Teaching and Learning Guide for: Sociology and Human Rights in the Post Development Era

This guide accompanies the following article: Mark Frezzo, ‘Sociology and Human Rights in the Post Development Era’, Sociology Compass 5/3 (2011): 203–214, 10.1111/j.1751‐9020.2011.00361.x. Author’s introduction The founding of the Thematic Group on Human Rights and Global Justice in the International Sociological Association in 2006 and the Section on the Sociology of Human Rights in the American Sociological Association in 2008 testify to the emergence of the sociology of human rights as a distinct field of research and teaching. In a nutshell, the field involves the analysis of (a) the social conditions under which human rights treaties and laws are drafted, debated, implemented, and enforced, and (b) the manner in which human rights treaties and laws constrain and/or enable nation‐states, societies, communities, and individuals. This entails explaining the social impact of a series of United Nations documents: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which created a framework for the implementation of human rights across the world; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), which outlined first‐generation rights to liberty and security of the person; and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966), which outlined second‐generation rights to equality and third‐generation rights to solidarity. In the postwar period, these documents became important reference points not only for the UN and its member nations, but also for national liberation movements in the global South. More recently, these documents have guided the undertakings of non‐governmental organizations (including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) and social movement organizations in responding to poverty, inequality, exclusion, and environmental degradation. In sum, the sociology of human rights draws on such fields as the sociology of law, development sociology, political economy, environmental sociology, organizational sociology, and social movement research in explaining ‘rights effects’. Author recommends While Micheline Ishay’s The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008) offers the authoritative account of the origins and evolution of human rights doctrine, Judith Blau and Alberto Moncada’s Human Rights: A Primer (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2009) serves as an excellent introduction to cutting‐edge thinking on economic, social, c