Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Whose Utopia?: Human Rights, Development, and the Third World

Whose Utopia?: Human Rights, Development, and the Third World Whose Utopia? Human Rights, Development, and the Third World antony anghie In this provocative and stimulating book, Samuel Moyn boldly states that his intention is to provide a “true history of human rights” in order to “confront their prospects today and in the fu- ture.” Moyn’s basic argument is that international human rights is a relatively new invention. Whereas other histories have insisted on seeing human rights as a manifestation and refi nement of a set of ideas that could be traced back to natural law and the French and American Revolutions, Moyn insists that it was not until 1977, when Jimmy Carter embraced human rights, making it an inte- gral part of US foreign policy, that international human rights law emerged in its distinctive modern form (LU, 155). In pursuit of this project, Moyn outlines a non- teleological reading of human rights that focuses on the “real conditions for historical developments” that led to the emergence of modern human rights law (LU, 12). He explores how human rights became the central language of moral authority for the expression of international idealism and the man- agement of world affairs. He seeks to distinguish between human rights and other “distinctive http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences University of Nebraska Press

Whose Utopia?: Human Rights, Development, and the Third World

Loading next page...
 
/lp/uni-neb/whose-utopia-human-rights-development-and-the-third-world-duA0b8eRyE

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
ISSN
1938-8020

Abstract

Whose Utopia? Human Rights, Development, and the Third World antony anghie In this provocative and stimulating book, Samuel Moyn boldly states that his intention is to provide a “true history of human rights” in order to “confront their prospects today and in the fu- ture.” Moyn’s basic argument is that international human rights is a relatively new invention. Whereas other histories have insisted on seeing human rights as a manifestation and refi nement of a set of ideas that could be traced back to natural law and the French and American Revolutions, Moyn insists that it was not until 1977, when Jimmy Carter embraced human rights, making it an inte- gral part of US foreign policy, that international human rights law emerged in its distinctive modern form (LU, 155). In pursuit of this project, Moyn outlines a non- teleological reading of human rights that focuses on the “real conditions for historical developments” that led to the emergence of modern human rights law (LU, 12). He explores how human rights became the central language of moral authority for the expression of international idealism and the man- agement of world affairs. He seeks to distinguish between human rights and other “distinctive

Journal

Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social SciencesUniversity of Nebraska Press

Published: Oct 6, 2013

There are no references for this article.