Rights as Weapons

Instruments of Conflict, Tools of Power

Clifford Bob

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Paperback

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English

Princeton University Press
15 July 2021

International relations; Political control & freedoms; Human rights; Civil rights & citizenship; Political corruption

An in-depth look at the historic and strategic deployment of rights in political conflicts throughout the world.

Rights are usually viewed as defensive concepts representing mankind's highest aspirations to protect the vulnerable and uplift the downtrodden. But since the Enlightenment, political combatants have also used rights belligerently, to batter despised communities, demolish existing institutions, and smash opposing ideas. Delving into a range of historical and contemporary conflicts from all areas of the globe, Rights as Weapons focuses on the underexamined ways in which the powerful wield rights as aggressive weapons against the weak.

Clifford Bob looks at how political forces use rights as rallying cries: naturalising novel claims as rights inherent in humanity, absolutising them as trumps over rival interests or community concerns, universalising them as transcultural and transhistorical, and depoliticising them as concepts beyond debate. He shows how powerful proponents employ rights as camouflage to cover ulterior motives, as crowbars to break rival coalitions, as blockades to suppress subordinate groups, as spears to puncture discrete policies, and as dynamite to explode whole societies. And he demonstrates how the targets of rights campaigns repulse such assaults, using their own rights-like weapons: denying the abuses they are accused of, constructing rival rights to protect themselves, portraying themselves as victims rather than violators, and repudiating authoritative decisions against them. This sophisticated framework is applied to a diverse range of examples, including nineteenth-century voting rights movements; the American civil rights movement; nationalist, populist, and religious movements in today's Europe; and internationalised conflicts related to Palestinian self-determination, animal rights, gay rights, and transgender rights.

Comparing key episodes in the deployment of rights, Rights as Weapons opens new perspectives on an idea that is central to legal and political conflicts.

By: Clifford Bob
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780691216881
ISBN 10: 0691216886
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 15 July 2021
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Clifford Bob is professor and chair of political science at Duquesne University. His previous books include The Marketing of Rebellion, The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics, and The International Struggle for New Human Rights. Twitter @cliffordbob

Reviews for Rights as Weapons: Instruments of Conflict, Tools of Power

The central argument of the book and the illustrations supporting it are ex tremely interesting. . . . Bob's account of fields of argumentation as battlefields and his account of some rights arguments as weapons is a metaphorical ac count with dramatic impact. ---Mervyn Frost, European Review of International Studies