Jeffries Vincent (Editor). Handbook Of Public Sociology

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352 Chapter 19

As social movement scholarship has grown, some scholars have argued

that much of it has become highly abstract and ahistorical (Darnovsky,

Epstein, and Flacks 1994; Buechler 2000; Flacks 2004, 2005). Their con-

cern is not just that such theory is hard for activists to understand or

connect to their circumstances, although it is. The deeper critique is that

ahistorical abstraction is not the path to good theory, an argument that

goes back at least as far as the works of Karl Marx, and within academic

sociology at least to Mills, Barrington Moore (1958), and other historical

sociologists.

The work of MRAP and the GPP shows that some kinds of abstract theory

can be used to inform engagement, if scholars work to make it relevant

to activists. Similarly, Meyer (2005) suggests ways in which political op-

portunity theory, another important strand in social movement scholar-

ship, may be made more relevant for activists. However, Flacks and other

critics may be right that some directions in social movement scholarship

may be questionable in terms of both theoretical value and relevance. A

fuller discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of this chapter, but it is

important to use engagement to help us examine more critically the nature

of our work, how we present it (see chapter 9 in this volume), and where

we publish or use it.

Tensions run in the other direction also. Engagement can create obstacles

to good professional scholarship. In grassroots policy and public sociol-

ogy, relationships with community partners are enriching and energizing.

However, these relationships can challenge scholars’ ability and desire to

maintain a critical distance and some measure of “objectivity” in studying

these groups.

The desire to maintain these relationships, into which so much has been

invested, also challenges our ability to be critical in print, in public con-

versations, and sometimes even in private. We do not want to lose access.

As in more traditional participant-observation, some scholars contend that

even full participants can maintain a critical intellectual distance from the

group or culture they study (Adler and Adler 1987). This may be true, but

engagement does put this to a tougher test.

Scholar-Activist Relationships

Relationships between scholars and activists are complex and take time

to negotiate and develop. One key point of possible tension involves both

intellectual and interpersonal leadership in engaged work. Top-down mod-

els privilege abstract knowledge and professional credentials of scholars.

Even if we do not consciously embrace this model, scholars often find

ourselves reproducing it. Bottom-up models privilege the felt needs of com-

munity partners.

Engaged Social Movement Scholarship 353

There is a middle position in which partners seek a shared leadership

role. Ferree, Sperling, and Risman (2005) talk about the feminist move-

ment’s emphasis on developing a “culture of conversation” in contrast

to the top-down “culture of lecture.” In working with activists, a culture

of conversation avoids both extremes—those of imposing our views, and

those of deferring completely to those of our partners. We should develop

relationships that allow us to take an active role toward community part-

ners, using social movement theory and research to provide a critical analy-

sis of their work. However, we should present our ideas as hypotheses and

suggestions, and seek and listen to responses that can also be challenging.

Community organizers call such relationships “agitational”—supportive

but constructively critical, seeking to bring out the full potential of the per-

son and the work. Grassroots public social movement scholarship is, ulti-

mately, the creation of relationships, cultures, and institutions that support

a culture of agitational conversation between scholars and activists.

CONCLUSION

Engaged social movement scholarship improves sociology and activism.

While there are tensions between and among the different sociologies,

there is a growing body of knowledge about how to manage the tensions

and create synergies. Scholars are questioning more about our theories,

institutional arrangements, and cultures, and seeking to create alternatives

more compatible with engaged work. We are working with activists to ac-

complish similar goals in their realms. As we continue in this direction, it

is important to continue to be reflective about this process, and to expand

both the practice and the theory of engaged social movement scholarship.

NOTE

1. Local affiliates of the four networks increased by almost 50 percent from 1995

to 2000, and included a combined base of 4,000 member organizations, compris-

ing between one and three million people (Hart 2001; Warren and Wood, 2001).

Although they avoid labels, the major CBCO networks pursue progressive policies.

They focus on economic issues and avoid social issues that might divide their base,

which is diverse in terms of class, race, gender, and religious affiliation.

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357

In this chapter, I consider Michael Burawoy’s (2005a:11) four categories of

sociology; namely, professional, critical, policy, and public, from my point

of view as a scholar of international human rights, originally trained in

political sociology. I take issue with Burawoy’s idiosyncratic definition of

human rights, and with his implicit equation of critical and public sociol-

ogy with his own avowedly Marxist perspective. I also take issue with his

implication that in the current era of globalization, markets are more likely

than states to violate human rights. International human rights provide

a common standard of achievement that transcends ideological debates,

and that makes no prior assumptions about the relative likelihood that

states, markets, or civil societies will protect or violate human rights. I am

a Canadian sociologist, and I ground my discussion of human rights in in-

ternational law. My work on human rights over the past 30 years has been

heavily interdisciplinary, as there is no explicit sociology of human rights.

