Being Social
The Philosophy of Social Human Rights
Edited by Kimberley Brownlee, David Jenkins and Adam Neal
Human rights capture what people need to live minimally decent lives. Recognised dimensions of this minimum include physical security, due process, political participation, and freedom of movement, speech, and belief, as well as - more controversially for some - subsistence, shelter, health,
education, culture, and community. Far less attention has been paid to the interpersonal, social dimensions of a minimally decent life, including our basic needs for decent human contact and acknowledgement, for interaction and adequate social inclusion, and for relationship, intimacy, and shared
ways of living, as well as our competing interests in solitude and associative freedom.
This pioneering collection of original essays aims to remedy the neglect of social needs and rights in human rights theory and practice by exploring the social dimensions of the human-rights minimum.
The essays subject enumerated social human rights and proposed social human rights to philosophical scrutiny, and probe the conceptual, normative, and practical implications of taking social human rights seriously. The contributors to this volume demonstrate powerfully how important this undertaking
is, despite the thorny theoretical and practical challenges that social rights present.
Being Social is the first in-depth and polyphonic philosophical treatment of social rights qua human rights in the English language. It explains how social rights are rights to participate and not only
to being in society, but also, even more importantly, it uncovers the social and interactional dimension of all human rights. A must-read for international human rights lawyers concerned about the critique of human rights' individualism.'
- Professor Samantha Besson, International Law of
Institutions Chair, Collège de France, Paris & Professor of Public International Law and European Law, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
'Every human being has deep needs for sociality: for contact, connection, intimacy, inclusion, recognition, and community. In this pioneering volume,
leading experts explore how social human rights can help fulfil these needs in our homes, workplaces, cities, nations, and virtual worlds. Since a human life is a life with others, human rights must include social rights too.'
- Leif Wenar, Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities, Stanford
University
Readership : UG, PG, Researchers interested in social philosophy and human rights
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Kimberley Brownlee, David Jenkins, and Adam Neal: Introduction
1. Henry Shue: Interlocking Rights, Layered Protections: Varieties of Justifications for Social Rights
2. Stephanie Collins: A Human Right to Relationships?
3.
Alexandra Couto: A Right to Opportunities for Meaningful Relationships
4. Kimberley Brownlee: The Right to Participate in the Life of the Society
5. Jenny Brown: What Becomes of the Right to Marry? Disestablishment and the Value of Marriage
6. S. Matthew Liao: Do Older People Have a
Right to Be Loved?
7. Jesse Tomalty: Social Rights at Work
8. Chiara Cordelli: Fair Equality of Opportunity, Social Relationships and Epistemic Advantage
9. Rowan Cruft: Communication and Rights
10. David Jenkins: The (Social) Right to the City
11. Elizabeth Brake: Rights to
Belong and Rights to Be Left Alone? Claims to Caring Relationships and Their Limits
12. Anca Gheaus: The Role of Solitude in the Politics of Sociability
13. Simon James Hope: Normative Disorientation and a Limitation of Human Rights
14. Bouke de Vries: Four Types of Anti-Loneliness
Policies
James Nickel and Kimberley Brownlee: Epilogue: Achieving Adequate Social Access
Index
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Kimberley Brownlee holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Political & Social Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. Her current work focuses on loneliness, belonging, social rights, and freedom of association. She is the author of Being Sure of Each Other (OUP, 2020) and
Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience (OUP, 2012).
David Jenkins is a lecturer in political theory at the University of Otago. He has published work on unconditional basic income, the politics of public space in India, homelessness, James Baldwin and recognition,
homelessness, structural injustice, and work.
Adam Neal is a Leverhulme Trust-funded doctoral student in Philosophy at the University of Warwick. His research concerns the social and interpersonal implications of poverty, the philosophy of work and the ethics of relationships.
Special Features
- A timely intervention into debates about humans' specifically social needs and the rights-claims they ground
- Contributes to the growing debate about solitude, loneliness, belonging, and inclusion
- The essays are philosophical reflections on a variety of policy interventions related
to social rights
- Explores the meaning of social rights and their complex relationship with civil, political, and economic rights
