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Since when, how, and why have sociologists discussed human rights in their work? In which forms of theoretical and empirical inquiry have such investigations been conducted, and what are some of their consequences for the praxis of sociology as well as for our understanding of human rights? We focus on the manner in which sociologists have conceptualized human rights and approached the topic from a number of analytical perspectives. In general, human rights have only recently begun to move sociologists in any noteworthy degree. This paper traces the difficult birth of a sociology of human rights relative to the place of the notion of rights in the sociology of law. This paper also ponders on the enthusiastic turn towards human rights in more recent times and criticizes some the reasons for this generous embrace of human rights. This critique is intended to enable rather than impede a truly sociological sociology of (human) rights.

Ils ont été appelés en Algérie au moment des « événements », en 1960. Deux ans plus tard, Bernard, Rabut, Février et d’autres sont rentrés en France. Ils se sont tus, ils ont vécu leurs vies. Mais parfois, il suffit de presque rien, d’une journée d’anniversaire en hiver, d’un cadeau qui tient dans la poche, pour que, quarante ans après, le passé fasse irruption dans la vie de ceux qui ont cru pouvoir le nier.

"Where is your wound?" asks Jean Genet in the lines Laurent Mauvignier uses as an epigraph to The Wound. By the time we have finished this four-part novel, we realize that for many the wound lies four decades back in "the Events" that people have tried to not talk about ever since: the Algerian War.
Chronicling the lives of two cousins--Bernard and Rabut--both in the present and at the time of the Algerian War of Independence in the 1960s, we get a full picture of the lasting effects this event had on the men who were involved. Through the fragments of their stories we see the whole history of the war: its atrocities, its horrors, and its hatreds. Mauvignier shows readers how the Algerian War, always present yet always repressed, has sickened the emotional and moral life of everyone it touched--and France itself, perhaps. The epigraph, like the novel, suggests that wounded men may even become the wound itself.

Though the issue of female genital cutting, or "circumcision," has become a nexus for debates on cultural relativism, human rights, patriarchal oppression, racism, and Western imperialism, the literature has been separated by diverse fields of study. In contrast, this volume brings together contributors from anthropology, public health, political science, demography, history, and epidemiology to critically examine current debates and initiatives, and to explore the role that scholars can and should—or should not—play in approaching the issue.

Case studies from nine African countries where female genital cutting (FGC) is traditionally and currently performed evaluate the impact of international efforts to eliminate the practice. A focus on local reactions to external involvement underscores that the myriad programs fashioned to effect changes in FGC ritual and procedure must be initiated and supported by indigenous communities if they are to be lasting and effective.

Situated at the crossroads of queer theory and postcolonial studies, Hybrid Anxieties analyzes the intertwined and composite aspects of identities and textual forms in the wake of the French-Algerian War (1954–1962). C. L. Quinan argues that the war precipitated a dynamic in which a contestation of hegemonic masculinity occurred alongside a production of queer modes of subjectivity, embodiment, and memory that subvert norms. Innovations in literature and cinema were also directly impacted by the long and difficult process of decolonization, as the war provoked a rethinking of politics and aesthetics. The novels, films, and poetry analyzed in Hybrid Anxieties trace this imbrication of content and form, demonstrating how a postwar fracturing had both salutary and injurious effects, not only on bodies and psyches but also on artistic forms. Adopting a queer postcolonial perspective, Hybrid Anxieties adds a new impulse to the question of how to rethink hegemonic notions of gender, sexuality, and nationality, thereby opening up new spaces for considering the redemptive and productive possibilities of negotiating life in a postcolonial context. Without losing sight of the trauma of this particularly violent chapter in history, Hybrid Anxieties proposes a new kind of hybridity that, however anxious and anticipatory, emphasizes the productive forces of a queer desire to deconstruct teleological relationships between past, present, and future.
 

