Human Rights and the Sociology of the Imagination
This one-day conference on “Re-imagining Human Rights” invites scholars and practitioners to discuss the challenge of power and inequalities embedded in current institutional arrangements and practices of human rights.
The production of human rights is not immune to the effects of inequalities across the global North and South. Conference panels will highlight projects or research within local, regional, and transnational contexts that offer insight for democratizing the production of human rights. Do understandings of justice in the Global South meaningfully shape those institutionalized as human rights, or do human rights in the name of “global justice” flow only from the North to the South? Does the social organization upon which transnational solidarity links actors across communities of the Global North and South reflect the human rights values that they pursue? What is the quality of the social relationships upon which such solidarities are formed? To what extent is the creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship of NGOs “measured” and constrained by the performative expectations of philanthropic donors and impact investment brokerages that provide the resources for their human rights work? How do our understandings of human agency and personhood shape the (re)production and (trans)formation of human rights?
We are particularly interested in learning from organizations and practices founded in the global South or affiliated transnational partnerships. In the shadow of the United Nations, the conference also will devote special attention to grassroots human rights projects and collaborative alliances operating in New York City. Participants will engage in a transnational dialogue and reflexive engagement across scholarly and activist communities (though not exclusive categories). Thus, the role of a common human rights imagination, or multiple co-existing human rights imaginations, may be a starting point for a new dialogue on academic and other approaches.
To download a PDF version of the Preliminary Program, click here.