Radha DSouza - Whats Wrong with Rights?: Social Movements and Legal Imaginations

Whats Wrong with Rights?

Social Movements, Law
and Liberal Imaginations

Radha DSouza

First published 2018 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright Radha DSouza 2018

The right of Radha DSouza to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7453 3540 7 Hardback

ISBN 978 0 7453 3541 4 Paperback

ISBN 978 1 7837 1726 2 PDF eBook

ISBN 978 1 7837 1728 6 Kindle eBook

ISBN 978 1 7837 1727 9 EPUB eBook

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England

Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America

In memory of Uday Mahale
Comrade, friend, fellow traveller

This book has been a long time in the making and many people have contributed to the development of the arguments in it. Over the years many activists around the world have invited me to speak at public events on a wide range of themes: conditions of workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, women, environment, multilateral trade agreements, civil liberties and much else. The events were attended by people who were deeply concerned about the future. At those meetings and outside, people contributed generously to the debates, raised questions and engaged with the arguments in this book. This book has grown from those dialogues and conversations with people committed to a better world. Their engagement encouraged me to write this book. I wish to take this opportunity to thank all of them wherever they may be.

Thanks to Rene Vellv of GRAIN, a non-profit organisation working with Third World farmers on community-controlled biodiversity-based food systems, for inviting me to the panel discussion which was published in Seedling (October 2007) under the same title: Whats Wrong With Rights? The reservations of farmers and rural activists from Africa and Asia on the panel about rights, people whose voices are seldom heard in mainstream academic discourses, gave me the confidence to pursue my own project on rights. Thanks to Reza Banakar for inviting me to contribute to his edited volume on rights even though I am not labelled as a human rights scholar within the academia. It forced me to go beyond speaking to activists and put pen to paper, or rather fingers on keyboard, to think about rights more theoretically and induct my critique into academic scholarship. Thanks to Brewster Kneen who has, over the years, been an unwavering cheer leader for the project. Aziz Choudry organised public and academic events and provided me with valuable opportunities to engage with his students.

Anyone who writes anything knows the importance of a sympathetic but critical reader. Nicola Perugini gave his time very generously and painstakingly went through a rough and ready first draft of the manuscript line by line, paragraph by paragraph and provided valuable comments. I have benefitted a great deal from his feedback. I am indebted to him for his labours and his generosity. The shortcomings in the book are of course my own.

David Shulman in Pluto was very patient, kind and understanding about the many interruptions in the writing of this book. Thank you David. Thanks to the Pluto team for seeing the publication to fruition. This book was not possible without the support of the library staff at the University of Westminster. I want to say a special thanks to the Interloan Document Delivery team in the library. Every time I needed something, and it was always urgent and frantic, I filled out the online IDD form and bingo, like magic the article, or book chapter or book turned up in my inbox or pick-up shelf at work faster than I had expected.

Knowledge is a social phenomenon. In writing something that is copyrighted as my own, I stand on the shoulders of intellectual giants: scholars, thinkers, philosophers, poets who have shaped my mind and my thoughts in ways that go beyond academic conventions for source citations that property rights to knowledge requires. My ongoing debts to all those predecessors who have inspired me to follow in their footsteps.

Amma, Bharti, Kunal, Jaya, Ajeet can I thank you enough? Uday, how I wish you were here to read my book.