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The Immutable Laws of Mankind

The Struggle For Universal Human Rights

  • Book
  • © 2012

Overview

Authors:
  1. Alastair Davidson

    1. St. Kilda, Australia

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  • Is provocative and intended to arouse debate among scholars and practitioners
  • Gives historical context to the development of universal human rights
  • Combines information and a thesis in a way not found in other English language texts
  • Contests the Anglo-Saxon paternity of universal human rights ?

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxxiii
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  2. A World Without Rights

    • Alastair Davidson
    Pages 1-44

  3. Eyes Turned Heavenwards

    • Alastair Davidson
    Pages 45-105

  4. When the World Was New

    • Alastair Davidson
    Pages 107-145

  5. The Open Republic or Kafka’s Doorman

    • Alastair Davidson
    Pages 147-184

  6. Jack Is Master in His Own House: The Triumph of the Nation

    • Alastair Davidson
    Pages 185-231

  7. Rousseau

    • Alastair Davidson
    Pages 233-255

  8. Human Rights and the Working Class

    • Alastair Davidson
    Pages 257-286

  9. The Excluded: Women

    • Alastair Davidson
    Pages 287-315

  10. The Excluded: Slaves

    • Alastair Davidson
    Pages 317-355

  11. It Could Happen to Us: The Uniting Force of Genocide

    • Alastair Davidson
    Pages 357-393

  12. Human Rights in the Nineteenth Century

    • Alastair Davidson
    Pages 395-430

  13. Fathering the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

    • Alastair Davidson
    Pages 431-469

  14. Back Matter

    Pages 471-520
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Keywords

About this book

The key question for the history of universal human rights is why it took so long for them to become established as law. The main theme of this book is that the attainment of universal human rights required heroic struggle, first by individuals and then by ever-increasing numbers of people who supported those views against the major historical trends. Universal human rights are won from a hostile majority by outsiders. The chapters in the book describe the milestones in that struggle. The history presented in this book shows that, in most places at most times, even today, for concrete material reasons a great many people oppose the notion that all individuals have equal rights. The dominant history since the 1600s has been that of a mass struggle for the national-democratic state. This book argues that this struggle for national rights has been practically and logically contradictory with the struggle for universal rights. It would only be otherwise if there were free migration and access to citizenship on demand by anybody. This has never been the case. Rather than drawing only on European sources and being limited to major literary figures, this book is written from the Gramscian perspective that ideas mean little until they are taken up as mass ideologies. It draws on sources from Asia and America and on knowledge about mass attitudes, globally and throughout history.

Authors and Affiliations

  • St. Kilda, Australia

    Alastair Davidson

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