DEFINITION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Human rights are rights that all human beings are entitled to, merely by

virtue of being human. They are individual rights, not tied to group, com-

munal, national, or any other membership. Human rights do not have to

be earned, nor are they dependent on any particular social status.

This is an explicitly liberal view of human rights, originating in the

West and enshrined in the United Nation’s (UN) International Bill of

Rights, which consists of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human

357

Public Sociology and

Universal Human Rights

Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann

358 Chapter 20

Rights (UDHR), the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political

Rights (ICCPR), and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, So-

cial, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (Brownlie and Goodwin-Gill:23–28,

348–374). Civil and political rights include, for example, protection

against torture, the right to a fair trial, and the right to vote. Economic,

social, and cultural rights include the right to work, the right to form

trade unions, and the rights to education, social security, an adequate

standard of living, and the highest attainable standard of health. There

are also so-called collective rights, such as to peace, development, and a

clean environment.

To assert that human rights originated in the West is not to assert that

only the West has a moral system of justice. Rather, the philosophical and

legal conceptions of universal, individual human rights emerged there, as

philosophers and political activists reacted against the overarching power of

monarchs and the state. Incipient principles of human rights can be found

in the religious and philosophical systems of other parts of the world, as in

some aspects of Hindu thought (Sen 2000:33–38), or in indigenous African

political systems (Wiredu 1996:155–190), but they were first articulated in

a systematic fashion in the West.

Many “non-Western” critics of human rights believe that the UDHR was

written only by Westerners. But although the UN was dominated by West-

ern and Soviet-Bloc countries in 1948, there were also non-Western mem-

ber countries, among whom Chile, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Lebanon,

Panama, the Philippines, and Uruguay participated in drafting the UDHR.

(Samnøy 1993:142). Some critics also believe that economic, social, and

cultural rights were included in the UDHR only because of Soviet Bloc and

“third world” influence. However, Westerners were instrumental in intro-

ducing economic rights into the UDHR (Donnelly 2007:37–55).

Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the UN committee that drafted the

UDHR, was no stranger to economic rights. Her husband, Franklin Delano

Roosevelt, president of the United States, had included freedom from want

as one of the four freedoms he enunciated in his State of the Union Ad-

dress on January 6, 1941 (the others were freedom of speech and expres-

sion, freedom of worship, and freedom from fear) (Howard-Hassmann

and Welch 2006:211). President Roosevelt went even further in his State of

the Union Address three years later, on January 11, 1944, advocating the

right to a job; the right to earn enough for adequate food, clothing, and

recreation; the right of every family to a decent home; the right to adequate

medical care and good health; the right to protection from “the economic

fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment”; and the right to

a good education (Howard-Hassmann and Welch 2006:213–214). John

Humphrey, a Canadian, worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to write the first

draft of the UDHR, and introduced economic and social rights into that

358 Chapter 20

Public Sociology and Universal Human Rights 359

draft over the objections of the Canadian government and Canadian busi-

ness community (Hobbins 1998:325–342).

The principle of human rights is one to which many non-liberal and/or

non-Western states now adhere, at least formally with regard to their obli-

gations under international law and their constitutional obligations to their

citizens. This does not, of course, mean that the elites or ruling classes of all

these countries actually believe in human rights. But neither does it mean

that, although the concept is originally Western and liberal, their publics

don’t believe in human rights—or that they would reject human rights, if

they were to be informed of them.

In this context, Burawoy’s definition of human rights (2005b:158) as

“the rights of human beings to survive in community with one another” is

idiosyncratic. This is a partial definition, bearing very little relation to in-

ternational law. The law does protect the right of human beings to survive,

and it protects their right to survive in community with one another. It also,

however, protects the rights of individuals against their community, as in the

case of women, children, gays and lesbians, or members of other marginal-

ized groups. The law also does far more than protect survival rights; it aims

to provide the conditions under which human beings can live a good life.

Of interest to Burawoy, given his avowed Marxist perspective, ought to

be the law’s focus on economic rights. However, the international law of

human rights does not condemn market economies, as Burawoy does.

Market economies are not necessarily more likely to result in violations of

international human rights than non-market economies.

While Burawoy is well aware of the human rights abuses perpetrated by

real, existing market economies and states, he minimizes the tremendous

abuses of human rights perpetrated by real, existing Marxist states (Courtois

et al. 1999). It is not enough to dismiss these abuses by simply stating that

“when Marxism rules it petrifies” (Burawoy 2005b:160). The UN’s principles

of human rights were designed to protect the individual against any state,

whether capitalist, Marxist, or other. Gross human rights violations such as

extra-judicial execution, arbitrary arrest, and torture are usually committed

by the state. Civil rights such as due process, a fair trial, and habeas corpus

are necessary to protect citizens against these abuses. So also are political

rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, trade union rights,

and the right to vote. The ubiquity of the state makes necessary a universal

human rights standard, regardless of the type of political regime.

