Description
Book SynopsisUtilizing the ethos of human rights, this insightful book captures the development of the moral imagination of these rights through history, culture, politics, and society. Moving beyond the focus on legal protections, it draws attention to the foundation and understanding of rights from theoretical, philosophical, political, psychological, and spiritual perspectives.
The book surveys the changing ethos of human rights in the modern world and traces its recent histories and process of change, delineating the ethical, moral, and intellectual shifts in the field. Chapters incorporate and contribute to the debates around the ethics of care, considering some of the more challenging philosophical and practical questions. It highlights how human rights thinkers have sought to translate the ideals that are embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into action and practice.
Interdisciplinary in nature, this book will be critical reading for scholars and students of human rights, international relations, and philosophy. Its focus on potential answers, approaches, and practices to further the cause of human rights will also be useful for activists, NGOs, and policy makers in these fields.
Trade Review‘We live in a moment of overlapping crises: in a radically unequal and dangerously warming world, populism, xenophobia, and closing space for dissent are the background conditions to which the acute calamities of a global pandemic and its dire economic consequences have been added. These intersecting emergencies have left human rights advocates searching for frameworks capable of generating new visions bold enough to tackle the challenges we face. Moving beyond legal foundations, The Changing Ethos of Human Rights,
edited by Hoda Mahmoudi, Alison Brysk and Kate Seaman, offers perspectives on rights rooted in traditions such as philosophy, spirituality, and feminism. In these spaces, the contributors find an ethos of care that centers the interdependence of all human beings, offering a pathway forward in the midst of peril.’Table of ContentsContents: Introduction to The Changing Ethos of Human Rights 1 Hoda Mahmoudi 1 Values and human rights: implications of an emerging discourse on virtue ethics 14 Michael L. Penn 2 Dignity and treating others merely as means 35 Samuel Kerstein 3 Making rights rhetoric work: constructing care in a post-liberal world 52 Alison Brysk 4 Race and feminist care ethics: intersectionality as method 66 Parvati Raghuram 5 Difficult care: examining women’s efforts in the Islamic Republic of Iran 93 Hoda Mahmoudi 6 Empathy, caring, and the defense of human rights in a digital world 111 Kate Seaman 7 Cultural heritage, cultural rights and care ethics 136 Matthew S. Weinert Index 157
