Social and Behavioral Sciences | Open Access Articles

The Cultural Sociology Of Human Rights, Mark D. Jacobs, Lester R. Kurtz

Lester R. Kurtz

These cases of China, Occupy, and Gandhi suggest the value of the sociology of culture for understanding human rights. Since human rights is a cultural construct, human rights issues are in-flected by the same set of semantic tensions as the culture concept itself. The sociology of culture thus recommends a method for studying human rights: to explicate--indeed, to weave into an exegetical deep structure--those various tensions. This helps to see beneath the distortions that power and other forms of domination introduce into the discourse of human rights, and to recognize the full multiplicity of interests and voices.

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Peaceful Relationships, Lester R. Kurtz

Lester R. Kurtz

Peaceful relationships are sustained interactions characterized by the absence or low levels of violence. Easier to theorize or write about than to sustain in practice, from interpersonal interactions to relations at the global level and among states, institutions, and social groups, peaceful relationships are the building blocks of a more peaceful world. Interwoven with a web of violence in human affairs is a web of peaceful relations, from the micro level to the macro level, that probably shape most human behavior.

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