Human Rights as Social Construction

Benjamin Gregg believes human rights can be created by the ordinary people whom they address and are valid only if embraced by those to whom they apply.

Benjamin Gregg (Author)

9781107015937, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 December 2011

272 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.53 kg

'Benjamin Gregg's brilliantly reasoned, strikingly original, and profoundly challenging approach to human rights theory and practice may be the most significant contribution on this theme in the last decade. It deserves the widest possible reading and debate.' Richard A. Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice, Princeton University

Most conceptions of human rights rely on metaphysical or theological assumptions that construe them as possible only as something imposed from outside existing communities. Most people, in other words, presume that human rights come from nature, God, or the United Nations. This book argues that reliance on such putative sources actually undermines human rights. Benjamin Gregg envisions an alternative; he sees human rights as locally developed, freely embraced, and indigenously valid. Human rights, he posits, can be created by the average, ordinary people to whom they are addressed, and that they are valid only if embraced by those to whom they would apply. To view human rights in this manner is to increase the chances and opportunities that more people across the globe will come to embrace them.

Part I. This-Worldly Norms, Local Not Universal: 1. Human rights: political not theological
2. Human rights: political not metaphysical
3. Generating universal human rights out of local norms
Part II. This-Worldly Resources for Human Rights as Social Construction: 4. Cultural resources: individuals as authors of human rights
5. Neurobiological resources: emotions and natural altruism in support of human rights
Part III. This-Worldly Means of Advancing the Human-Rights Idea: 6. Translating human rights into local cultural vernaculars
7. Advancing human rights through cognitive re-framing
Part IV. Human Rights, Future Tense: Human Nature and Political Community Reconceived: 8. Human rights via human nature as cultural choice
9. The human-rights state
Part V. Coda: 10. What is lost, and what gained, by human rights as social construction.

Subject Areas: Jurisprudence & philosophy of law [LAB], Human rights [JPVH], Political science & theory [JPA]