Critical Sociology

Fasenfest, David

doi: 10.1177/0896920516645720pmid: N/A

doi: 10.1177/0896920516645722pmid: N/A

Dale, John; Kyle, David

doi: 10.1177/0896920516640041pmid: N/A

A paradigmatic shift around the central role of ‘social entrepreneurs’ is captivating a broad, diverse range of social actors refashioning the institutional landscape of human rights and humanitarian practices. For this special issue dedicated to ‘Re-imagining Human Rights’, we explore some of the implications of these revolutionary changes in human rights practices, and their consequences for sociological study and political critique in the 21st century. Following a discussion of the state of the sociology of human rights practices, we describe the remaking of the human rights arena into a site of technocratic organizations with an emphasis on the ‘triple bottom line’ (financial, social and environmental sustainability). This market-led rights paradigm also promotes a new kind of empathy required for social problem-solving and humanitarian action – one less sentimental, much more technocratic and managerial. We offer some critical observations on this ‘smart humanitarianism’, which emphasizes the human-machine partnership via online technologies, apps, and expert systems management strategies; they redistribute the cognitive responsibilities of determining and delivering goods for greatest measurable impact with a quid-pro-quo of reframing inequality. We introduce the other contributing articles, signposting notable elements and the implications for wider socio-political critique, especially regarding ‘smart humanitarianism’.

Shannon, Deric

doi: 10.1177/0896920515608924pmid: N/A

Scholars developing a concept they call the ‘human rights enterprise’ suggest a theory of human rights guaranteed, in some cases, by social movements from below and often against the wishes of the state. This article draws on data from an ethnography conducted in a small Food Not Bombs collective to critically assess the radical potential and pitfalls of the claims made by scholars promoting the human rights enterprise and the social movement organizations using the language of ‘rights’ to frame their direct action-oriented praxis.

Falcón, Sylvanna M.

doi: 10.1177/0896920514565484pmid: N/A

This article explores the production of human rights discourse by examining the organization and social actors involved in its construction. The author proposes a triad constellation configuration for situating the varied engagements of human rights by different constituencies at the United Nations level: dominant understandings, counterpublic approaches, and social praxis. Dominant understandings are affiliated with the Western-legal apparatus, counterpublic approaches embrace antiracist and feminist epistemologies, and social praxis is about the mediation between the first two constellations. This article argues that the social praxis constellation is where the discourse of human rights can be inventive and dynamic because an envisioning of human rights moves beyond the rubric of civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights.

Bean, Anderson M.

doi: 10.1177/0896920515582093pmid: N/A

This paper explores the dynamic between the Venezuelan state, which has committed itself to a discourse on grassroots political participation, and civil society, which has responded to this call in ways that often exceed and challenge the expectations of the government. The Bolivarian process has raised Venezuelan’s expectations of the state, and its very success depends on both the actions of grassroots activists and the Chavista government. By analyzing the case of Venezuela I make three arguments concerning human rights. First, although human rights in recent years have more often than not served as a hegemonic tool of the West, they can have emancipatory potential, especially when used by social movements, as effective agents of social change. Second, in order for human rights to serve an emancipatory or counter-hegemonic function, they must be radicalized and transformed. Movements from below must drive the reconceptualization of human rights rather than powerful governments, international institutions and other top-down entities. My third argument is that the conception of the state as the sole violator of human rights or as the guarantor of human rights is a false dichotomy. While the state can be a violator of human rights, when pressured from below the state can protect its citizens from human rights abuses.

Cockburn, Jenny

doi: 10.1177/0896920515589002pmid: N/A

This article examines barriers to collaborations that arise between Andean farmers and a Bolivian rural development NGO in efforts toward agroecology. Despite their shared concerns, tensions are evident in the power imbalances embedded in these relationships, as well as in the divergent values and meanings assigned to participation and equality, most evident when viewed through the lens of gender. The implications of these tensions extend to how gendered human rights are understood more broadly. Western liberal notions of human rights may conflict with local cultures’ notions of these rights, informed by the organizing principle of gender complementarity. To explore this, ethnographic data on farm women’s participation, issues of decision-making power, and their public voices and silence are brought forth, demonstrating how the NGO is positioned as cultural broker between two different conceptions of equality – that of the farm families and the funding agencies and partners from the Global North.

Gouge, Melissa C.

doi: 10.1177/0896920515603110pmid: N/A

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) employs creative playfulness and subversive storytelling in their human rights campaigns and solidarity-building practices. The article focuses on three particular media to illustrate how they construct transnational solidarity: (1) son jarocho music as a medium for organizing the March for Rights, Respect, and Fair Food targeting Publix Supermarkets for human rights abuses like wage theft; (2) mística theater as a medium for organizing the Encuentro gathering to build their campaign against Wendy’s for failing to free their supply chain from worker abuse; and (3) a grassroots community museum as a medium for building support against slavery. Creative playfulness and subversive storytelling contribute to successes built on human rights principles and realized through corporate accountability strategies. The article describes these media, and shows how they overcome challenges of building transnational solidarity. Finally, it suggests how the CIW has influenced recent farmworker strikes in Mexico.

Kfir, Nelly; Kemp, Adriana

doi: 10.1177/0896920515584168pmid: N/A

This article introduces the distinction between ‘routine’ and ‘emergency’ times in human rights struggles. Based on ethnography of Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) advocating on migrant workers’ rights, we show how this emergent distinction manifests in the social dynamics of human rights struggles. Thus, whereas in their daily work, human rights NGOs follow the logic of the bureaucratic system in a slow, Sisyphean manner, in times of perceived ‘emergency’, opportunities open up for a faster pace of action and for breaking routine repertoires. In bringing socio-temporal configurations to bear on human rights struggles, we show how activists’ experiencing of events as ‘emergency’ was a catalyst for the transformation of social mobilization, positing that both NGOs and social movements, however distinct from each other, are in fact related to different ‘times’ of human rights struggles.

Gregg, Benjamin

doi: 10.1177/0896920515582092pmid: N/A

One generally enjoys rights, if at all, then only as a member of a particular political community. The nation state’s territorial sovereignty precludes the possibility of human rights. I propose a ‘human rights state’ whose members seek the corresponding nation state’s embrace of human rights. It functions as a metaphor with ‘deontic power’, with each member carrying these deontic powers in a ‘human rights backpack’. Metaphorical thinking is more plausible than theology or metaphysics on the approach I adopt: social construction. Accordingly, all norms are human inventions and at best emerge through ongoing self-reflective politics: rejected or embraced on the basis of critical examination and justification. Creating justice begins with an act of imagination, envisioning better alternatives, and resisting taking for granted many aspects of the communities we are born into. Metaphorical thinking facilitates creating justice in this sense: limiting the sovereignty of the nation state to the extent necessary to allow for human rights.