Concrete Utopia

The Concrete Utopiaconceptualizes the human rights project of the last two and a half centuries as a backward-looking endeavor, which, in order to move forward, must return to the utopian roots of itsfoundationaldocuments.Human rightsadvance by judging the ills ofthe present world from a standpointin the future wheretheymightno longer exista fundamentally utopian gesture.This peculiar character of human rights makes them continually ripe for reinvention and for responding to changing circumstances in the world.With a particular focus on developments from the 1960s until the present, this bookaddresses the history of human rights movements andhow human rights have beenreconceived and upheld in various historical moments.Finally,itattempts to sketchouthowthey maybere-envisioned for the strugglesofthe 21st century.At a timewhenthe human rights project has endured criticismfor being toothless orevenforproviding a pretext for militaryinvasions, Kaleck argues that the current global crises, from inequality, to ecological collapse, to theage of pandemics,can becounteredbyreinventinghuman rightsworkthrough feminist, decolonial and ecologicalinterventions.