Pluto Press What's Wrong with Rights?: Social Movements, Law and Liberal Imaginations

Through mapping the rights discourse and the transformations in transnational finance capitalism since the world wars, and interrogating the connections between the two, Radha D'Souza examines contemporary rights in theory and practice through the lens of the struggles of the people of the Third World, their experiences of national liberation and socialism and their aspirations for emancipation and freedom. Social movements demand rights to remedy wrongs and injustices in society. But why do organisations like the World Bank and IMF, the G7 states and the World Economic Forum want to promote rights? Activists and activist scholars are critical of human rights in their diagnosis of problems. But in their prognosis, they reinstate human rights and bring back through the backdoor what they dismiss through the front. Why are activists and activist scholars unable to 'let go' of human rights? Why do indigenous peoples find the need to invoke the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People to make their claims sound reasonable? Are rights in the 20th and 21st centuries the same as rights in the 17th and 18th centuries? This book examines what is entailed in reducing rights to 'human' rights and in the argument 'our understandings of rights are better than theirs' that is popular within social movements and in critical scholarship. Review "The book many of us have been waiting for--brilliant, radical, and essential thinking for our times. Challenging us to rethink the ideas and politics of justice and rights and the uses to which they are put, this is anti-colonial scholarship at its finest. It should be read by anyone who is concerned about our future on this planet, wondering how we got here, and what is to be done. A major contribution to critical theorizing and activist knowledge for struggles against capitalist exploitation, imperialism and fascism today." --Aziz Choudry, McGill University "This book is a brilliant interrogation of the powerful hold the concept of rights has over social movements. Contrasting the ubiquity of claims about rights with their actual treatment in courts, politics and philosophy, D'Souza skilfully shows just how far removed contemporary ideas about rights are from their origin in early capitalism. An absolute must read for everybody concerned with rights as a means for realizing justice."--Sunera Thobani, University of British Columbia About the Author Radha D’Souza teaches law at the University of Westminster, London. Radha practiced as a public interest lawyer in Mumbai. She is a social justice activist, a writer, critic and commentator and has worked with solidarity movements in India, the Asia-Pacific region and internationally. She is author of Interstate Disputes Over Krishna Waters: Law, Science and Imperialism (2006) and works with the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) in the UK.