'Bringing Coals to Newcastle?' Human Rights, Civil Rights and Social Movements in New York City (with Diana H. Yoon)

Abstract

In this article we examine the encounter between global human rights ideas and domestic discourses of civil rights and social justice, focusing on processes of translation and adaptation of women’s human rights in two ethnographic sites in New York City. The first site is a citywide coalition working for the adoption of a New York City human rights ordinance. The second site is an advocacy organization working on domestic violence issues. We find that the local adoption of human rights in New York City – the ‘domestication’ of human rights – takes place in two central sites: law and social movement. We further find that the process of translation takes place unevenly in the two sites, and it is driven primarily by the actors, mechanisms and technologies in the social movement arena. Overall, we witness the emergence of a domestic human rights movement as a new counter-hegemonic space, characterized by multiplicity in meanings, ideological heterogeneity and ambivalence from those engaged in its construction.

Keywords: human rights, social movements, law, civil rights, women's rights, New York City