Special Issue on the Sociology of Human Rights: International Journal of Human Rights Volume 14, Number 6, November 2010 (editors: Patricia Hynes, Michele Lamb, Damien Short, Matthew Waites)

Following the first Study Group workshop held at the end of 2009 (at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies), the existing study group convenors edited a Special Issue of the International Journal of Human Rights on the Sociology of Human Rights.  The Special Issue featured eight papers by study group members and an introduction from the editors.

About the Special Issue

The contribution analyses how the relationship between sociology and human rights could be better conceptualised and taken forward in the future.  The editors argue for the need to deepen existing analyses of what sociology can offer to the broad field of human rights scholarship, but also, more unusually, that sociologists need to focus more on what human rights related research can bring to sociology, to renew it as a discipline. The articles within the Special Issue take this forward by examining a series of themes including: the relationship between the individual and the social; the need to address inequality; the challenge of social engagement and activism; and the development of interdisciplinarity. Each contribution concludes by summarising proposals for future directions in sociological research.

Articles

• Sociology and Human Rights: Confrontations, Evasions and New Engagements

• Cultural Genocide and Indigenous Peoples: A Sociological Approach

• Who’s Human? Developing Sociological Understandings of the Rights of Women Raped in Conflict

• Sociology and Human Rights: What have they got to say about Care and Dignity?

• Contestations over Rights: From establishment to implementation of the National Basic Livelihood Security System in South Korea

• Human rights and cities: the Barcelona Office for Non-Discrimination and its work for migrants

• From ‘rights-based’ to ‘rights-framed’ approaches: A social constructionist view of human rights practice

• Reconstructing Rwanda: Balancing Human Rights and the Promotion of National Reconciliation

• Global Points of ‘Vulnerability’: Understanding Processes of the Trafficking of Children and Young People into, within and out of the UK

• Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and the Generation of Childhoods: Analysing the Partial Decriminalization of ‘Unnatural Offences’ in India

• Loyalty and Human Rights: Liminality and Social Action in a Divided Society

Hynes, P., Lamb, M., Short, D. and M. Waites, (Eds.), (2011), Sociology and Human Rights: New Engagements, Routledge, London  

Recent News

As a result of the edited books' positive sales history, Routledge have recently informed the group that they are planning to produce a paperback edition which should be published on the 3rd September 2012.

Further detail

Sociology and Human Rights: New Engagements is the first collection to focus on the contribution sociological approaches can make to analysis of human rights. Taking forward the sociology of human rights which emerged from the 1990s, it presents innovative analyses of global human rights struggles by new and established authors. The collection includes a range of new work addressing issues such as genocide in relation to indigenous peoples, rights-based approaches in development work, trafficking of children, and children’s rights in relation to political struggles for the decriminalisation of same-sex sexual activity in India. It examines contexts ranging from Rwanda and South Korea to Northern Ireland and the city of Barcelona.

The collection as a whole is of interest to students and academics working in various disciplines such as politics, law and social policy, and to practitioners working on human rights for various governmental and non-governmental organisations, as well as to sociologists seeking to develop understanding of the sociology of human rights.

Sociology, Special Issue: the Sociology of Human Rights, Volume 46, Number 5, November 2012 (editors: Patricia Hynes, Michele Lamb, Damien Short, Matthew Waites)

Editorial

• Editorial Foreword, Patricia Hynes, Michele Lamb, Damien Short, Matthew Waites

Articles 

• Human Rights, Movements and Law: On Not Researching Legitimacy, Kate Nash
• Human Rights and the Transformations of War, Chetan Bhatt
• On the Sociology of Human Rights: Theorising the Language-structure of Rights, Darren O'byrne

• The Creation of New Rights by the Food Sovereignty Movement: The Challenge of Institutionalizing Subversion, Priscilla Claeys

• ‘Putting Cruelty First’: Interpreting War Crimes as Human Rights Atrocities in US Policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Liliana Riga, James Kennedy 

•  What One Sees and How One Files Seeing: Human Rights Reporting, Representation and Action, Claire Moon

• Constructing Rights and Wrongs in Humanitarian Action: Contributions from a Sociology of Praxis, Dorethea Hilhorst, Bram J Jensen

• Integrating Children’s Human Rights and Child Poverty Debates: Examples from Young Lives in Ethiopia and India, Virginia Morrow, Kirrily Pells 

• Human Rights and Ethical Reasoning: Capabilities, Conventions and Spheres of Public Action, Noel Whiteside, Alice Mah

• Religion, Sexual Orientation and the Equality Act 2010: Gay Bishops in the Church of England Negotiating Rights Against Discrimination, Rob Clucas

• Privacy as a Human Right: A Sociological Theory, Katayoun Baghai

•  Asia, Enforceable Benevolence and the Future of Human Rights, Anthony Woodiwiss

Book Review Essays 

•  Globalisation, Rights and the Non-Citizen, Nando Sigona

Book Reviews 

•   Book Review: Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Michael Freeman
•   Book Review: Christopher Powell, Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide, Martin Shaw
•  Book Review: Judith Blau and Mark Frezzo (eds), Sociology and Human Rights: A Bill of Rights for the Twenty-first Century, Lydia Morris
•  Book Review: Thomas Cushman (ed), Handbook of Human Rights, Phillipa Roberson-Riek

Background to the Special Issue

Following a Call for Papers that was circulated internationally, 83 submissions were received for the special issue on the Sociology of Human Rights.  This is the highest number of submissions ever received for a Special Issue of the journal, with many submissions being of exceptional quality. The existing convenors of the Study Group, with the Editorial and International Boards of the journal, then reviewed the submissions.  

Both the editorial team and the convenors found it particularly encouraging that leading authors who have previously written seminal papers on the sociology of rights submitted papers, as did several authors from around the world. 

Added to this, it was also noted that whilst there will not be space for all papers to be included in the Special Issue, it should be received as significant that the level of interest, commitment and, above all, quality of submissions were so high.