In the West we frequently pay lip service to universal notions of human rights. But do we ever consider how these work in local contexts and across diverse cultural and ethical structures? Do human rights agendas address the problems many people face, or are they more often the imposition of Western values onto largely non-Western communities? Human Rights in a Global Perspective develops a social critique of rights agendas. It provides an understanding of how rights discussions and institutions can construct certain types of subjects such as victims and perpetrators, and certain...
In the West we frequently pay lip service to universal notions of human rights. But do we ever consider how these work in local contexts and across di...
Humanitarian sentiments have motivated a variety of manifestations of pity, from nineteenth-century movements to end slavery to the creation of modern international humanitarian law. While humanitarianism is clearly political, Humanitarianism and Suffering addresses the ways in which it is also an ethos embedded in civil society, one that drives secular and religious social and cultural movements, not just legal and political institutions. As an ethos, humanitarianism has a strong narrative and representational dimension that can generate humanitarian constituencies for particular causes. The...
Humanitarian sentiments have motivated a variety of manifestations of pity, from nineteenth-century movements to end slavery to the creation of modern...
Francisco Ferrandiz Antonius C. G. M. Robben Richard Ashby Wilson
The unmarked mass graves left by war and acts of terror are lasting traces of violence in communities traumatized by fear, conflict, and unfinished mourning. Like silent testimonies to the wounds of history, these graves continue to inflict harm on communities and families that wish to bury or memorialize their lost kin. Changing political circumstances can reveal the location of mass graves or facilitate their exhumation, but the challenge of identifying and recovering the dead is only the beginning of a complex process that brings the rights and wishes of a bereaved society onto a...
The unmarked mass graves left by war and acts of terror are lasting traces of violence in communities traumatized by fear, conflict, and unfinished...