This pioneering volume explores the long-neglected history of social rights, from the Middle Ages to the present. It debunks the myth that social rights are second-generation rights that appeared after the Second World War as additions to a rights corpus stretching back to the Enlightenment. Not only do social rights extend that far back; they arguably predate the Enlightenment. In tracing their long history across various global contexts, this volume reveals how debates over social rights have often turned on deeper struggles over social obligation over determining who owes what to whom, morally and legally. In the modern period, these struggles have been intertwined with questions of freedom, democracy, equality and dignity. Many factors have shaped the history of social rights, from class, gender and race to religion, empire and capitalism. With incomparable chronological depth, geographical breadth and conceptual nuance, Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History sets an agenda for future histories of human rights.
Steven L. B. Jensen is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. He is author of the multiple prize-winning book The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization and the Reconstruction of Global Values (2016) and co-editor of Histories of Global Inequality: New Perspectives (2019). He has worked previously for UNAIDS and the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Charles Walton is a reader in history at the University of Warwick. He is author of the prize-winning Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: The Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech (2009) and editor of Into Print: Limits and Legacies of the Enlightenment (2012) and a special issue on social rights in French History (2019). He has taught previously at Sciences Po and Yale University.
Edited by
Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, University of California, Berkeley
Samuel Moyn, Yale University
This series showcases new scholarship exploring the backgrounds of human rights today. With an open-ended chronology and international perspective, the series seeks works attentive to the surprises and contingencies in the historical origins and legacies of human rights ideals and interventions. Books in the series will focus not only on the intellectual antecedents and foundations of human rights, but also on the incorporation of the concept by movements, nation-states, international governance, and transnational law.
A full list of titles in the series can be found at: www.cambridge.org/human-rights-history
Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History
Edited by
Steven L. B. Jensen
The Danish Institute for Human Rights
Charles Walton
University of Warwick
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781316519233
DOI: 10.1017/9781009008686
Cambridge University Press 2022
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2022
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jensen, Steven L. B., 1973 editor. | Walton, G. Charles (George Charles), 1966 editor.
Title: Social rights and the politics of obligation in history / edited by Steven L.B. Jensen, The Danish Institute for Human Rights, Charles Walton, University of Warwick.
Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2022. | Series: Human rights in history | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021038274 (print) | LCCN 2021038275 (ebook) | ISBN 9781316519233 (hardback) | ISBN 9781009005111 (paperback) | ISBN 9781009008686 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Social rights History. | Human rights History. | BISAC: HISTORY / Europe / Renaissance
Classification: LCC HM671 .S6745 2022 (print) | LCC HM671 (ebook) | DDC 303.3/72dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038274
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038275
ISBN 978-1-316-51923-3 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents
Steven L. B. Jensen and Charles Walton
Julia McClure
Dan Edelstein
Charles Walton
Philip Kaisary
Stephen W. Sawyer and William J. Novak
Nicolas Delalande
Scott Newton
Bernard Thomann
Rosie Doyle
Laura L. Frader
Samuel Moyn
Mark Goodale
Meredith Terretta
Christian Olaf Christiansen and Steven L. B. Jensen
Philip Alston
Contributors
Philip Alston is the John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law and Director and Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the NYU School of Law.
Christian Olaf Christiansen is an associate professor in the history of ideas at Aarhus University.
Nicolas Delalande is an associate professor of history at Sciences Po, Paris.
Rosie Doyle is a senior teaching fellow in Latin American history at the University of Warwick.
Dan Edelstein is the William H. Bonsall Professor in French at Stanford University.
Laura L. Frader is a professor emerita of history at Northeastern University.
Mark Goodale is a professor of cultural and social anthropology and holds a chair at the University of Lausanne.
Steven L. B. Jensen is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
Philip Kaisary is an associate professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University.
Julia McClure is a lecturer in late medieval and early modern global history at the University of Glasgow.
Samuel Moyn is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence and a professor of history at Yale University.
Scott Newton is a reader in the laws of Central Asia, SOAS University of London.
William J. Novak is the Charles F. and Edith J. Clyne Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.
Stephen W. Sawyer is the Ballantine-Leavitt Professor of History at the American University of Paris.
Meredith Terretta is a professor of history at the University of Ottawa.
Bernard Thomann is a professor at INALCO (Paris) and the director of the Institut franais de recherche sur le Japon la Maison franco-japonaise (MEAE/CNRS) in Tokyo.