The Role of Human Rights Education in Social Movements: Case Studies in South Africa and the United States

2016 ◽  
pp. 111-125
Author(s):  
Sandra Sirota
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Rights Education

scholarly journals Introduction: Radical Teaching About Human Rights Part II

2016 ◽  
Vol 104 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Michael Bennett ◽  
Susan O'Malley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Rights Education ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
Rights Discourse

In our introduction to the first of these two issues of Radical Teacher devoted to “Radical Teaching About Human Rights,” we cautioned that all forms of Human Rights Education (HRE) are not radical.  The problem, we pointed out, with rights discourse is that it can mask the politics of how rights are defined, whose rights are recognized, and how they are enforced.  This problem becomes evident when HRE is bound up with a neoliberal, or worse than neoliberal, perspective that points fingers at others and rallies troops for supposedly humanitarian interventions while eliding the role of the United States as an imperializing settler colonial state.  Fortunately, we have once again received several essays that seem to us to be aware of this danger and provide admirable examples of radical teaching about human rights.

Constructive Engagement: Reactionary Pragmatism at its Best

1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
Deborah Toler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
The United States ◽  
Willingness To Accept ◽  
Economic Assistance ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Constructive Engagement

No one is happy with the Reagan Administration’s southern Africa foreign policy strategy known as constructive engagement. Liberals object to the tilt towards South Africa, to the linkage of Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola to the Namibian negotiations; to the resulting moribund state of those negotiations; and to the deemphasis of human rights and development issues in favor of increased emphasis on military and security issues. Conservatives object to economic assistance packages for African socialist and self-styled states; to the declining U.S. support of Jonas Savimbi’s ostensibly pro-Western UNITA forces in Angola; to Administration efforts to improve relations between the United States and the Marxist states of Angola and Mozambique; and to the Administration’s apparent willingness to accept a SWAPO (i.e., communist guerrilla) outcome in Namibia.

Religion and Progressive Activism—Introducing and Mapping the Field

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Nicholas Fuist ◽  
Ruth Braunstein ◽  
Rhys H. Williams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Theories Of Religion ◽  
Religious Activism ◽  
Progressive Religion

This chapter introduces readers to the often-overlooked field of progressive religious activism in the United States, and maps its contours. First, it traces the history and continued relevance of progressive religious activism in American political life. Second, it argues that progressive religion should not be conceptualized as a category of social actors, but rather as a field of action defined by participants’ commitment to progressive action, progressive values, progressive identities, and/or progressive theology, as well as through participants’ efforts to distinguish themselves from the activities of religious conservatives and/or secular progressives. Finally, it assesses the varied ways that attention to progressive religion challenges common political binaries (like Right/Left and progress/tradition), and prompts a reconsideration of long accepted theories of religion and social movements as well as the role of faith in democratic politics and civic life.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Taves
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Alcoholics Anonymous ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spiritual Path ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book analyzes the role of revelatory claims in three groups that emerged in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Mormonism, Alcoholics Anonymous, and the network of students associated with A Course in Miracles. These three case studies are not only richly documented but also present intriguing comparative possibilities. Each had a key figure whose unusual experiences and/or abilities led to the emergence of a new spiritual path and to the production of scripture-like texts that were not attributed directly to them. However, the three groups do not make the same claims for their scripture-like texts, and their respective collaborations generated very different social formations.

Derogation of Human Rights in Emergency Situations

1979 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 92-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. C. Green
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
The United States ◽  
Emergency Situations ◽  
The Soviet Union

Since Mr. Carter became President of the United States, there bas been a revival in the use of human rights as a weapon in international politics. More and more western countries have stated that they are contemplating measuring the aid they give to members of the developing world in proportion to the extent to which the latter conform to basic humanitarian standards or improve their own record in relation to observance of human rights. In addition, there have been calls for the cancellation of visits by politicians, academics, and artistic performers; for non-participation in international athletic contests — a western adaptation of the African ban of the Montreal Olympic Games because of New Zealand’s participation while the latter’s athletes were not barred from competing in South Africa; for non-participation in technical and scientific conferences; and for the breaking of town-twinning arrangements. This attitude has been fed somewhat by reason of the activities of “Helsinki watchers,” who contend that this or that country, and particularly the Soviet Union, is not living up to its human rights obligations as embodied in the Helsinki Agreement.

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