Summary of content

Human Rights exist conceptually, politically, discursively, and in their application through legal process. The international human rights frameworks characterise states parties as duty bearers, and individuals as rights holders. But despite the aspirational principles that human rights are universal, inalienable, and indivisible, the daily reality for many individuals is persistent injustice and inequality and a denial of rights. The human rights legislation and the international instruments and conventions apply to everyday situations, from care homes to prisons, detention centres and displaced persons' camps, access to housing, food or education, to freedom of expression and hate crime, to the maximisation of public resources through government budgets and taxation policies. That reality is not always well understood or is deliberately overlooked by some for political or discursive purposes. The purpose of this module is to bring theoretical concepts of human rights into focus in the practice of public services, public policy decision making, and the advancement of equality and justice at the local and global levels. Drawing on critical theories of disability, race, feminism, globalisation, and the application of alternative theories of social, legal and economic justice such as the Capabilities Approach (Sen Nussbaum), students will be encouraged to engage in what Bacchi and Goodwin describe as the "critical practice of thinking otherwise." In the social construction of vulnerability, students will explore Fineman's conception of vulnerability, alongside vulnerability to climate change, and a third dimension of vulnerability: care. By engaging students to consider how "the particular combination of practices and relations that give a 'problem' a certain shape in a particular context, and indicate that different practices can produce contrasting problematizations" to reveal a rights-based approach to policymaking, policy analysis, and political action.

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