Human Rights and Memory

“In this inspirational text about the impact of human-rights principles and normative cosmopolitanism on both the nation-state and international relations, Levy and Sznaider address the dominant moral problems of our time. Why should I care? Who is my brother? What should I remember? Through a defense of cosmopolitan ethics, they provide convincing answers to the perplexities of rights from Hannah Arendt onwards, namely, the specific rights of citizens versus the universal Rights of Man. Human rights matter because modern states can no longer abuse their own citizens with impunity in the name of national unity. Given the slide toward authoritarianism and state security, the task of defending both cosmopolitanism and human rights has a definite political urgency to which Human Rights and Memory offers a decisive response.”

—Bryan S. Turner, Presidential Professor, the City University of New York, the Graduate Center

“This excellent book shows that the human rights regime gives rise to a geography of human rights that founds a new geography of power both within and between states. Within states it empowers powerless groups, and between states it empowers powerful states to intervene. This is part of a cosmopolitan realism that Levy and Sznaider are promoting and practicing very convincingly—a must-read.”

—Ulrich Beck, Munich University and the London School of Economics

“Human Rights and Memory is a useful contribution to the sociology of cosmopolitanism, rights and memory, and will prove to be a handy text for researchers and postgraduates in the field.”

—Peter Manning British Journal of Sociology

“[Human Rights and Memory] raises new questions and should motivate rich lines of future empirical inquiry. I highly recommend it to scholars and graduate students in sociology, philosophy, law, political science, and history, to all who share an interest in memory and human rights.”

—Joachim J. Savelsberg Memory Studies