Unit name | The Politics of Human Rights |
---|---|
Unit code | POLI20011 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | I/5 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Dr. Ashley Dodsworth |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies |
Faculty | Faculty of Social Sciences and Law |
The Politics of Human Rights introduces students to the debates over human rights. Exploring the contemporary debates over rights to migration and torture, the theoretical underpinnings of the concept of human rights, debates over who can possess such rights and the ethical considerations over measurement, this unit will enable students to both understand and participate in the dominant moral language of contemporary politics and the contested attempts to apply it.
The aims of this unit are:
• to examine the theoretical and practical underpinnings of human rights
• explore what is meant by ‘human’, how such rights have developed, the extent of their reach and their measurement.
• enable students to understand the contemporary political debate surrounding five rights; the rights of migrants, the right to life, the right to freedom from torture, gender rights and environmental rights
By the end of the module students will be able to:
Two hours of lectures and a one hour seminar per week
James Nickel, Making Sense of Human Rights, (Blackwell: New York, 2007)
Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights, (New York: Norton, 2007)
Todd Landman and Edzia Carvalho, Measuring Human Rights, (New York: Routledge, 2010)
Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, Third Edition, (USA: Cornell University Press, 2013)
Andrew Clapham, Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction, Second Edition, (Oxford: OUP, 2015)
Michael Goodhart (ed), Human Rights: Polices and Practice, Third Edition (New York: OUP, 2016)