Human Rights Law Commons^™

From Scientists To Merchants: The Transformation Of The Pharmaceutical Industry And Its Impact On Health, Ugalde, Núria Homedes

Societies Without Borders

The number of innovative drugs reaching the market has decreased steadily during the last several years to a handful per year. At the same time, the amount of resources allocated by the pharmaceutical industries to promotion and marketing has increased at a faster pace than those allocated to research and development of new products. The paper presents the hypothesis that for the large corporations, the production of me-too drugs is more profitable than to invest in research and development of innovative products. Gaining a market share of me-too drugs requires large investments in promotion and marketing, one result of which …

Global Sociology And The Nature Of Rights, Turner

Societies Without Borders

Citizenship is fundamentally a western political and legal concept; it is also a concept relevant specifically to a national polity. By contrast human rights have been, since their formal proclamation in 1948, promoted as universal rights. The relationship between the social rights of national citizenship and the human rights of the Declaration provides a useful case study in which to discover whether sociology can provide concepts and theories that function across conceptual boundaries and territorial borders. Furthermore, human rights discourse may prove to be the primary candidate for sociology to operate as an effective discourse of global social reality. However, …

Children As Victims Of Structural Violence, Kent

Societies Without Borders

Structural violence is harm imposed by some people on others indirectly, through the social system, as they pursue their own preferences. Its effects are clear in the massive mortality of children. More than ten million children die before their fifth birthdays every single year. For most children, the immediate cause of death is a combination of malnutrition and ordinary diseases such as diarrhea, malaria, and measles. Given adequate resources, such diseases are readily managed. The limited allocation of resources to meeting children's needs is due more to the ways in which available resources are used than to the absolute shortage …

Towards A Simple Typology Of Racial Hegemony, Coates

Societies Without Borders

Racial Hegemony, a concept developed by Omi and Winant, provides a critical tool for evaluating the modern racial state. This paper explores this tool and offers some enhancements. These enhancements, recognizing that one size does not fit all, identify different hegemonic types associated with different racial states. Implications are drawn which suggests that our efforts toward evaluating, transforming, and/or eliminating racial hegemonies are best accomplished by understanding the variations of racial hegemonies.

Empowering "Foreign Brides" And Community Through Praxis-Oriented Research, Hsia

Societies Without Borders

Through the author's direct participation in the empowerment of the "foreign brides" and in a rural community, which are both stigmatized in the mainstream Taiwan society, this paper discusses the theories and methods of praxis-oriented research, and its implication to social studies. This paper illustrates how the concepts and techniques of the "theater of the oppressed" can be combined with "pedagogy of the oppressed" to break through the "culture of silence" of the oppressed, develop their critical awareness, and help the women organize themselves for social transformation. It is proposed that praxis-oriented research can achieve more sophisticated research results, because …

Human Rights And The Roles Of Social Scientists, Moncada, Judith Blau

Societies Without Borders

Human rights entail an expansive conception of humans that stresses their inherent equalities, their responsibilities in democratic societies, and their rights as individuals and group members. This paper refers to the "human rights revolution," especially how it is evident in constitutions, and the relationship between human rights and public goods. Also sketched out are some of the ways that social scientists can promote human rights.

American Politics On The Edge, Aronowitz

Societies Without Borders

Currently there are two major strategies attempting to thwart the rightward lurch of United States politics: liberals and leftists who place faith in their ability to push the Democratic party away from its current center-right orientation; and the new social movements which, disdaining electoral politics and party organization have elevated the concept of "protest and resistance" to the level of a principle and social strategy. This article argues that we desperately need a discussion about the possibility and justification for the formation of a new radical party which combines the best of the electoral and extra electoral experiences of progressive …

The Profit Motive: Can Corporate Networks Be An Effective Conduit For Improving Worker Rights?, Alisa Dicaprio

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization? By Kimberly Elliott and Richard Freeman. Washington: Institute for International Economics, 2003. 179pp.

and

Rising Above Sweatshops: Innovative Approaches to Global Labor Challenges. Edited by Laura Hartman, Denis Arnold and Richard Wokutch. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2003. 414pp.

and

Transnational Corporations and Human Rights. Edited by Jedrzej Frynas and Scott Pegg. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 223pp.

Polemics In The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Jerome Slater

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. 264pp.

and

Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History by Norman G. Finkelstein. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 332pp.

Examining The Declining Utility Of Military Force, Ali Wyne

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War by Andrew J. Bacevich. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 270pp.

Human Rights In Cuba, Susan Kemp

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In 1959, Fidel Castro established a Cuban socialist state closely aligned with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's collapse brought an end to Soviet economic support which, combined with the U.S. embargo, created an economic crisis in the early 1990s. The Cuban government's instability and desire to maintain control overrides the individual rights of its citizens. These events are the background for the lack of fundamental human rights in Cuba today.

Human Rights In El Salvador, Tait Robinson

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Between 1979 and 1991 El Salvador was embroiled in a civil war that claimed over 70,000 lives. Longstanding socio-economic inequality between the rich and poor led to government-backed human rights abuses dispensed by the military. These ranged from denials of freedom and civil liberties to village massacres.

Human Rights In Guatemala, Jennifer Archibald

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Thirty six years of civil war affected human rights negatively in Guatemala. Many actors that violated human rights were also victims of human rights violations; a complex series of events that has still not been fully resolved today.

