Arthur Kleinman, A Passion for Society: How We Think about Human Suffering (University of California Press, 2016), p. 196.41 41 See the history by Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Cornell University Press, 2013). More widely, it is captured well in Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis (Polity, 2010), and Natan Sznaider’s The Compassionate Temperament: Care and Cruelty in Modern Society (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). For a much more critical appraisal, see Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (University of California Press, 2011).
42 42 Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (New York Review of Books, 1950), cited in David J. Rothman, ‘The State as Parent’, in Willard Gaylin, ed., Doing Good: The Limits of Benevolence (Random House, 1978), p. 72.
43 43 Tony Vaux, The Selfish Altruist (Earthscan, 2001), p. 203.
44 44 Philip Cunliffe, Cosmopolitan Dystopia: International Intervention and the Fall of the West (Manchester University Press, 2020).
45 45 Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, p. 3. A useful lecture given by Fassin, ‘Critique of Humanitarian Reason’, can be found at https://video.ias.edu/critique-of-humanitarian-reason.
46 46 It can be found at https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/.
47 47 See two very positive evaluations of human rights by Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics (Norton, 2013), and Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century (Princeton University Press, 2017).
48 48 See Lawrence M. Friedman, The Human Rights Culture: A Study in History and Context (Quid Pro, 2011).
49 49 See William F. Felice, Taking Suffering Seriously: The Importance of Collective Human Rights (State University of New York Press, 1996).
50 50 For example: although indigenous rights may be officially recognized, in practice many problems remain. See Colin Samson, The Colonialism of Human Rights: Ongoing Hypocrisies of Western Liberalism (Polity, 2020). Similar problems remain for each category listed in this Box.
51 51 Stephen Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human Rights (Cornell University Press, 2013), p. ix; see also Cunliffe, Cosmopolitan Dystopia; Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Belknap, 2019). Hopgood distinguishes between human rights (lower case) as grounded activism, which is important and will always be with us, and a Human Rights (upper case) – a large global structure more like a worldwide church, of which he is very critical. By contrast, Alison Brysk provides the positive case for rights in The Future of Human Rights (Polity, 2018).
52 52 See Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Duke University Press, 2003); Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Duke University Press, 2007).
53 53 See Robert W. Fuller and Pamela A. Gerloff, Dignity for All: How to Create a World Without Rankism (Berrett-Koehler, 2008).
54 54 Christian Smith, What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up (University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 435. Smith argues that it is impossible not to be an essentialist. There is always an essential core hanging around somewhere or we could not even talk about such things. He builds his personalist account (a theory held by a distinctive group of largely Catholic theorists) with dignity and agentic human purpose at the core. See also Chapter 4 of Phillips, The Politics of the Human for a critical commentary of essentialist ideas of dignity. Maria Kronfeldner’s What’s Left of Human Nature? A Post-Essentialist, Pluralist and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept (MIT Press, 2018) is a rigorous and systematic philosophical development of modern non-essentialist ideas around human nature.
55 55 Martha C. Nussbaum’s ideas can be found in, especially, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Harvard University Press, 1998); Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Harvard University Press, 2011). Much of her recent work is concerned with taking seriously the importance of emotions in social, ethical and political life. For examples, see, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge University Press, 2001); Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (Princeton University Press, 2004); Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Harvard University Press, 2006); and Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (Harvard University Press, 2013).
56 56 Cary Wolfe, What Is Posthumanism? (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), p. xv.
57 57 This idea is well detailed and discussed in the writings of Deborah Lupton; see her The Quantified Self (Polity, 2016); and Data Selves (Polity, 2020).
58 58 See David Roden’s Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human (Routledge, 2015), esp ch. 1. I have drawn mainly on Rosi Braidotti’s three key works: The Posthuman (Polity, 2013); Posthuman Knowledge (Polity, 2019); and, with Maria Hlavajova, Posthuman Glossary (Bloomsbury, 2018).
59 59 Braidotti, The Posthuman, p. 65.
60 60 See Cunliffe, Cosmopolitan Dystopia.
61 61 Braidotti and Hlavajova, Posthuman Glossary.
62 62 E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910), ch. 22.
63 63 José van Dijck, The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (Oxford University Press, 2013).
64 64 There are many precedents for thinking about connectedness. The early work of Carol Gilligan was very influential – e.g., ‘Hearing the Difference: Theorizing Connection’, Hypatia, 10/2 (1995): 120–7; but see also Gurminder K. Bhambra, Connected Sociologies (Bloomsbury, 2014), and, on relationality, Nick Crossley, Toward Relational Sociology (Routledge, 2011).
65 65 C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (Oxford University Press, 1959).
66 66 A wonderful book for children used in primary schools asks us to ‘imagine if the world were a village’ – children often learn the shape of the world through tales of comparative size. See David J. Smith and Shelagh Armstrong, If the World Were a Village: A Book about the World’s People, 2nd edn (Bloomsbury, 2011).
67 67 Richard Sennett has written an elegant account of the importance of this process in Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation (Penguin, 2013) – part of his trilogy of works on ‘homo faber’ and the ‘skills people need to sustain everyday life’ (p. ix).
Part II Dehumanizing the World: Disconnecting Humanity
Man was made for Joy and Woe
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go
Joy and woe are woven fine …
William Blake, Auguries of Innocence (1863)
Definitions:
To dehumanize: to make less than human
To damage: to harm and impair functioning
To
