In Defense of Social and Economic Human Rights: An Intellectual History, 1940 to the Present

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In Defense of Social and Economic Human Rights: An Intellectual History, 1940 to the Present

By Christian Olaf Christiansen
Cambridge University Press November 2025

Specifications

ISBN-13
9781009551410
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publication
November 2025
Format
Hardback
Jurisdiction
U.K. ? Countri(es) for reference only

Details

Breaking new ground in the intellectual history of economic and social human rights, Christian Olaf Christiansen traces their justification from the outset of World War II until the present day. Featuring a series of fascinating thinkers, from political scientists to Popes, this is the first book to comprehensively map the key arguments made in defense of human rights and how they connect to ideas of social and redistributive justice. Christiansen traces this intellectual history from a first phase devoted to internationalizing these rights, a second phase of their unprecedented legitimacy deployed to criticize global inequality, to a third phase of a continued quest to secure their legitimacy once and for all. Engaging with the newest scholarship and building a bridge to political philosophy as well as global inequality studies, it facilitates a much-needed novel and nuanced history of rights-rights we should still consider defending today.

Table of Contents

Introduction: human rights and distributive justice

Part I. Internationalizing Human Rights
1. War aims: Ralph Bunche, H. G. Wells and 'world social democracy'
2. A 'Just share in social progress:' revisiting Hersch Lauterpacht
3. Bridging the cold war divide: Ralph Bunche, Gunnar Myrdal and Moses Moskowitz advocating rights in the 1950s

Part II. Criticizing Global Inequalities Through Human Rights
4. Deploying human rights against global inequalities in the 1960s: catholics and pan Africanists
5. The 'Widening gap' as a threat to human rights: Manouchehr Ganji

Part III. Legitimizing Human Rights
6. The derailment of a dream: Amartya Sen and the Sisyphean task of defending rights

Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Selected bibliography
Index
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