Vulnerability and Human Rights
Vulnerability and Human Rights
BRYAN S. TURNER
Series: Essays on Human Rights
Copyright Date: 2006
Published by: Pennsylvania State University Press
Pages: 160
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/j.ctt7v124
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Book Info
Vulnerability and Human Rights
Book Description:

The mass violence of the twentieth century’s two world wars—followed more recently by decentralized and privatized warfare, manifested in terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and other localized forms of killing—has led to a heightened awareness of human beings’ vulnerability and the precarious nature of the institutions they create to protect themselves from violence and exploitation. This vulnerability, something humans share amid the diversity of cultural beliefs and values that mark their differences, provides solid ground on which to construct a framework of human rights. Bryan Turner undertakes this task here, developing a sociology of rights from a sociology of the human body. His blending of empirical research with normative analysis constitutes an important step forward for the discipline of sociology. Like anthropology, sociology has traditionally eschewed the study of justice as beyond the limits of a discipline that pays homage to cultural relativism and the “value neutrality” of positivistic science. Turner’s expanded approach accordingly involves a truly interdisciplinary dialogue with the literature of economics, law, medicine, philosophy, political science, and religion.

eISBN: 978-0-271-05466-7
Subjects: Sociology
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
  3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (pp. ix-x)
  4. 1 CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
    1 CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY (pp. 1-24)

    In this study of rights, the concepts of human vulnerability and institutional precariousness are employed both to grasp the importance of human rights and to defend their universalism. Vulnerability defines our humanity and is presented here as the common basis of human rights. The idea of our vulnerable human nature is closely associated with certain fundamental rights, such as the right to life. Indeed, the rights that support life, health, and reproduction are crucial to human rights as such. It is, however, difficult to enforce human rights, and hence we must explore the complex relationships among the state, the social...

  5. 2 VULNERABILITY AND SUFFERING
    2 VULNERABILITY AND SUFFERING (pp. 25-44)

    This study of human rights places the human body at the center of social and political theory, and it employs the notion of embodiment as a foundation for defending universal human rights. My argument is based on four fundamental philosophical assumptions: the vulnerability of human beings as embodied agents, the dependency of humans (especially during their early childhood development), the general reciprocity or interconnectedness of social life, and, finally, the precariousness of social institutions. The dialectical relationship between these four components becomes obvious when one thinks about the process of technological modernization. Within this dialectical balance of vulnerability, dependency, reciprocity,...

  6. 3 CULTURAL RIGHTS AND CRITICAL RECOGNITION THEORY
    3 CULTURAL RIGHTS AND CRITICAL RECOGNITION THEORY (pp. 45-68)

    Cultural rights have become a crucial issue in contemporary politics. In an increasingly hybrid and multicultural global context, cultural identities are politically contested—and hence securing cultural rights is an important precondition for the enjoyment of other human rights. These cultural rights, however, may bear an uncomfortable relationship to the various identities that an individual might have as a consequence of diverse memberships in local communities, nation-states, transnational social movements, or global religions. With globalization, such diasporic communities proliferate, and cultural rights become more uncertain and contested. If culture defines identity, then culture is an important aspect of the basic...

  7. 4 REPRODUCTIVE AND SEXUAL RIGHTS
    4 REPRODUCTIVE AND SEXUAL RIGHTS (pp. 69-88)

    We might reasonably argue that human beings are vulnerable precisely because they are sexual beings—that is, social beings whose sexual satisfaction and reproduction requires intimate reciprocity, typically with a limited number of partners over a considerable length of time. Humans cannot reproduce by cellular division, and they must seek out appropriate mates. Sexual acts, however fleeting and casual, require complex interactions with others. These encounters are typically institutionalized by various norms that attempt to regulate sexual activity, thereby reducing its complexity, uncertainty, and dangers. Despite these institutions, sexual encounters are inherently and irreducibly precarious. Sexual interaction invites us to...

  8. 5 RIGHTS OF IMPAIRMENT AND DISABILITY
    5 RIGHTS OF IMPAIRMENT AND DISABILITY (pp. 89-110)

    Citizenship and social rights have passed through several stages in modern social and political thought—from the idealism of the philosopher T. H. Green before the First World War to the development of European welfare policies after the Second World War, policies that were associated with social Keynesianism and specifically with T. H. Marshall, Richard Titmuss, J. M. Keynes, and William Beveridge. The modern debate about citizenship has concentrated on Marshall’sCitizenship and Social Class and Other Essays(1950). In the United States, Talcott Parsons and Kenneth Clark inThe American Negro(1966) and Reinhard Bendix inNation-Building and Citizenship...

  9. 6 RIGHTS OF THE BODY
    6 RIGHTS OF THE BODY (pp. 111-128)

    A minimum level of good health is a material precondition for the enjoyment of human rights. We might interpret this commonsense observation through the political economy of Karl Marx against the claims of liberalism and its assumptions about individual rights. Marx believed that democratic institutions in capitalism had failed because the social dominance of the ruling class was based on its ownership and control of the economic foundations of society. Marx argued inOn the Jewish Questionthat the emancipation of the Jews as a consequence of the French Revolution and the granting of equal rights was based on an...

  10. 7 OLD AND NEW XENOPHOBIA
    7 OLD AND NEW XENOPHOBIA (pp. 129-142)

    InOf Hospitality(2000), Jacques Derrida has written eloquently and convincingly about the rights of the stranger, arguing that ethics is in fact hospitality. His account of hospitality follows Émile Benveniste, who inIndo-European Language and Society(1973) demonstrated the ambiguous and contradictory nature of a cluster of concepts: host, guest, and stranger. In Latin, a stranger/guest is calledhostisandhospes. Whereashospesis the etymological root of ‘‘hospitality,’’hostisis an ‘‘enemy.’’ Benveniste argued that both ‘‘guest’’ and ‘‘enemy’’ derive from ‘‘stranger,’’ and the notion of ‘‘favorable stranger’’ evolved eventually into ‘‘guest,’’ while a ‘‘hostile stranger’’ became the...

  11. REFERENCES
    REFERENCES (pp. 143-150)
  12. INDEX
    INDEX (pp. 151-156)
  13. Back Matter
    Back Matter (pp. 157-157)
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