Part I. What's the Problem?: 1. What are they shouting about 2. Lineaments of contention 3. Comparisons, mechanisms, and episodes Part II. Tentative Solutions: 4. Mobilizations in comparative perspective 5. Contentious action 6. Transformations of contention Part III. Applications and Conclusions: 7. Revolutionary trajectories 8. Nationalism, national disintegration, and contention 9. Contentious democratization 10. Conclusions.

Dynamics of Contention

This volume argues that international human rights law has made a positive contribution to the realization of human rights in much of the world. Although governments sometimes ratify human rights treaties, gambling that they will experience little pressure to comply with them, this is not typically the case. Focusing on rights stakeholders rather than the United Nations or state pressure, Beth Simmons demonstrates through a combination of statistical analyses and case studies that the ratification of treaties leads to better rights practices on average. Simmons argues that international human rights law should get more practical and rhetorical support from the international community as a supplement to broader efforts to address conflict, development, and democratization.

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Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics

The dynamics by which norms emerge and spread in international society have been the subject of strikingly little study. This article focuses on norms that prohibit, both in international law and in the domestic criminal laws of states, the involvement of state and nonstate actors in activities such as piracy, slavery, counterfeiting, drug trafficking, the hijacking of aircraft, and the killing of endangered animal species. It analyzes the manner in which these norms have evolved into and been institutionalized by global prohibition regimes and argues that there are two principal inducements to the formation and promotion of such regimes. The first is the inadequacy of unilateral and bilateral law enforcement measures in the face of criminal activities that transcend national borders. The second is the role of moral and emotional factors related to neither political nor economic advantage but instead involving religious beliefs, humanitarian sentiments, fears, prejudices, paternalism, faith in universalism, the individual conscience, and the compulsion to proselytize. The ultimate success or failure of an international regime in effectively suppressing a particular activity depends, however, not only on the degree of commitment to its norms or the extent of resources devoted to carrying out its goals but also on the vulnerability of the activity to its enforcement measures.

Global prohibition regimes: the evolution of norms in international society

This revised and updated edition provides not only simple, one-line definitions, but also entries that discuss the issues involved in, and alternative approaches to, the central concepts, theories and writings of sociology. It is a comprehensive reference for students of school to university level. For this edition, many new definitions have been added and existing ones updated where necessary. The range of entries is wide, from advertising to critical theory, from epistemology to flexible specialization and from Saussure to working-class conservatism. There are also useful cross-references and an updated bibliography to enhance the balance to this book.

Penguin Dictionary of Sociology

In this path-breaking work, Susan Buck-Morss draws new connections between history, inequality, social conflict, and human emancipation. "Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History" offers a fundamental reinterpretation of Hegel's master-slave dialectic and points to a way forward to free critical theoretical practice from the prison-house of its own debates.Historicizing the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the actions taken in the Haitian Revolution, Buck-Morss examines the startling connections between the two and challenges us to widen the boundaries of our historical imagination. She finds that it is in the discontinuities of historical flow, the edges of human experience, and the unexpected linkages between cultures that the possibility to transcend limits is discovered. It is these flashes of clarity that open the potential for understanding in spite of cultural differences. What Buck-Morss proposes amounts to a "new humanism," one that goes beyond the usual ideological implications of such a phrase. She asks us to embrace a radical neutrality that insists on the permeability of the space between opposing sides and reaches for a common humanity.

Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History

This classic Pulitzer Prize-winning book depicts the various ways the Old and the New Worlds responded to the intrinsic contradictions of slavery from antiquity to the early 1770s, and considers the religious, literary, and philosophical justifications and condemnations current in the abolition controversy.

The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture

The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823

The author explores the international impact and social significance of antislavery thought in a critical era of political and industrial revolution. He examines the implications and historical consequences of challenging the long-accepted institution of slavery. The study not only provides a comparative account of early antislavery movements, but also uses the controversies over slavery to analyse shifting attitudes towards labour, social order, political representation, and the authority of law and religion. The focus is on the Anglo-American experience, but Davis makes illuminating comparisons with the history of slavery in France and Latin America. The book also offers portraits of important historical figures, including Thomas Jefferson, Granville Sharp, Bryan Edward, and Moreau de Saint-Mery, and accounts of key groups, movements, and bodies of literature. Through the history of slavery, Davis explores many areas of the social and intellectual history of the revolutionary era, creating a new reading of the entire age.

Pulitzer Prize-winner David Brion Davis here provides a penetrating survey of slavery and emancipation from ancient times to the twentieth century. His trenchant analysis puts the most recent international debates about freedom and human rights into much-needed perspective. Davis shows that slavery was once regarded as a form of human progress, playing a critical role in the expansion of the western world. It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that views of slavery as a retrograde institution gained far-reaching acceptance. Davis illuminates this momentous historical shift from "progressive" enslavement to "progressive" emancipation, ranging over an array of important developments--from the slave trade of early Muslims and Jews to twentieth-century debates over slavery in the League of Nations and the United Nations. In probing the intricate connections among slavery, emancipation, and the idea of progress, Davis sheds new light on two crucial issues: the human capacity for dignifying acts of oppression and the problem of implementing social change.

David Brion Davis

Papers

The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture

The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823

The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823

Slavery and Human Progress

Some Themes of Counter-Subversion: An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Mormon Literature