, as such, affect the horizon of universal rights.
Gabriel Blouin-Genest is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech, USA.
Marie-Christine Doran is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada.
Sylvie Paquerot is Associate Professor of Political and Legal Studies at the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada.