Rights, Action, Change: Organize for What?
ORGANIZE!: BUILDING FROM THE LOCAL FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE, p. 71, Aziz Choudry, Jill Hanley and Eric Shragge, eds., PM Press, May 2012
9 Pages Posted: 6 Mar 2013
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Rights, Action, Change: Organize for What?
Rights, Action, Change: Organize for What?
Date Written: 2012
Abstract
Going by the demands made by social movements it would seem that in the nineteenth century people demanded political fixes to problems, in the twentieth century they demanded economic fixes and the twenty-first century is the century for legal fixes. No matter what the problem, social justice movements demand a corresponding right as the solution. The demand for expansion of rights mirrors the core values of neo-liberalism and public choice theory. This essay examines the problems that activists face when they invoke rights to organise. The essay argues that there is a temporal tension in the use of rights for social change in that action mediates between past and future and therefore becomes the site where questions of ethics, higher principles, ideas, social relations and human purpose present themselves to social justice activists.
Keywords: activism, rights, ethics, temporality
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