Development and Rights: Negotiating Justice in Changing Societies

The issue of rights is increasingly gaining interest among scholars of developing societies. This probably reflects the growing prominence of rights on political agendas in general. A great deal of research is centred around classical human rights, but other types of rights have also come into focus in the context of development, some under the candidacy of human rights. We talk about cultural rights, social rights and property rights - for example, rights to natural resources or to intellectual property. This collection, on the one hand, explores a major undercurrent of the debate on rights, namely, the question of universalism and cultural relativism. On the other, it explores how rights are claimed and contested, vindicated and politicised and, in different ways, transform social practice