BiblioVault - Books about Human rights -

Aid Imperium

United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia

Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr.

University of Michigan Press, 2021

Does foreign aid promote human rights? As the world’s largest aid donor, the United States has provided foreign assistance to more than 200 countries. Deploying global numerical data on US foreign aid and comparative historical analysis of America’s post–Cold War foreign policies in Southeast Asia, Aid Imperium provides the most comprehensive explanation that links US strategic assistance to physical integrity rights outcomes in recipient countries, particularly in ways that previous quantitative studies have systematically ignored. The book innovatively highlights the active political agency of Global South states and actors as they negotiate and chart their political trajectories with the United States as the core state of the international system. Drawing from theoretical insights in the humanities and the social sciences as well as a wide range of empirical documents, Aid Imperium is the first multidisciplinary study to explain how US foreign policy affects state repression and physical integrity rights outcomes in Southeast Asia and the rest of the Global South.

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Are Worker Rights Human Rights?

Richard P. McIntyre

University of Michigan Press, 2008

"In a much-needed intervention, Ric McIntyre recasts the debate about globalization and labor rights and speeds us to the heart of the matter: the battle between transnational corporations who distance themselves from responsibility for the fate of workers, and labor activists who seek to reestablish bonds of accountability and moral obligation. The stakes in this struggle are enormous, and Dr. McIntyre provides crucial insight into the economic and political dynamics that define it."
---Scott Nova, Executive Director, Worker Rights Consortium, Washington, DC

"This book presents an insightful, powerful corrective to the contemporary debate over worker rights. McIntyre identifies the limitations of thinking of worker rights as individualized human rights and challenges us instead to examine how rights are defined through conventional thinking and class interest. The product is rich and compelling: McIntyre's investigation demands of us that we be far more attentive to the contradictory effects of ‘rights talk.' I recommend this book enthusiastically to all those who advocate for a just economic order the world over."
---George DeMartino, Associate Professor of Political Economy, the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver

"An important contribution to the interdisciplinary study of labor. McIntyre's book will challenge the debate over labor rights on all fronts."
---Michael Hillard, Professor of Economics, University of Southern Maine

"A timely examination of our modern 'sweating system' . . . essential reading for all workers who hope for greater dignity in the workplace and greater fairness in society."
---Janet Knoedler, Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University

"Ric McIntyre convincingly shows how local actions, regulations changes, and international norms can combine to establish collective rights for workers."
---Gilles Raveaud, Assistant Professor in Economics, University of Saint-Denis, France, and cofounder of the "post-autistic economics movement"

"An important, timely, and needed contribution to our understanding of worker rights."
---Patrick McHugh, Associate Professor of Management, George Washington University

"Workers of the world, unite!" Karl Marx's famous call to action still promises an effective means of winning human rights in the modern global economy, according to economist Richard P. McIntyre. Currently, the human rights movement insists upon a person's right to life, freedom, and material necessities. In democratic, industrial nations such as the United States, the movement focuses more specifically on a person's civil rights and equal opportunity.

The movement's victories since WWII have come at a cost, however. The emphasis on individual rights erodes collective rights---the rights that disadvantaged peoples need to assert their most basic human rights. This is particularly true for workers, McIntyre argues. By reintroducing Marxian and Institutional analysis, he reveals the class relations and power structures that determine the position of workers in the global economy. The best hope for achieving workers' rights, he concludes, lies in grassroots labor organizations that claim the right of association and collective bargaining.

At last, an economist offers a vision for human rights that takes both moral questions and class relations seriously.

Richard P. McIntyre is Director of the University Honors Program and Professor of Economics at the University of Rhode Island.

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At the Risk of Being Heard

Identity, Indigenous Rights, and Postcolonial States

Bartholomew Dean and Jerome M. Levi, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 2003

Leading experts in the analysis of ethnicity and indigenous rights explore the questions of why and how the circumstances of indigenous peoples are improving in some places of the world, while their human rights continue to be abused in others. Drawing on case studies from Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas, chapters explore how political organization, natural resource management, economic development, and conflicting definitions over cultural, linguistic, religious, and territorial identity have informed indigenous strategies for empowerment.
Combining rich ethnographic descriptions with clear theoretical analyses, At the Risk of Being Heard considers the paradoxical challenges and opportunities confronting indigenous peoples at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In the face of state-sanctioned violence, indigenous peoples encounter considerable risks when asserting their rights, especially to self-determination. Yet, if they remain silent or absent from new arenas of power, hiding in marginalized homelands or cultural practices, they risk being invisible to those allies that would aid them in their struggles for survival.
At the Risk of Being Heard offers needed insights for individuals working on issues of governance, sustainable development, resource management, globalization, and indigenous affairs. It will undoubtedly appeal to undergraduate and graduate students in anthropology, sociology, history, political science, peace studies, and to those students in courses that explore relationships among postcolonial states, indigenous peoples, and human rights.
Bartholomew Dean is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Kansas. Jerome M. Levi is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Carleton College.

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