Human Rights, Development Policies and Globalizations: Contradictions and Alternatives

Recommended Prerequisites

The same prerequisites for being accepted in the doctoral program, including English proficiency.

Teaching Methods

The seminar involves lectures, readings, discussions and research that address various issues falling in the intersections of human rights and development. Expositive lectures by the various professors will lay out the core issues, present different disciplinary and intellectual perspectives, identify and recommend pertinent bibliographic and web-based materials and allow participatory discussion on the core issues and competing perspectives. Workshops that feature debates on core issues in a ‘for and against’ format by persons/students that assume different disciplinary perspectives will be organized.

Learning Outcomes

Students who successfully complete the study of this seminar will:

- have in-depth knowledge about the interrelationship between human rights, development and globalization;

- understand the human rights challenges posed by economic/development policies and practices both at national and global levels;

- apprehend the tensions between human rights and globalization from the perspectives of actors (state and non-state) as well as spaces (territorial and extraterritorial);

- recognize how specific human rights are affected by hegemonic economic policies and by measures taken to fix such policies in times of economic crisis;

- be able to articulate arguments for the coherent implementation of economic policies, transnational relations and human rights; and

- acquire research skills that involve the syntheses of various points of view from such sub-disciplines as law, international relations and economics and the presentation of new or innovative arguments.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

Human rights and globalizations

Human rights and international trade and investment

Human rights and economic/development policies

Neo-liberalism and human rights

Human rights and economic crises

Global social justice and social movements

The protection and promotion of socio-economic rights, labor rights

The environment, climate change and human rights

The military, prison industrial complex and human rights

Human rights obligations of non-state actors

Human rights and extraterritorial obligations

The emancipatory potentials of human rights

Head Lecturer(s)

Boaventura Sousa Santos

Assessment Methods

Continuous
Regular attendance of sessions: 20.0%
Oral presentation: 40.0%
Paper submission: 40.0%

Bibliography

Benedek, W et al (orgs) 2006. Economic Globalization and Human Rights. Cambridge University Press.

Breining-Kaufmann, C 2006. Globalization and Labor Rights. Oxford: Hart.

Brysk, A (org) 2002. Globalization and Human Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Clapham, A 2006. Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Actors. Oxford University Press.

Cottier, T et al (orgs) 2005. Human Rights and International Trade. Oxford University Press.

De Schutter, O (org) 2006. Transnational Corporations and Human Rights. Oxford: Hart.

Khor, M 2000. Globalization and the South: Some critical issues. Penang: Third World Network.

Santos, BS 2002. Toward a New Legal Common Sense (2nd ed). London: Butterworths.

Santos, BS 2006. The rise of the global left: the World Social Forum and beyond. London: Zed Books.

Skogly, S 2006. Beyond National Borders: States’ Human Rights Obligations in International Cooperation. Antwerp: Intersentia.

Stiglitz, J 2007. Making Globalization Work. New York: WW Norton