Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique
In 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and with it a profusion of norms, processes, and institutions to define, promote, and protect human rights. Today virtually every cause seeks to cloak itself in the righteous language of rights. But even so, this universal reliance on the rights idiom has not succeeded in creating common ground and deep agreement as to the scope, content, and philosophical bases for human rights.\ Makau Mutua argues that the human...
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Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique provides a bracing and controversial analysis of the scope of human rights and lays the groundwork for a multicultural and more universal understanding of these rights.
PrefaceIntroduction11Human Rights as a Metaphor102Human Rights as an Ideology393Human Rights and the African Fingerprint714Human Rights, Religion, and Proselytism945The African State, Human Rights, and Religion1126The Limits of Rights Discourse126Conclusion154Notes159Index237Acknowledgments251
\ From the Publisher"Engaged, sometimes passionate. . . . Mutua's book is an inspiring one. . . . Viewing the human rights commitment as a self-justifying crusade, he points toward an innovative direction of research."—Human Rights Review\ "A welcome and timely contribution to a human rights discourse that is becoming increasingly monolithic. Mutua is right when he argues that the human rights movement is neither nonideological nor postideological. The mantra of universal morality tends to mask its deeply political character."—Ethics and International Affairs\ \ \
