Human Rights and Social Theory

Lydia Morris is Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, UK, and a member of the Human Rights Centre.She is the author of The Workings of the Household (1991), Dangerous Classes (1994), Asylum, Welfare and the Cosmopolitan Ideal (2010) and the editor of Rights: Sociological Perspectives (2006).

"Understanding human rights as ultimately concerned with the protection of human dignity, Lydia Morris skilfully combines social theory and ethical inquiry to show how rights emerge from ceaseless confrontations in civil society. Her Through a telling analysis of the tensions between agency and structure in social theory, she offers an overview of such issues as torture, citizenship, migration, culture and cosmopolitanism. A major contribution to the sociology of human rights." - Bryan S. Turner, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, USA

• 1. Understanding Torture: the Strengths and the Limits of Social Theory2. Civil and Political Rights and the Human Condition3. The Community of Rights: Membership, Rights and Recognition4. Human Rights as Trans-national Rights: Migration and Asylum5. The Culture of Rights, and Rights to Culture6. The Rights of Distant Others.