MARC Record from Library of Congress

LEADER: 02062cam a2200277 a 4500
001 2010012998
003 DLC
005 20110312082452.0
008 100331s2010 mau b 001 0 eng
010 $a 2010012998
015 $aGBB083677$2bnb
016 7 $a015600375$2Uk
020 $a9780674048720 (alk. paper)
020 $a0674048725 (alk. paper)
035 $a(OCoLC)ocn555658436
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dBTCTA$dYDXCP$dUKM$dC#P$dCDX$dBWX$dBUR$dDLC
050 00 $aJC571$b.M88 2010
082 00 $a323.09$222
100 1 $aMoyn, Samuel.
245 14 $aThe last utopia :$bhuman rights in history /$cSamuel Moyn.
260 $aCambridge, Mass. :$bBelknap Press of Harvard University Press,$c2010.
300 $a337 p. ;$c22 cm.
520 $aHuman rights offer a vision of international justice that today's idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. Here, historian Samuel Moyn elevates that transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal's troubled present and uncertain future. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.--From publisher description.
505 0 $aHumanity before human rights -- Death from birth -- Why anticolonialism wasn't a human rights movement -- The purity of this struggle -- International law and human rights -- The burden of morality -- "Human rights" in Anglo-American news -- Human rights in the 1940s -- Human rights between 1968-1978.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
650 0 $aHuman rights$xHistory.