Beyond Illiberalism

Arguing that there has never been a consensus on which rights all people are entitled, Beyond Illiberalism: Rights, Rhetoric, and Reality in a Pluralistic World traces how the concept of human rights is tied to a global project rooted in colonialism and grounded in nineteenth-century liberalism and post-World War II social democratic principles.This book contends that human rights are conceived, imagined, and promoted by dominant states, organizations, and activists within a specific liberal framework, and that, after more than 200 years, the dream of a universal history rooted in the worldview of G.W.F. Hegel has been displaced by the stuff of practical reality.Robert J. Shepherd shifts our attention to rights as a matter of human practice and emphasizes the importance of the actualization of rights within local contexts, demonstrating the spuriousness of categorizing governments as "e;liberal"e; or "e;illiberal"e; based on preconceived notions of what counts as legitimate rights. This book will appeal to scholars of anthropology, sociology, socio-legal studies, and cultural studies.