Human Rights and Social Movements

This book champions social movements as one of the most influential agents that shape our conceptions of human rights.Stammers argues that human rights cannot be properly understood outside of the context of social movement struggles. He explains how much of the literature on human rights has systematically obscured this link, consequently distorting our understandings of human rights.Stammers identifies the contours of a new framework through which human rights can be understood. He suggests that what he calls the 'paradox of institutionalisation' can only be addressed through a recognition of the importance of human rights arising out of grassroots activism, and through processes of institutional democratisation.

Neil Stammers is Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex. He is the author of Civil Liberties in Britain During the Second World War (1983), and co-editor of Global Activism, Global Media (Pluto Press, 2005).