The Cultural Politics of Human Rights Comparing the US and UK

How does culture make a difference to the realisation of human rights in Western states? It is only through cultural politics that human rights may become more than abstract moral ideals, protecting human beings from state violence and advancing protection from starvation and the social destruction of poverty. Using an innovative methodology, this book maps the emergent 'intermestic' human rights field within the US and UK in order to investigate detailed case studies of the cultural politics of human rights. Kate Nash researches how the authority to define human rights is being created within states as a result of international human rights commitments. Through comparative case studies, she explores how cultural politics is affecting state transformation today.

Preface; 1. What does it matter what human rights mean?; 2. Analysing the intermestic human rights field; 3. Sovereignty, pride and political life; 4. Imagining a community without 'enemies of all mankind'; 5. Global solidarity: justice not charity; 6. Conclusion.

What do human rights mean? Why does it matter? Comparing detailed case studies within the US and UK, Kate Nash explores how cultural politics is crucial to the realization of human rights ideals and what impact the cultural politics of human rights is having on state transformation today.

Kate Nash is Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London and Faculty Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University.