The Human Rights Revolution An International History

by Iriye, Akira; Goedde, Petra; Hitchcock, William I.

• ISBN13: 9780195333138
• ISBN10: 0195333136
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-01-27
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The third volume for the OUP/National History Center series, Reinterpreting History, this book offers a critical look at the political movement encompassed by human rights, a term rarely used before the 1940s. An agenda for human rights, with particular attention to international justice in the wake of crimes against humanity, women's rights, indigenous rights, the right to health care, all developed in the second half of the 20th century. Drawing on the work of legal scholars, political scientists, journalists, activists, and historians, human rights as a field of research has been characterized by analysis of natural rights, study of key documents like the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, discussion of activism and NGOs, and analysis of rhetoric. This volume will take a case study approach that will shed light on different perspectives, methodologies, and conceptualizations for the study of human rights history. The contributors to this volume look at the wave of human rights legislation emerging out of World War II, including the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the Nuremberg trial, and the Geneva Conventions, and the flowering of human rights activity in the 1970s and beyond, including anti-torture campaigns and Amnesty International, Indonesia and East Timor, international scientists and human rights, and female genital mutilation. The book concludes with a look at the UN Declaration at its 60th anniversary. Together the group of renowned senior and junior scholars create a volume that can introduce students from a range of disciplines to this topic, as well as offer new perspectives for scholars.

Author Biography

Akira Iriye is Charles Warren Research Professor of American History, Emeritus at Harvard University and the author of Cultural Internationalism and World Order. Petra Goedde is Associate Professor of History at Temple University and the author of GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, 1945-1949. William I. Hitchcock is Professor of History at the University of Virginia and the author of The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Contributors	p. xi
Introduction: Human Rights as History	p. 3
The Human Rights Revolution
The Recent History of Human Rights	p. 27
The Holocaust and the "Human Rights Revolution": A Reassessment	p. 53
"Constitutionalizing" Human Rights: The Rise and Rise of the Nuremberg Principles	p. 73
Human Rights and the Laws of War: The Geneva Conventions of 1949	p. 93
Grams, Calories, and Food: Languages of Victimization, Entitlement, and Human Rights in Occupied Germany, 1945-1949	p. 113
Are Women "Human"? The UN and the Struggle to Recognize Women's Rights as Human Rights	p. 133
The Globalization of Human Rights History
Imperialism, Self-Determination, and the Rise of Human Rights	p. 159
"The First Right": The Carter Administration, Indonesia, and the Transnational Human Rights Politics of the 1970s	p. 179
Anti-Torture Politics: Amnesty International, the Greek Junta, and the Origins of the Human Rights "Boom" in the United States	p. 201
From the Center-Right: Freedom House and Human Rights in the 1970s and 1980s	p. 223
"For Our Soviet Colleagues": Scientific Internationalism, Human Rights, and the Cold War	p. 245
Principles Ovemhelming Tanks: Human Rights and the End of the Cold War	p. 265
The Right to Bodily Integrity: Women's Rights as Human Rights and the International Movement to End Female Genital Mutilation, 1970s-1990s	p. 285
Is History a Human Right? Japan and Korea's Troubles with the Past	p. 311
Approaching the Universal Declaration of Human Rights	p. 327
Index	p. 345
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