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Module details for 2022/23.

30 credits

FHEQ Level 7 (Masters)

Module Outline

As the Twentieth Century neared its end, holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Eli Wiesel proclaimed that human rights were fast becoming the world’s secular religion. Taking up this provocation, this core graduate module systematically and critically interrogates the rise to prominence of 'human rights'. It probes the origins, diverse theorisations and global political contentions of human rights, whilst at the same time interrogating the assumed ascendance of human rights in international politics. In the current context where human rights appear embattled, module participants will take a critical approach to human rights as a colonial, political and historical 'artefact'.

The module begins with an examination of the debate over the historical origins of rights, examining dominant -- and, as we shall see, Eurocentric -- narratives that locate the emergence of rights alongside the European Enlightenment and western liberalism. We will not only question the silences of these rather triumphalist 'origin' stories by revisiting the history of slavery, colonialism and settler-colonialism, as well as decolonisation struggles. We will also interrogate claims about the coloniality of human rights, examining particularly who the subject of rights has been historically and how this is linked to forms of exclusionary understandings of who the ‘human’ of human rights is in gendered and racialised terms in the prevalent assumptions of free and autonomous rights holders. We will also spend time surveying critically certain prominent ways of defining and understanding human rights,
The module, moreover, allows participants to explore key international practices of human rights and the debates that emerge around these, for example,
• the contention that rights claims for women's and 'gay' rights are entangled with hetero- and homo-normativity;
• how practices of human rights advocacy are mired in significant power relations and are animated by the 'problem of speaking for (and over) 'weaker', helpless others;
• the ways in which human rights challenge and modify state sovereignty, looking at the evolution of 'sovereignty as responsibility' alongside the wider concern over armed intervention as a remnant of colonialism within postcolonial global politics;
• the debate on states of emergency and counter-terrorism as necessitating the suspension of rights and liberties, as well as concrete racial and political implications of counter-terrorism;
• the potential and limits of rights-based approaches to resist the worst excesses of denigration of human rights by business in the neoliberal world economy, etc.

Module learning outcomes

Develop systematic and critical understanding of this issue area

To analyse and evaluate theories of rights relevant to international relations

To conduct independent research on particular aspect of human rights in international relations

To summarise and evaluate key debates in this issue area

To develop the ability to use methodologies and knowledge from related disciplines such as international relations, anthropology and law

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Timing

Submission deadlines may vary for different types of assignment/groups of students.

Weighting

Coursework components (if listed) total 100% of the overall coursework weighting value.

How to read the week pattern

The numbers indicate the weeks of the term and how many events take place each week.

Prof Anne-Meike Fechter

Assess convenor
/profiles/158737

Prof Louiza Odysseos

Convenor, Assess convenor
/profiles/200596