Prof Chetan Bhatt STC S107 and Dr Olivia Rutazibwa STC S216

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Human Rights and Politics. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access). Students who have this course as a core course are guaranteed a place. Other than for students for whom the course is a core course, places are allocated based on a written statement, with priority given to taught postgraduate students in the Sociology Department. As demand is typically high, this may mean that not all students who apply will be able to get a place on this course.

During a period of unprecedented change in social, political, technological and cultural spheres, key human rights institutions and ideas have come under sustained criticism or attack. After the Second World War, an international consensus emerged in which the legitimacy of a framework of universal rights and related institutions was generally accepted. This consensus can no longer be assumed, whether within or outside formally liberal-democratic states.  Human rights, as a powerful exemplar of political liberalism, have been criticised for their institutionalised, procedural and legalistic nature. They have come under sustained attack from authoritarian and populist states and movements. This interdisciplinary course examines many of the sharp tensions and contradictions in the contemporary politics of human rights. This includes the relevance of humanist foundations today, tensions in the practice of human rights, the populist, far-right and left-wing attacks on human rights, the rise of new identity politics and its human rights consequences, and the impact of social media on human rights. The course aims to critically examine the problems of - as well as the problems facing - contemporary human rights. Key topics that are often considered settled within much human rights thinking and practice, including the politics of identity, the politics of care, sameness and difference, racism, culture and religion, gender and sex, humanitarianism and war, will be examined and debated critically, as will emerging areas linked to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movements. The course considers how we might rethink human rights and humanism for a new period of political change.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures, online materials and seminars totalling a minimum of 40 hours across MT and LT.

There will be a Reading Week in Week 6 of both Michaelmas Term and Lent Term.

Students should submit two formative essays, 1,000 words each, one in Week 6 of Michaelmas Term and one in Week 6 of Lent Term.

Baxi, Upendra (2012), The Future of Human Rights (Third Edition), Oxford India.

Moses, Dirk, Duranti, Marco and Burke, Roland eds. (2020), Decolonization, Self-Determination, and the Rise of Global Human Rights Politics, Cambridge University Press.

Fields, Karen and Fields, Barbara (2012), Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, Verso.

Donnelly, Jack (2013), Universal human rights in theory and practice, Cornell University Press

Combahee River Collective (1983), ‘The Combahee River Collective Statement’, in Barbara Smith (ed.), Home Girls, A Black Feminist Anthology, Kitchen Table / Women of Color Press. A

Deng, Francis, An-Na’im, Abdullahi, Ghai, Yash and Baxi, Upendra (2009), Human Rights, Southern Voices, Cambridge University Press.

Boersma, David (2011), Philosophy of human rights: theory and practice, Westview.

Gilmore, R. W. (2007). Golden gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California. University of California Press.

Mamdani, M. 2009. Saviours and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror. HSRC Press

Essay (50%, 3500 words) in the LT Week 1.
Essay (50%, 3500 words) in the ST Week 1.

An electronic copy of the assessed essay, to be uploaded to Moodle, no later than 4.00pm on the submission day.

Attendance at all classes and submission of all set coursework is required.