Human Rights and Social Concerns

The world is beset by social concerns that are global and inexorable. While hope seems to be plummeting, rejection of major social institutions that are supposed to be useful in responding to these concerns is widespread. The international framework of human rights is one such institution. The institutions and culture we have established to advance human rights are supposed to be global, available to everyone so that we can overcome barriers to community and shared humanity. Contributors to 'Human Rights and Social Concerns' bring ideas and evidence to bear on the utility of human rights to questions around crucial social concerns. Through their chapter, “Migrant Women’s Responses to Street Harassment in Naples, Italy,” Bonatti and Hutson examine the phenomenon of denying human rights to women who have migrated to work in Italy’s economy. In their chapter, “Social Stigma and Consequent Self Stigmatization among the Girls with Disabilities and their Families in India: A Study of Rural Punjab,” Gupta and Kumari’s study reveals that the intersection of disability and gender experiences prompts denial of personhood to young women who seek formal education in India. In “Femina Academica, Female Professionals in Sociology,” Mušić studies prominent women sociologists whose careers and work demanded attention to gender inequality and other forms of discrimination. Cardoso de Miranda’s study, “Ecological Modernization Theory in Light of Environmental Licensing Arena of Wind Power Projects in Brazil,” shows that, instead of advancing sustainability, wind farms can be used to reject social justice and demobilize resistance in service of market expansion. In “Is the Concept of Family ‘Over-Regulated?,’ European Standards and Constitutional Provisions related to the Notion of the ‘Family,” Lux and Pásztor deliberate on how states’ attention to families not only is misplaced, but contradicts human rights and harms families. Meinen, in his “Human Rights as a Cause for Environmental Degradation,” argues that human rights may lead to human extinction. Human Rights and Social Concerns is positioned to contribute scholarship concentrating on the utility of human rights for tackling social concerns. Its originality is that its authors focus on social concerns. It is distinguished from other work that consider specific human rights or specific social concerns. Its authors consider distinct social concerns across different societies, employing different methodological approaches to study diverse evidence. 'Human Rights and Social Concerns' will make a valuable contribution to classes focused on social problems and human rights. This volume will be useful to researchers and practitioners whose work concentrates on social concerns.

Brian Gran is a sociologist and lawyer on the faculty of the Sociology Department, Law School, and Mandel School of Applied of Social Sciences of Case Western Reserve University. He is the first sociologist awarded the Jefferson Science Fellowship of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. His scholarship concentrates on human rights, including children's rights, law, and social policy. Gran was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy at Yale University. As a Fulbright Scholar, he taught a course on children's rights to the Law School of Reykjavik University and conducted research on Iceland's Ombudsman for Children. Gran was a member of the Council and Steering Committee of the Science and Human Rights Coalition of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was one of fourteen members of the U.S. National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists, a group that advises on national policy around law, technology, and science. Gran has advised the United Nations on the human right to science and human rights indicators. His scholarship has received support of various institutions, including the British Academy, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and right now from the U.S. Department of Defense for a project on obstacles to and facilitators of recovery from spinal cord injury and from the U.S. National Science Foundation for a project on derogation of human rights during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gran has published books as well as articles in various sociology, law, and policy journals. With Polity Press, he published the book, 'The Sociology of Children's Rights.' Former President of the Thematic Group on Human Rights and Global Justice of the International Sociological Association, Gran’s intellectual approach is informed by the human right to science, an interest shared with Mark Frezzo, in whose memory this book is prepared.

Social problems; human rights; social concerns; global justice; law and society