The last utopia : human rights in history / Samuel Moyn.

Main entry:

Moyn, Samuel.

Title & Author:

The last utopia : human rights in history / Samuel Moyn.

Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.

Description:

337 pages ; 22 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Humanity before human rights -- Death from birth -- Why anticolonialism wasn't a human rights movement -- The purity of this struggle -- International law and human rights -- The burden of morality -- "Human rights" in Anglo-American news -- Human rights in the 1940s -- Human rights between 1968-1978.

Summary:

Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today's idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. Here, historian Samuel Moyn elevates that transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal's troubled present and uncertain future. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.--From publisher description.

Resources:
Book review (H-Net)
E-book
Full-text

ISBN:

9780674048720 (alk. paper)
0674048725 (alk. paper)
9780674064348
0674064348

Subject:

Human rights History.
Droits de l'homme (Droit international) Histoire.
Politics and Government.
Human rights
Menschenrecht
Mänskliga rättigheter historia.
HUMAN RIGHTS.
JUSTICE.
HISTORY.

Form/genre:

Nonfiction.
History

Holdings:

Location: Library main 297219
Call No.: BIB 243539
Status: Available

Actions:

Add to folder

Request these items

Email this list to yourself (or someone else)

Your folder is empty.

Please complete this form to make a request for consultation. A copy of this list will also be forwarded to you.

Your contact information

First name:

Last name:

Email:

Phone number:

Notes (optional):

We will contact you to set up an appointment. Please keep in mind that your consultation date will be based on the type of material you wish to study. To prepare your visit, we'll need:

— At least 2 weeks for primary sources (prints and drawings, photographs, archival documents, etc.)
— At least 48 hours for secondary sources (books, periodicals, vertical files, etc.)

Back to list

Submit