Jan Hancock – författare

This book analyzes the role of human rights in the foreign policy of the George W. Bush Administrations.

References to human rights, freedom and democracy became prominent explanations for post-9/11 foreign policy, yet human rights have been neither impartially nor universally integrated into decision-making. Jan Hancock addresses this apparent paradox by considering three distinct explanations. The first position holds that human rights form a constitutive foreign policy goal, the second that evident double standards refute the first perspective. This book seeks to progress beyond this familiar discussion by employing a Foucaultian method of discourse analysis to suggest a third explanation. Through this analysis, the author examines how a discourse of human rights has been artificially produced and implemented in the presentation of US foreign policy. This illuminating study builds on a wealth of primary source evidence from human rights organizations to document the contradictions between the claims and practice of human rights made by the Bush Administrations, as well as the political significance of denying this disjuncture.

Human Rights and US Foreign Policy will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of US foreign policy, human rights, international relations and security studies.

This book analyzes the role of human rights in the foreign policy of the George W. Bush Administrations.

References to human rights, freedom and democracy became prominent explanations for post-9/11 foreign policy, yet human rights have been neither impartially nor universally integrated into decision-making. Jan Hancock addresses this apparent paradox by considering three distinct explanations. The first position holds that human rights form a constitutive foreign policy goal, the second that evident double standards refute the first perspective. This book seeks to progress beyond this familiar discussion by employing a Foucaultian method of discourse analysis to suggest a third explanation. Through this analysis, the author examines how a discourse of human rights has been artificially produced and implemented in the presentation of US foreign policy. This illuminating study builds on a wealth of primary source evidence from human rights organizations to document the contradictions between the claims and practice of human rights made by the Bush Administrations, as well as the political significance of denying this disjuncture.

Human Rights and US Foreign Policy will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of US foreign policy, human rights, international relations and security studies.

This title was first published in 2003. Environmental Human Rights redefines the political, ethical and legal relationships between the environment and human rights to claim the human rights to an environment free from toxic pollution and to natural resources. Through a focus on the operational dynamics of social power, this compelling book details how global capitalism subjugates concerns of human security and environmental protection to the values of allocative efficiency and economic growth. The capacity of social power to construct ethical norms and to determine the efficacy of law is examined to explain how ethical and legal concepts have been selectively applied to accommodate existing patterns of production, consumption and exchange that cause environmental degradation and human rights violations. By looking at how environmental values have been systematically excluded from the human rights discourse, the book claims that human rights politics and law has been constructed on double standards to accommodate the destructive forces of capitalism.