The Community of Rights provides a detailed explication of the fundamental rights of agency as derived from a single rationally justified principle of morality and develops the contents of economic and social rights as a basic part of human rights. A critical alternative to both "liberal" and "communitarian" views, this authoritative work will command the attention of anyone engaged in the debate over social and economic justice.
One of the leading thinkers to emerge in the postwar conservative intellectual revival was the sociologist Robert Nisbet. His book The Quest for Community, published in 1953, stands as one of the most persuasive accounts of the dilemmas confronting modern society. Nearly a half century before Robert Putnam documented the atomization of society in Bowling Alone, Nisbet argued that the rise of the powerful modern state had eroded the sources of community—the family, the neighborhood, the church, the guild. Alienation and loneliness inevitably resulted. But as the traditional ties that bind fell away, the human impulse toward community led people to turn even more to the government itself, allowing statism—even totalitarianism—to flourish. This edition of Nisbet’s magnum opus features a brilliant introduction by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and three critical essays. Published at a time when our communal life has only grown weaker and when many Americans display cultish enthusiasm for a charismatic president, this new edition of The Quest for Community shows that Nisbet’s insights are as relevant today as ever.
A noted theologian explains how the radical idea of Christian love animated the African American civil rights movement and how it can power today's social justice struggles Speaking to his supporters at the end of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared that their common goal was not simply the end of segregation as an institution. Rather, "the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community." King's words reflect the strong religious convictions that motivated the African American civil rights movement. As King and his allies saw it, "Jesus had founded the most revolutionary movement in human history: a movement built on the unconditional love of God for the world and the mandate to live in that love." Through a commitment to this idea of love and to the practice of nonviolence, civil rights leaders sought to transform the social and political realities of twentieth-century America. In The Beloved Community, theologian and award-winning author Charles Marsh traces the history of the spiritual vision that animated the civil rights movement and shows how it remains a vital source of moral energy today. The Beloved Community lays out an exuberant new vision for progressive Christianity and reclaims the centrality of faith in the quest for social justice and authentic community.
In Human Rights from Below, Jim Ife shows how human rights and community development are problematic terms but powerful ideals, and that each is essential for understanding and practising the other. Ife contests that practitioners - advocates, activists, workers and volunteers - can better empower and protect communities when human rights are treated as more than just a specialist branch of law or international relations, and that human rights can be better realised when community development principles are applied. The book offers a long overdue assessment of how human rights and community development are invariably interconnected. It highlights how critical it is to understand the two as a basis for thinking about and taking action to address the serious challenges facing the world in the twenty-first century. Written both for students and for community development and human rights workers, Human Rights from Below brings together the important fields of human rights and community development, to enrich our thinking of both.
Human rights advocates contend that the LGBT community has yet to achieve full equality and acceptance--in the United States and elsewhere. In recent years in the United States, state legislators have introduced more than 250 bills that limit LGBT rights--and twenty of these have become law. In other parts of the world, it remains shameful to identify as LGBT; in some countries, it is even punishable by death. These and other human rights concerns are examined.
A transformative model for community social work rooted in basic social and economic rights is the basis of this timely Brief. With specific chapters spotlighting the rights to health care, nutritious food, and adequate and affordable housing, the book describes in depth the role of community practice in securing rights for underserved and vulnerable groups and models key aspects of rights-based work such as empowerment, participation, and collaboration. Case examples relate local struggles to larger regional and statewide campaigns, illustrating ways the book's framework can inform policymakers and improve social structures in the larger community. This rights-based perspective contrasts sharply with the deficits-based approach commonly employed in community social work, and has the potential to inspire new strategies for addressing systemic social inequality. Features of Human Rights-Based Community Practice in the United States: A conceptual basis for a rights-based approach to community practice. Detailed analysis of legal and social barriers to health care, housing, and food. Examples of effective and emerging rights-based community interventions. Methods for assessing the state of human rights at the community level. Documents, discussion questions, resource lists, and other valuable tools.
"This volume presents the concept of a Human Community with a Shared Future as a new path towards the realization of human rights. This idea tries to encourage all countries and economies to focus on a shared future and common destiny for all humankind as well as to work together to build a Human Community with a Shared Future through interdependence and joint development. The present volume consists of a collection of texts arising from conferences organized by the China Society for Human Rights Studies. The texts centre on the concept of a Human Community with a Shared Future, reflecting the current reality and extent of human rights thinking with respect to both law and policy in establishment circles in China, and helping to demonstrate the likely direction of official policy in the near future"--