Human Rights In Honduras, Andrea Degaetani

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Honduras’ history of human rights violations is rooted in a political culture of militarization. Following a military coup in 1963, Honduras faced strengthened military authority and a decade of harsh military rule. It was also during this time that the United States used the country as a base for Contras fighting leftist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. In 1981 Honduras returned to a parliamentary democracy, electing Roberto Suazo Cordova as president. However, by then the process of militarization had been so heavily funded by the U.S and had made such a significant impact on public policy that little changed for the better. …

Paul J. Magnarella On European Court Of Human Rights: Remedies And Execution Of Judgments. Edited By Theodora Christou And Juan Pablo Raymond. London, Uk: British Institute Of International And Comparative Law, 2005. 115 Pp., Paul J. Magnarella

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

European Court of Human Rights: Remedies and Execution of Judgments. Edited by Theodora Christou and Juan Pablo Raymond. London, UK: British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 2005. 115 pp.

Aaron Peron Ogletree On A Brief History Of Neoliberalism By David Harvey. Oxford, Uk: Oxford University Press, 2005. 256 Pp., Aaron Peron Ogletree

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005. 256 pp.

Contending Interventions: Coming To Terms With The Practice And Process Of Enforcing Compliance, Emilian Kavalski

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force by Martha Finnemore. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. 174pp.

and

International Intervention in the Post-Cold War World: Moral Responsibility and Power Politics edited by Michael C. Davis, Wolfgang Dietrich, Bettina Scholdan, and Dieter Sepp. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004. 332pp.

Human Rights In Chile, Stephanie Raessler

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Chile might evoke memories of Augosto Pinochet and his brutal reign, though there is more to this country than an oppressive authoritarian regime. A history of politics longer than Pinochet's rule has shaped Chile's current situation. Many issues recur across Chilean history, and continue to influence the present.

Human Rights In Colombia, Mariko Frame

Human Rights & Human Welfare

With its notoriously vicious paramilitary death squads, rampant drug trade and collusive government, Colombia remains a complex and tumultuous nation. Needless to say, the human rights history of this country has been marked by political violence, absence of due process, and at times a general lawlessness that has made it perpetually unstable. Coupled with Colombia's domestic problems, U.S. involvement in its 'war on drugs' has exacerbated the situations that already were at a boiling point. With an ongoing power struggle between the government, the military and the drug lords, it is no exaggeration to describe Colombia as in a constant …

An American Dilemma Of The 21st Century?, Wallerstein

Societies Without Borders

In 1941, Henry Luce proclaimed the twentieth century the American Century. And in 1944, Gunnar Myrdal wrote of the American dilemma, the discrepancy between its values and the actual treatment of Black Americans. In the post-1945 period, the need of a hegemonic United States to project a positive world image led to major improvements in the position of Black Americans – an improvement however primarily for educated elites and much less for the Black working-class strata. In the period since 1970, U.S. power has been on the decline, which has caused increased internal tensions in the U.S. This intersects with …

Human Rights Dialogues, Sahle, Ollen Mwalubunju

Societies Without Borders

In this conversation Ollen Mwalubunju discusses the politics of exile, the rise of Malawi's popular movement in the early 1990s and its legacies. Further, Mwalubunju discusses at length the struggle by civil society groups to deepen the democratic space that has emerged since the demise of the postcolonial authoritarian regime in 1994. Finally, Mwalubunju reflects on the tensions and complexity of his work as a social activist and the difficulties of promoting the respect and protection of human rights in the current global political and economic conjuncture. This conversation took place in January 2006.

Recognizing Victimhood, Christine Wilke

Studio for Law and Culture

The category of victimhood resonates deeply with many contemporary struggles for recognition without, however, receiving similar attention by political theories of recognition. Many “struggles for recognition” are fought with explicit reference to massive injustice that have ceased without having been publicly recognized as injustices. The state responses to claims for the recognition of victimhood mirror, I will argue, the state’s dominant conceptions of justice and injustice. In many cases, the state affirms its conceptions of injustice and moral innocence through the selective recognition of victims. For example, the U.S. government has granted Japanese-Americans interned during the Second World War an …

Are Workers Rights Human Rights And Would It Matter If They Were?, Richard Mcintyre

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops by J.S. Ross. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. 396pp.

and

Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization? by Kimberly Ann Elliott and Richard B. Freeman. Washington: Institute for International Economics, 2003. 175pp.

The Limits Of Intervention—Humanitarian Or Otherwise, J. Peter Pham

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism by David Kennedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 400 pp.

and

At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention by David Rieff. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. 288 pp.

Religion, Politics And Human Rights: Understanding The Role Of Christianity In The Promotion Of Human Rights, Barbara Ann Rieffer

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Global Face of Public Faith by David Hollenbach. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003. 259pp.

and

For All Peoples and All Nations by John Nurser. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005. 209pp.

How To Recapture Human Rights Within The Political: Validating The Discourse Theory Approach, Magdalena Zolkos

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Human Rights and Democracy: Discourse Theory and Global Rights Institutions by Eva Erman. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. 243 pp.

Escaping The Cultural Context Of Human Rights, Andrew Fagan

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom by Chandran Kukathas. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003. pp.292

Beyond Power Politics: International Law And Human Rights Discourse In The Post-9/11 World, J. Peter Pham

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law by Antony Anghie. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 356 pp.

Adolf Eichmann: Understanding Evil In Form And Content, Matthew S. Weinert

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Criminal Case 40/61, the Trial of Adolf Eichmann by Harry Mulisch. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Human Rights In Latin America: Introduction, Regina Nockerts

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As with many regions of the world, human rights are an issue of enduring concern for Latin America. The essays and bibliographies in this digest chart the recent history of human rights issues in this region, beginning, in most cases, with the wave of military coups that began in the 1970s, highlighting their lasting effects on the governments, civil societies, and economies of the region today. The cases of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Peru are given here; the Organization of American States (OAS) is also covered.