Freedoms and Solidarities In Pursuit of Human Rights

Much has been written about growing global disparities in wealth and resources, how global capitalism has adversely affected human populations and the environment, and the dangers that a unipolar world order poses to peace and global pluralism. After summarizing the evidence for these arguments, Judith Blau and Alberto Moncada develop two main themes: first, that there is a growing transformative peoples' movement that challenges global capitalism and the imperial superpower; and second, that there is an extraordinary worldwide shift underway in human consciousness that accompanies practical global interdependencies and connectedness. The authors provide evidence for anemerging foundation of what philosopher Peter Singer describes as a "one-world ethic," and they show how this ethic is closely connected with the "human rights revolution." They compare the western, liberal conception of freedom with conceptions of freedom found in the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and Amartya Sen, and draw from Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition to clarify that freedom has both collective and individual dimensions. Working in the tradition of critical social science, the authors go beyond that to encourage readers to engage in emancipatory projects and utopian thinking. Book jacket.

Judith Blau is professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and president of the U.S. chapter of Sociologists without Borders Alberto Moncada is president of Sociologists without Borders/Sociologos sin Fronteras and vice president of UNESCO-Valencia