511 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Paper Session. Human Rights or Civil Rights? How Changing the Conversation Matters for Changing the World

Session Submission Type: Paper Session 100min

Description

This open panel invites papers that explore the relationship between human rights and civil rights in how social justice claims are made in different places and at different historical periods. For example, some scholars emphasize how discourses vary across types of societies in that those who research the world of development often study human rights while those who examine advanced industrial countries are more likely to focus on civil rights, civil liberties, and social welfare. American legal scholars, on the other hand, highlight variation across time, suggesting that human rights claims formed the basis of advocacy around race and gender equality in the 19th and early 20th centuries but such claims were supplanted by civil rights discourse as the cold war undercut the efficacy of human rights claims for domestic struggles in the U.S. Still other scholars stress variation by social actors, contending that human rights has traditionally been an elite discourse, only recently taken up by non-elites. This panel takes the conference theme as a point of departure, asking how changing the conversation can matter for changing the world. We seeks papers that explore the use of civil rights and human rights claims as well as the relationship between the two discourses in a wide variety of places and times.

Sub Unit

• Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology / Human Rights or Civil Rights? How Changing the Conversation Matters for Changing the World

Session Organizer

• Kim Voss, University of California

Presider

• Fabiana Silva, University of California Berkeley

Individual Presentations

• Between Rights Discourse and Practice - Poulami Roychowdhury, McGill University

• Explaining Nonviolent Failure? International Politics and Bahrain’s Unarmed Revolution - Daniel P. Ritter, Stockholm University

• From International Legal Instruments to Local Outcomes: Closing the Gap on Universal Primary Education - Anita L Rocha, Unviersity of Washington

• The United States and Human Rights: The Historical Roots of a Contemporary Absence - Christopher Nigel Roberts, University of Minnesota

Discussant

• Kim Voss, University of California