The Cultural Politics of Human Rights
Comparing the US and UK

Explores how crucial cultural politics is to the realization of human rights ideals.

Kate Nash (Author)

9780521853521, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 March 2009

224 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.6 cm, 0.49 kg

'… the research in this book is very well done, politically relevant, and essential reading for students of culture, globalization, politics and human rights. It is appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses and for an interested public.' Social Movement Studies

How does culture make a difference to the realisation of human rights in Western states? It is only through cultural politics that human rights may become more than abstract moral ideals, protecting human beings from state violence and advancing protection from starvation and the social destruction of poverty. Using an innovative methodology, this book maps the emergent 'intermestic' human rights field within the US and UK in order to investigate detailed case studies of the cultural politics of human rights. Kate Nash researches how the authority to define human rights is being created within states as a result of international human rights commitments. Through comparative case studies, she explores how cultural politics is affecting state transformation today.

Preface
1. What does it matter what human rights mean?
2. Analysing the intermestic human rights field
3. Sovereignty, pride and political life
4. Imagining a community without 'enemies of all mankind'
5. Global solidarity: justice not charity
6. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Human rights [JPVH], Political science & theory [JPA], Social issues & processes [JFF]