Futures: The Globalization of Human Rights

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Professor Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
• Assessment: a 4000-word essay (100%)

In this module we will examine present developments and tendencies in the theories and practices of human rights from a prospective and planetary perspective. Addressing the various actual critiques on the conception, practice and enforcement of human rights, from the standpoint of 'non-Western' peoples and traditions, we will explore how recent conceptions of human rights and humanitarianism interact with recent transformational economic, social and political phenomena, usually grouped under the term 'globalisation'. Specifically, we will focus our attention on the ongoing transformations of international relations since the beginning of the twenty-first century, deal with alternative genealogies of human rights and track the potential impact of the rise of Asian and Latin peoples upon global regulation, political economic models and conceptions of human rights.

We will explore the argument that the current crisis has raised once again the question of access to common goods as a social right rather than as a matter of private debt. To do so, we will look at recent calls to emphasise 'southern voices' in the interests of a more just international order and a healthy cosmopolitan discipline, re-examine the history of human rights and consider matters of policy, both domestic and international.