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/lp/de-gruyter/the-grammar-of-rights-and-the-grammar-of-needs-rUJxoCte9L
- Publisher
- de Gruyter
- Copyright
- © 2019 Institute for Research in Social Communication, Slovak Academy of Sciences
- ISSN
- 1337-401X
- eISSN
- 1337-401X
- DOI
- 10.1515/humaff-2019-0027
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
AbstractThe paper is structured into four parts. Firstly I discuss the connection between the concept of injustice and the idea of human or individual rights. The claim is quite trivial: the language of rights has been and is still used as a strategy to demand correctives against injustice. Since this strategy has negative effects, of which concrete examples are given, I suggest a different grammar be adopted, the grammar of needs, which is what societies adopt in their justificatory discourses anyway. This leads into a consideration of how social criticism could start precisely from such discourses and why, under specific circumstances, the grammar of needs could represent a better strategy for this criticism than the language of rights does.
Journal
Human Affairs – de Gruyter
Published: Jul 1, 2019
Keywords: individual rights; human rights; human needs; society; justificatory discourses