Document details

Outline of a social theory of rights: a neo-pragmatist approach

Author(s): Silva, Filipe Carreira da, 1975- cv logo 1

Date: 2013

Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/8331

Origin: Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa

Subject(s): Mead, George Herbert, 1863-1931; Pragmatismo


Description
This article articulates a neo-pragmatist theory of human rights by drawing and expanding upon the American classical pragmatism of G.H. Mead. It characterizes this neo-pragmatist theory of rights by its anti-foundationalist, relational, fictive, and constitutive nature, and begins by providing a reconstruction of Mead’s social pragmatist approach to rights, a contribution systematically ignored by contemporary sociologists of rights. Next, it details the cost of this disciplinary oblivion by examining how much neo-pragmatism, critical theory, and legal consciousness studies have meanwhile gained by engaging with Mead’s work on rights. Finally, it discusses the contributions of this historical-theoretical exercise to the rapidly growing sociology of rights, and shows that by supplementing the neo-Meadian approach with a recent interpretation of Hobbes’s fictional theory of politics, there appear to be substantive gains in the empirical study of the origins, consequences, meaning, and denial of rights.
Document Type Article
Language English
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