PROFESSIONAL SOCIOLOGY

The field of international human rights will not contribute to any funda-

mental changes in professional sociology, but professional sociologists can

360 Chapter 20

contribute to the study of human rights. Some scholars of human rights

now use the rigorous methodologies of professional, quantitative, and

qualitative analysis in their own work. There is a large scholarly body of

quantitative work measuring achievement of human rights, mostly, how-

ever, by political scientists rather than sociologists (Landman 2005).

From the point of view of professional sociology, human rights are usu-

ally a dependent variable. Questions that sociologists could address are

how human rights are achieved and protected (Fein 2007), how citizens

view human rights (Howard-Hassmann 2003), and how marginalized

social groups gain their human rights. These macro-questions require un-

derstanding of historical sociology (Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens

1992), theories of social change, and social movement theory (Keck and

Sikkink 1998), among other aspects of sociology.

As an example, professional sociologists could pay more attention to

genocide. The world’s leading scholar of comparative genocide studies is

Helen Fein, a sociologist, whose work has influenced all students of com-

parative genocide, regardless of their discipline, and who employs rigor-

ous quantitative and qualitative methods in her research: her Accounting

for Genocide won the American Sociological Association’s Sorokin Award

in 1979 (Fein 1979). Sadly, genocide is a common event, which can be

analyzed by sociologists, who moreover could involve themselves in the

international project to predict and prevent genocide.

Sociology can also contribute to understanding of how human rights

are realized, rather than violated. Sociological studies of social move-

ments have shown the importance of the right to organize. Human rights

networking across lines that previously divided individuals, such as across

ideological or geographical lines, has increased dramatically over the last

25 years. Human rights networking helped bring down the governments of

the Soviet Bloc, for example. Network sociologists can study these human

rights groupings as part of their professional obligations, just as sociologists

of social movements can study international human rights advocacy.

Professional sociology, then, has much to offer the academic study of

human rights, presently dominated by the fields of law, philosophy, and

international relations. These fields do not possess the theoretical or meth-

odological tools to explain the circumstances under which individuals will

enjoy, or not enjoy, their human rights. The classic Weberian themes of

class, status, and power are still weakly integrated into the human rights

literature. Yet without understanding the nature of status, we cannot ana-

lyze the situation of the Dalits in India, or of traditional slavery in African

countries such as Mauritania. Without analysis of class society, the viola-

tions of the economic rights of the poor in capitalist countries such as the

United States and Canada will escape us (Howard-Hassmann and Welch

2006). Without analysis of power, states remain suspended in an intellec-

Public Sociology and Universal Human Rights 361

tual vacuum in which they are legally mandated to promote, protect, and

fulfill their citizens’ rights, but frequently do the opposite.

Professional sociology, as amended by the last three decades’ work on

gender, ethnicity, and race, also helps human rights scholars understand

how and why society and the family, as well as the state, can violate human

rights. Individuals must be able to claim rights against society, as, for exam-

ple, women, gays, blacks, and minority groups do in Canada and the United

States. Under international human rights law, the family is no longer a pro-

tected, private realm. The law undermines men’s authority over women, and

parents’ authority over children. There are separate international conven-

tions governing both women’s (1979) and children’s (1989) rights (Brown-

lie and Goodwin-Gill: 388–399, 429–447). The sociology of the family

helps to understand the relationship of rights to the family. Drawing on the

sociology of marriage, for example, I have argued that gay marriage is easier

in societies in which the purpose of marriage is companionship, rather than

merely reproduction (Howard-Hassmann 2001:73–95).

Rights for women, children, and homosexuals raise the question of eth-

nocentrism. Some would argue that when Westerners advocate universal

human rights, especially rights for previously subordinated social groups,

they are cultural imperialists. Cultural relativists claim that human rights

undermine local, non-Western states’ or communities’ ideas of the good

life. Professional sociology helps to answer this criticism by providing

tools to look carefully at what culture means, who defines and interprets

it, and who enforces it. Sociologists interrogate the notion that culture is a

static, homogeneous entity (Howard 1993:315–338); they apply the clas-

sic categories of class, status, and power to culture, as to any other social

phenomenon. Sociologists can also investigate how cultures can change to

support human rights, and how norms such as egalitarianism, or a belief in

religious tolerance, that support human rights emerge and are sustained in

some national cultures.

Thus, from the point of view of professional sociology, human rights are

an object of study. The theories, concepts, and methods of professional soci-

ology help legal scholars and practitioners understand why and how human

rights are protected or violated by the state, community, and family. With

regard to critical, policy, or public sociologies, however, human rights are

more than an object of study. They contribute independently to sociological

debate, as principles to be defended and policies to be implemented.

CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY

There is some confusion, in Burawoy’s writings, as to whether the function

of critical sociology is merely to debate foundational principles within the