Human Rights and Revolutions

Edited by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Greg Grandin, Lynn Hunt, Marilyn B. Young

Not available to order

Publication date:

15 May 2007

Length of book:

244 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781461637516

Now in a revised and updated edition with added original chapters, this acclaimed book provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the complex links between revolutionary struggles and human rights discourses and practices. Covering events as far removed from one another in time and space as the English Civil War, the Parisian upheavals of 1789, Latin American independence struggles, and protests in late twentieth-century China, the contributors explore the paradoxes of revolutionary and human rights projects.

The book convincingly shows the ways in which revolutions have both helped spur new advances in thinking about human rights and produced regimes that commit a range of abuses. Providing an unusually balanced analysis of the changes over time in conceptions of human rights in Western and non-Western contexts, this work offers a unique window into the history of the world during modern times and a fresh context for understanding today's pressing issues.

Contributions by: Florence Bernault, Mark Philip Bradley, Sumit Ganguly, Greg Grandin, James N. Green, Lynn Hunt, Yanni Kotsonis, Timothy McDaniel, Kristin Ross, Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Alexander Woodside, Marilyn B. Young, David Zaret, and Michael Zuckert

Introduction: Human Rights and Revolutions
Part I: Two Opening Perspectives
Chapter 1: The Paradoxical Origins of Human Rights
Chapter 2: The Chinese Revolution and Contemporary Paradoxes
Part II: The English, American, and Russian Revolutions
Chapter 3: Tradition, Human Rights, and the English Revolution
Chapter 4: Natural Rights in the American Revolution: The American Amalgam
Chapter 5: A European Experience: Human Rights and Citizenship in Revolutionary Russia
Part III: Asian and African Case Studies
Chapter 6: An Enlightenment of Outcasts: Some Vietnamese Stories
Chapter 7: India, Human Rights, and Asian Values
Chapter 8: What Absence Is Made Of: Human Rights in Africa
Part IV: A Human Rights Revolution?
Chapter 9: (Homo)sexuality, Human Rights, and Revolution in Latin America
Chapter 10: Ethics and the Rearmament of Imperialism: The French Case
Chapter 11: The Strange Career of Radical Islam
Part V: A Concluding Perspective
Chapter 12: Human Rights and Empire's Embrace: A Latin American Counterpoint

The authors argue convincingly that without revolutions human rights would never have become a political reality, even though countries that never have had a revolution have done a better job of preserving freedom. Many of the essays are interrelated in that they illustrate one or another or both of these themes. On the whole, this is an interesting, worthwhile, and thought-provoking book. Social and political philosophers might gain a great deal from understanding the history of the concepts that they use and argue about.