Editorial Foreword

Abstract

If sociology is to be revitalised to address power, inequalities and resistance in the contemporary global context, then the development of the sociology of human rights is an urgent necessity. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) proclaimed in 1948 that 'recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world' (United Nations, 1948). Since that Declaration was made, the governmental institutionalisation and cultural circulation of human rights have increased the utilisation of such rights in many contexts, such that the need for a dynamic sociology of human rights should be increasingly apparent. In this foreword to The Sociology of Human Rights we first introduce human rights and existing sociological research on human rights before outlining the Special Issue's key themes and the articles in turn.

State-Centrism in International Relations: Examining the Construction of Nonstate Collective Actors in Human Rights Scholarship

“…The key takeaway from this article, in which the state of knowledge of major conceptual developments in IR human rights research and the limits of non-state actors is decomposed and mapped, is to suggest that there is a pressing need to more closely engage with a sociological perspective on human rights (Hynes et al, 2012(Hynes et al, , 2016. Scholarly attention to the lived experiences of those claiming human rights and their real-world interactions (Dudai, 2019) is essential.…”

The Life and Times of Human Rights Organizations: Organizational Biographies and the Sociology of Human Rights

“…Lynn Welchman's study of Al-Haq, the oldest and most prominent Palestinian human rights organization, is a major contribution to the debate on the strengths and limitations of human rights activism. It resonates with the sociological perspective on human rights, a fairly recent subfield (Hynes et al, 2012) that offers a more complex and productive outlook than either a triumphalist account or dead-end criticism (Dudai, 2019). This perspective considers human rights as a "powerful language for making demands for justice and respect" (Silk, 2021) but is interested mostly in how and why people and organizations use this language, and what are the effects, implications, and drawbacks of relying on human rights in political struggles.…”

LGBTI organizations navigating imperial contexts: the Kaleidoscope Trust, the Commonwealth and the need for a decolonizing, intersectional politics

“…The sociology of human rights presents a way to develop this distinct theoretical framework (Woodiwiss, 2005;Waites, 2010;Hynes et al, 2012). In the present approach there is an assumption, following Corrêa et al (2008, p.151), of the 'indispensability' as well as 'insufficiency' of human rights.…”

“…While these authors note negative as well as positive effects of globalization, and some localizing rather than universalizing social tendencies, their normative advocacy of human rights remains somewhat analytically detached from such sociological observations, and hence there is a lack of sociological analysis of processes shaping discourses of human rights, and their reception (cf. Hynes et al , 2012). Hence extending human rights tends to be offered as a somewhat insufficient normative solution to complex social problems.…”