De 1954 à 1962, plus d’un million et demi de jeunes Français sont partis faire leur service militaire en Algérie. Mais ils ont été plongés dans une guerre qui ne disait pas son nom. Depuis lors, les anciens d’Algérie sont réputés n’avoir pas parlé de leur expérience au sein de leur famille. Le silence continuerait à hanter ces hommes et leurs proches. En historienne, Raphaëlle Branche a voulu mettre cette vision à l’épreuve des décennies écoulées depuis le conflit. Fondé sur une vaste collecte de témoignages et sur des sources inédites, ce livre remonte d’abord à la guerre elle-même : ces jeunes ont-ils pu dire à leur famille ce qu’ils vivaient en Algérie ? Ce qui s’est noué alors, montre Raphaëlle Branche, conditionne largement ce qui sera transmis plus tard. Son enquête suit ensuite les métamorphoses des silences et des récits jusqu’à nos jours. Elle pointe l’importance des bouleversements qu’a connus la société française et leurs effets sur ce qui pouvait être dit, entendu et demandé dans les familles à propos de la guerre d’Algérie. Elle éclaire en particulier pourquoi, six décennies après la fin du conflit, beaucoup d’enfants ont toujours la conviction qu’existe chez leur père une zone sensible à ne pas toucher. Grâce à cette enquête, c’est plus largement la place de la guerre d’Algérie dans la société française qui se trouve éclairée : si des silences sont avérés, leurs causes sont moins personnelles que familiales, sociales et, ultimement, liées aux contextes historiques des dernières décennies. Avec le temps, elles se sont modifiées et de nouveaux récits sont devenus possibles.

This pioneering book demonstrates how different traditions of sociological thought can contribute to an understanding of the theory and practice of rights. It provides a sociological treatment of a wide range of substantive issues but never loses sight of the key theoretical questions.

In Second Wounds, Carrie A. Rentschler examines how the victims’ rights movement brought about such a marked shift in how Americans define and portray crime. Analyzing the movement’s effective mobilization of activist networks and its implementation of media strategies, she interprets texts such as press kits, online victim memorials, and training materials for victims’ advocates and journalists. Rentschler also provides a genealogy of the victims’ rights movement from its emergence in the 1960s into the twenty-first century. She explains that while a “get tough on crime” outlook dominates the movement, the concept of secondary victimization has been invoked by activists across the political spectrum, including anti–death penalty advocates, who contend that the families of death-row inmates are also secondary victims of violent crime and the criminal justice system.

In this unique collection, Yale literary critic Shoshana Felman and psychoanalyst Dori Laub examine the nature and function of memory and the act of witnessing, both in their general relation to the acts of writing and reading, and in their particular relation to the Holocaust. Moving from the literary to the visual, from the artistic to the autobiographical, and from the psychoanalytic to the historical, the book defines for the first time the trauma of the Holocaust as a radical crisis of witnessing "the unprecedented historical occurrence of ... an event eliminating its own witness." Through the alternation of a literary and clinical perspective, the authors focus on the henceforth modified relation between knowledge and event, literature and evidence, speech and survival, witnessing and ethics.

The Military Enlightenment brings to light a radically new narrative both on the Enlightenment and the French armed forces from Louis XIV to Napoleon. Christy Pichichero makes a striking discovery: the Geneva Conventions, post-traumatic stress disorder, the military "band of brothers," and soldierly heroism all found their antecedents in the eighteenth-century French armed forces.

Readers of The Military Enlightenment will be startled to learn of the many ways in which French military officers, administrators, and medical personnel advanced ideas of human and political rights, military psychology, and social justice.

The language of human rights is the most prominent 'people-centred' language of global justice today. This textbook looks at how human rights are constructed at local, national, international and transnational levels and considers commonalities and differences around the world. Through discussions of key debates in the interdisciplinary study of human rights, the book develops its themes by considering examples of human rights advocacy in international organisations, national states and local grassroots movements. Case studies relating to specific organisations and institutions…