Rethinking Rights and Global Development (GEND90007)

This subject explores the theoretical and political issues surrounding ideas of rights and human rights, with special reference to the development process within the contemporary globalising order. It draws on recent critical feminist and other (re)theorising within a range of disciplines, including anthropology and sociology, political science, international relations, geography, legal studies, history and development studies. The subject examines definitions of rights and the re-framing of such ideas within critical theory, the background to the development of the international human rights regime, the moral basis of and possibility of global civil society and global citizenship, histories of rights discourses, especially the so-called four generations of rights, the state, citizenship and rights in the developing world, "rights", universalism, cosmopolitanism and "culture", with particular reference to "Asian Values", participation and rights-based development theory and practice, especially in relation to poverty alleviation, economic and land rights, indigenous people's rights, labour, unfree labour and rights, war, displacement, the new migrations and refugees' rights, women's rights, sexuality rights, children's rights, disability rights, and NGOs, social movements and rights.