Human Rights Praxis and the Struggle for Survival
Asserting a critical sociological perspective, Human Rights Praxis and the Struggle for Survival reveals the contested historical processes through which fundamental human needs are constructed as “rights” under international law, and how those rights are confronted by the ruling relations and crises inherent to contemporary global capitalism and the waning American hegemonic world order.
Put simply, the book explores why human rights as a formal legal project has failed to deliver on guaranteeing human survival, let alone universal human dignity. Rather than stopping at critique, the authors propose a specific, materialist intellectual and political agenda for the preservation of collective human survival that can achieve the historically unique notions of common humanity and human emancipation. The authors build on previous work, further developing the sociology of human rights as a distinct field at the intersection of Social Sciences and International Law. They take on several provocative theoretical debates, such as those over connections between racism and capitalism; the existence of a global or “transnational” police state; the control, growth, and exploitation of migrants/migration; and the complex relationship between political repression and various forms of domination.
Human Rights Praxis and the Struggle for Survival offers critical analysis of contemporary politics and options for students, scholars, organizers, and stakeholders to grapple with some of the most pressing social problems of human history.
William T. Armaline is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences and founder of the Human Rights Minor Program and Human Rights Institute at San José State University. His formal training and professional experience spans sociology, education, and human rights. Dr Armaline’s interests, applied work, and scholarly publications address social problems as they relate to political economy, politics, human rights, racism, critical pedagogy, inequality and youth, mass incarceration, policing, and drug policy reform.
Davita Silfen Glasberg is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. She is a past President of Sociologists without Borders. She is also a former Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UConn. Her research and teaching interests focus on human rights, political sociology, political economy, and systemic inequalities, including racism and gendered inequities as well as the intersectionality of these. She has published over a dozen books and dozens of articles in these fields.