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Palgrave Macmillan
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Human Rights as Political Imaginary

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  • © 2018

Overview

  • Presents theoretically sophisticated and thoughtful analysis of the sociology of human rights
  • Questions rather than reproduces mainstream sociological conceptions of human rights
  • Conceptualizes human rights as a political imaginary rather than as a moral ideal, a global ethic, or an emerging international legal standard

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

In this book, López proposes the ‘political imaginary’ model as a tool to better understand what human rights are in practice, and what they might, or might not, be able to achieve. Human rights are conceptualised as assemblages of relatively stable, but not unchanging, historically situated, and socially embedded practices.  Drawing on an emerging iconoclastic historiography of human rights, the author provides a sympathetic yet critical overview of the field of the sociology of human rights. The book addresses debates regarding sociology’s relationships to human rights, the strengths and limits of the notion of practice, human rights’ affinity to postnational citizenship and cosmopolitism, and human rights’ curious, yet fateful, entanglement with the law.

Human Rights as Political Imaginary will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, politics, international relations and criminology.

Reviews

Human Rights as Political Imaginary is a brave, bold, and highly creative book. Its sustained engagement with highly diverse literatures makes it a genuine landmark study in the establishment of the sociology of human rights.” (Anthony Woodiwiss, author of Human Rights, and Making Human Rights Work Globally)

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    José Julián López

About the author

José Julián López is Professor at the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada.

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