C9187 - POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Learning outcomes

In this course you will learn about what human rights and social justice are, how human rights are constructed, framed, and used in human rights struggles by social actors such as NGOs and grassroots activist organisations. Human rights will be approached by means of sociological, political, and cultural lenses and instruments. Human rights’ struggles in relation to citizenship, sexual and reproductive rights, euthanasia, migration, security and counter-terrorism, minority rights, religion, the environment, animal rights, populism, and conservative fundamentalism will be discussed. At the end of the course, the student will have acquired an interdisciplinary capacity for critical analysis of human rights, and an understanding of how human rights work in practice.

Course contents

We are living in an age of rights. In Europe, human rights seem to constitute a 'ius commune'. But human rights are also increasingly being contested and denied. The course explores the emergence of modern human rights, the complex justification, usage, and implementation  of rights, and the increased contestation of specific rights, such as the right to abortion, or to right to free speech. Also recent phenomena, such as the impact of Artificial Intelligence on human rights will be explored. The course follows an interdisciplinary, politico-sociological and socio-legal, perspective.

The course explores and explains how European society has become 'formatted' by human rights, and investigates the complex European situation of overlapping rights regimes (EU, Council of Europe) and their role and function in European societies. In changing societies, it seems that human rights have become a far more prominent feature of the social and political landscape than in the past. Human rights seem to bypass domestic democratic orders by providing an external, European benchmark. Human rights seem to  a constitute common bedrock underlying EU law and norms based on conventions of rights and solidified through the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights.

A distinct focus will be on how rights are (increasingly) being used by social movements to further particular claims. A wealth of examples will used regarding rights application as well as rights claims by (transnational) social movements (regarding inter alia the resistance to (semi-)authoritarian regimes,  migrants rights, sexual and reproductive rights, religious identity, rights in relation to anti-discrimination and anti-racism).

Key questions asked are: to what extent are human rights (still) capable of promoting justice, equality, participation, inclusion and recognition? Are human rights accessible to all, or are there important forms of exclusion? How are rights constructed and interpreted, to which extent is the context important, and what different interpretations and framings do we encounter in socio-political practice? Which prominent contestations of human rights do we see today? And how can sociology provide a unique persepective on human rights?

Teaching methods

Lectures

Class debates and deliberations

Office hours

See the website of Paulus Albertus Blokker