Offering deep insight to the lives of human rights activists in a conflict zone, against the backdrop of major historical changes that shaped Latin America in the twentieth century, this book illuminates the critical role of human rights organizations in bringing violence to public attention and analyzing its causes and consequences.

Human Rights, now in its fourth edition, is an introductory text that is both innovative and challenging. Its unique interdisciplinary approach invites students to think imaginatively and rigorously about one of the most important and influential political concepts of our time. Tracing the history of the concept, the book shows that there are fundamental tensions between legal, philosophical and social-scientific approaches to human rights. This analysis throws light on some of the most controversial issues in the field: What are the causes of human-rights violations? Is the idea of universal human rights consistent with respect for cultural difference? Are we living in a ‘post-human rights’ world? Thoroughly revised and updated, the new edition engages with recent developments, including the Trump and Biden presidencies, colonial legacies, neoliberalism, conflict in Syria, Yemen and Myanmar, the Covid-19 pandemic, new technologies and the supposed crisis of liberal democracy. Widely admired and assigned for its clarity and comprehensiveness, this book remains a ‘go-to’ text for students in the social sciences, as well as students of human-rights law who want an introduction to the non-legal aspects of their subject.

This book shows how a series of contradictions worked their way into the International Bill of Human Rights.

A history of the successes of the human rights movement and a case for why human rights work Evidence for Hope makes the case that yes, human rights work. Critics may counter that the movement is in serious jeopardy or even a questionable byproduct of Western imperialism. Guantánamo is still open and governments are cracking down on NGOs everywhere. But human rights expert Kathryn Sikkink draws on decades of research and fieldwork to provide a rigorous rebuttal to doubts about human rights laws and institutions. Past and current trends indicate that in the long term, human rights movements have been vastly effective. Exploring the strategies that have led to real humanitarian gains since the middle of the twentieth century, Evidence for Hope looks at how essential advances can be sustained for decades to come.

In The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda A.B.K. Kasozi examines the origins of the appallingly high levels of violence in Uganda since independence. This is the first scholarly compilation and comparison of patterns and forms of violence under successive Ugandan regimes, and the first to offer a systematic analysis of violence under the second Obote regime.

This book makes a forceful case for the scientific aspirations of ethics and for the necessity of ethics to our humanity. It is written as a challenge to those who are reluctant to recognize that science can deal decisively with questions in ethical theory. It throws new light on group responsibilities, apparent oughtness, and the responsibility we have for expanding our awareness of responsibilities.

Because oral history interviews are personal interactions between human beings, they rarely conform to a methodological ideal. These reflections from oral historians provide honest and rigorous analyses of actual oral history practice that address the complexities of a human-centered methodology.

Current debates about the future of the family are often based on serious misconceptions about its past. Arguing that there is no biologically mandated or universally functional family form, Stephanie Coontz traces the complexity and variety of family arrangements in American history, from Native American kin groups to the emergence of the dominant middle-class family ideal in the 1890s. Surveying and synthesizing a vast range of previous scholarship, as well as engaging more particular studies of family life from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, Coontz offers a highly original account of the shifting structure and function of American families. Her account challenges standard interpretations of the early hegemony of middle-class privacy and "affective individualism," pointing to the rich tradition of alternative family behaviors among various ethnic and socioeconomic groups in America, and arguing that even middle-class families went through several transformations in the course of the nineteenth centure. The present dominant family form, grounded in close interpersonal relations and premised on domestic consumption of mass-produced household goods has arisen, Coontz argues, from a long and complex series of changing political and economic conjunctures, as well as from the destruction or incorporation of several alternative family systems. A clear conception of American capitalism's combined and uneven development is therefore essential if we are to understand the history of the family as a key social and economic unit. Lucid and detailed, The Social Origins of Private Life is likely to become the standard history of its subject.

Misagh Parsa develops a structural theory of the causes and outcomes of revolution, applying the theory in particular to Iran. He focuses on the ends and means of various groups of Iranians before, during, and after the revolution. For Parsa, revolution is not a direct result of ideologies, which may be less important than structural factors such as the nature of the state and the economy, as well as each group's interests, capacity for mobilization, autonomy, and solidarity structures. Existing theories of revolution explain earlier revolutions better than the Iranian revolution. In Iran most of the protest was in urban areas, the peasants never played a major role, and power was transferred to the clergy, not to an intelligentsia. In the 1970s, oil revenues increased, the economy developed rapidly but unevenly, and the state's expanded intervention undermined market forces and politicized capital accumulation. Systematic repression of workers, aid to the upper class, and attacks on secular and religious opposition showed that the state was serving the interests of particular groups. When the state tried to check high inflation by imposing price controls on bazaaris (merchants, shopkeepers, artisans), their protests forced the state to introduce reforms, providing an opportunity for industrial workers, white-collar workers, intellectuals, and the clergy to mobilize against the state. Thus, structural features rendered the state vulnerable to challenge and attack. Parsa's thorough explanation of the collective actions of each major group in Iran in the three decades prior to the revolution shows how a coalition of classes and groups, using mosques as safe gathering places and led by a segment of the clergy, brought down the monarch of 1979. In the years since the revolution, the conflicts that existed before the revolution seem to be reemerging, in slightly altered form. The clergy now has control, and the state has become centrally and powerfully involved in the economy of the country.

Human rights, equality, and social justice are at the forefront of public concern and political debate in Canada. Global events--especially the "war on terrorism"―have fostered further interest in the abuse of human rights, especially when sanctioned or perpetuated by democratic governments. This groundbreaking contributed volume seeks to shed light on this topic by uniting original essays that examine the history of human rights in Canada. Contributors explore a variety of themes integral to the post-confederation period, including immigration and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, disability, state formation, and provincial-federal relations. Three key issues emerge throughout: incidents of discrimination in both government and society, the efforts of human rights and civil liberties activists to create a more open and tolerant society, and the implementation of state legislation designed to protect or enhance civil rights.