Human Rights And The Search For Community

Some critics contend that the concept of universal human rights reflects the West’s anticommunitarian, self-centered individualism, which disproportionately focuses on individual autonomy. In this book Rhoda Howard-Hassmann refutes this claim, arguing instead that communities can exist in modern Western societies if they protect the whole spectrum of individual human rights, not only civil and political but also economic rights.Howard-Hassmann supports the case for the universality of human rights by showing community to be inherent in and essential to the realization of universal human rights. She makes an original contribution to the study of universal human rights through her review of those types of communitarian thought that underlie cultural relativist attacks on human rights. Howard-Hassmann defends individual rights against conservative and leftist communitarian challenges emanating from both the Western world and the Third World. Exploring conservative viewpoints, she examines traditionalists of the Third World—focusing on African and Muslim traditionalist schools, as well as reactionary conservatives of the Western world. Howard-Hassmann then looks at challenges from the left, including collectivists, who see universal human rights as the products of cultural imperialism or capitalist exploitation, and status radicals, such as feminists or black activists, who are critics of liberalism.Howard-Hassmann also criticizes what she dubs “radical capitalism” or “social minimalism,” the idea that there is a very narrow range of true human rights, including the right to property, and that citizens are responsible for no one but themselves. A community, in Howard-Hassmann’s view, is a group of people who all feel a sense of obligation to all others in the group. For a community to work in the modern world, everyone must be treated equally, enjoy societal respect, and be able to act autonomously in her or his everyday decisionmaking.