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Full-Text Articles in Politics and Social Change

Of Sweatshops And Human Subsistence: Habermas On Human Rights, David Ingram Jan 2009

Of Sweatshops And Human Subsistence: Habermas On Human Rights, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this paper I argue that the discourse theoretic account of human rights defended by Jürgen Habermas contains a fruitful tension that is obscured by its dominant tendency to identify rights with legal claims. This weakness in Habermas’s account becomes manifest when we examine how sweatshops diminish the secure enjoyment of subsistence, which Habermas himself (in recognition of the UDHR) recognizes as a human right. Discourse theories of human rights are unique in tying the legitimacy of human rights to democratic deliberation and consensus. So construed, their specific meaning and force is the outcome of historical political struggle. However, unlike …


The Redevelopment Of Place In The Urban Context: An Evaluation Of Non-Housing Economic Change In A Transforming Public Housing Neighborhood, Crystal Jackson Jan 2009

The Redevelopment Of Place In The Urban Context: An Evaluation Of Non-Housing Economic Change In A Transforming Public Housing Neighborhood, Crystal Jackson

Master's Theses

At the turn of the twenty-first century the pervasive unsuitability of living conditions within many public housing projects facilitated the enactment of the HOPE VI program, the most recent reform in public housing policy. While increasing the habitability of traditional public neighborhoods arguably has been an overarching goal of the HOPE VI intervention, research has not widely considered the extent to which the program may have facilitated the development of non-housing amenities in transforming neighborhoods. The goal of this study is to consider the extent to which non-housing economic amenities have been developed in a transforming Chicago neighborhood targeted for …