Human Welfare, Rights, and Social Activism

by Pulkingham, Jane

• ISBN13: 9780802096999
• ISBN10: 0802096999
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

J.S. Woodsworth, a founding member and leader of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (forerunner of the New Democratic Party) and member of Parliament, was a social policy pioneer who promoted human welfare and rights over interests of property or finance. The essays in Human Welfare, Rights, and Social Activismexplore the contemporary significance of Woodsworth's human rights framework by examining current social welfare objectives. Canadians continue to grapple with the enduring question of how to accommodate and reconcile social diversity and difference while articulating a common interest and advancing human rights, both domestically and internationally. These interdisciplinary essays address such issues as globalization, labour rights and law, the gendered and racialized dimensions of transnational labour, the relationship between human rights, social programs, and social rights, and the emergent cultural politics of difference. Taken as a whole, these essays pursue a careful consideration of the historical and contemporary exclusions to polity that occur around gender, ethnicity, class, and race.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Contributors	p. ix
A Common Interest? Reflections on the Social Legacy of J.S. Woodsworth and the Contemporary Politics of Social Change in Canada	p. 3
The Historical Woodsworth and Contemporary Politics	p. 42
Labour Rights in an Interregnum: The Ambiguous Legacy of J.S. Woodsworth	p. 65
The Changing Struggle for Rights: A Critical Look at the Origins and Fate of Human Rights	p. 91
Social Rights Are Human Rights: Furthering the Democratic Project	p. 114
Human Rights and Poverty: A Twenty-First Century Tribute to J.S. Woodsworth and Call for Human Rights	p. 136
Human Needs above Property Rights? Rethinking the Woodsworth Legacy in an Era of Economic Globalization	p. 161
Zones of Abandonment: The Cultural Politics of Public Health in Vancouver's Inner City	p. 180
'Re-construction' from the Viewpoint of Precarious Labour: The Practice of Solidarity	p. 199
J.S. Woodsworth and the Discourse of White Civility	p. 221
Embodied Memory: Universal Citizenship and Indigenous Cree Identity	p. 244
Canadians of Tomorrow: J.S. Woodsworth and the New Ethnicities	p. 266
Index	p. 287
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