In Advocating Dignity, Jean H. Quataert explores the emergence, development, and impact of the human rights revolution following World War II. Intertwining popular local and national mobilizations for rights with ongoing developments of a formal international system of rights monitoring in the United Nations, Quataert argues that human rights advocacy networks have been a vital dimension of international political developments since 1945. Recalling the popular slogan "Think globally, act locally," she contends that postwar human rights have been shaped by the efforts of people at the grassroots. She shows that human rights politics are constituted locally and reinforced by transnational linkages in international society. The U.N. system is continuously reinvigorated and strengthened by its ties to local individuals, organizations, and groups engaged in day-to-day rights advocacy. This daily work, in turn, is supported by the ongoing activities from above. Quataert establishes the global contexts for the historical unfolding of human rights advocacy through thorough studies of such cases as the Soviet dissident movement, the mothers' demonstrations in Argentina, the transnational antiapartheid campaign, and coalitions for gender and economic justice. Drawing from many fields of inquiry, including legal studies, philosophy, international relations theory, political science, and gender history, Advocating Dignity is an innovative work that narrates the hopes and bitter struggles that have altered the course of international and domestic relations over the past sixty years.
Jean H. Quataert is Professor of History at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and author of several books, including Staging Philanthropy: Patriotic Women and the National Imagination in Dynastic Germany, 1813-1916.
List of Illustrations Preface Introduction. The New Moral Order: Between Human Dignity and Territorial Sovereignty Chapter 1. Raising the Bar, 1900-1949 PART I. AN EMERGING HUMAN RIGHTS ORTHODOXY: THE FIRST ROUND Chapter 2. Cold War Politics and Human Rights Publics: The International Antiapartheid and Soviet Dissident Movements, 1952-90 Chapter 3. Mothers' Courage and U.N. Monitoring of Disappearance, 1973-83 PART II. THE DEBATE CONTINUES: CRITICS AND NEW MECHANISMS Chapter 4. The Gender Factor since the 1970s: Universality and the Private Sphere Chapter 5. Citizenship, Socioeconomic Rights, and the Courts in the Age of Transnational Migrations PART III. HUMAN RIGHTS AT A CROSSROADS: WARS, CRIMES, AND PRIORITIES Chapter 6. Ethnic Violence, Humanitarian Intervention, and Criminal Accountability in the 1990s Chapter 7. September 2001 and History Conclusion: Making a Difference Notes Index
"An ambitious and compelling book. Advocating Dignity offers an innovative conceptual framework to provide one of the first major historical accounts of the global human rights revolutions of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries."-Mark Bradley, University of Chicago
