Review by Choice Review
Nash (Goldsmiths College, Univ. of London, UK) assumes human rights as a given and asks what the effects of such rights are in practice. What conditions do human rights require, and how close are activists to achieving those conditions? She examines the "cultural politics" of human rights, the "public contests over how society is imagined; how social relations are, could be and should be organized." The concept of human rights is cosmopolitan, but how can it be reconciled with the nation-state through which human rights have to be realized. Case studies focus on the UK and US and court rulings on terrorism. British courts have been more responsive to human rights than US courts, and the UK government more responsive to court rulings. The UK is better integrated into a transnational human rights regime, in the Council of Europe and the EU, than is the US, which campaigns for cosmopolitan human rights but practices American exceptionalism. Working through courts has limits, and Nash believes that cosmopolitan human rights norms must be written into domestic law to be effective. The book is written as sociological theory. It raises important issues but is not for beginners. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections. A. J. Ward emeritus, College of William and Mary
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
