Singapore’s tough stance on human rights, however, does not negate the long and persistent existence of a human rights society that exists almost unknown to the world. The focus of this book is on independent activists and writers, documenting this tradition in Singapore society that has a legacy of defending universal values of individual human rights. It uncovers their discourses, main contentions, campaigns, survival strategies, prominent activists and their untold stories during Singapore’s first 50 years of independence.

This book argues that human rights cannot go global without going local. This important lesson from the winding debates on universalism and particularism raises intricate questions: what are human rights after all, given the dissent surrounding their foundations, content, and scope? What are legitimate deviances from classical human rights (law) and where should we draw “red lines”? Making a case for balancing conceptual openness and distinctness, this book addresses the key human rights issues of our time and opens up novel spaces for deliberation. It engages philosophical reasoning with law, politics, and religion and demonstrates that a meaningful relativist account of human rights is not only possible, but a sorely needed antidote to dogmatism and polarization.

This book analyses the equal citizenship claims of women and sexual and gender diverse people across several Asian jurisdictions. The volume examines the rich diversity of constitutional responses to sex, gender and sexuality in the region from a comparative perspective. Leading comparative constitutional law scholars identify 'opportunity structures' to explain the uneven advancement of gender equality through constitutional litigation and consider a combination of variables which shape the diverging trajectories of the jurisdictions in this study. The authors also embed the relevant constitutional and legal developments in their historical, political and social contexts. This deep contextual understanding of the relationship between sex, gender, sexuality and constitutionalism greatly enriches the analysis. The case studies reflect a variety of constitutional structures, institutional designs and contextual dynamics which may advance or impede developments with respect to sex, gender and sexuality. As a whole, the chapters further an understanding of the constitutional domain as a fruitful site for advancing gender equality and the rights of sexual and gender diverse people. The jurisdictions covered represent all Asian sub-regions including: East Asia (Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea), South East Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia), and South Asia (India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka). The introductory framework chapter situates these insights from the region within the broader global context of the evolution of gender constitutionalism.

This book explores, situates, and discusses the contours of urban inclusivity amidst and beyond the well-researched neoliberal turn in urban governance. While it is generally accepted that urban social issues are susceptible to global woes, these perceptions draw only limited attention to the plurality of interventions that cities undertake—or facilitate—in managing their social turfs. By addressing the apparent lack of theorizations on everyday heterogeneities in urban place-making, especially in non-Western contexts, this book highlights the role of inclusionary practices by different stakeholders as an explicit pattern of urbanization. It does so by focusing on old urban centralities that have an outspoken history in experimenting with inclusivity. The book is guided by two interrelated questions: (1) What particular urban settings promote inclusionary features in contrast to the conspicuous exclusionary mechanisms of market-led urbanization, and (2) how do we conceptualize these features in dialogue with concurrent urban theories that continue to grapple with the structural properties of exclusionary urbanization under the auspices of the neoliberal turn and gentrification? To answer these questions, the chapters provide a rich empirical account of inclusionary initiatives by the city governments, the voluntary organization sector, and informal communities, each revealing a unique new set of spatial approaches to urban inclusivity. The book concludes with the political implications of envisioning urban inclusivity as a negotiatory moment between key stakeholder interests in a capitalist society. Primarily intended for researchers and graduate students in the fields of urban geography, sociology, migration, and welfare studies, the book is also a valuable source for policymakers and practitioners in the fields of social planning and civil society at large.

Examining how policy affects the human rights of people with disabilities, this topical Handbook presents diverse empirical experiences of disability policy and identifies the changes that are necessary to achieve social justice.

This book critically examines the impact of globalization, changing power dynamics, migration, and evolving rights regimes on regional order, discourse of national governance, state and society relations, and the development of civil society in East Asia. Providing a textured, critical reading of East Asia as an economically, socially, and politically dynamic region, this book also presents the region as one shaped simultaneously by progressive as well as regressive pulls. Attentive to prevailing issues as well as to states’ and civil societies’ responses to them, it focuses on changing societies and politics in East Asia, particularly on shifting notions of citizenship, nationhood, and peoplehood. The contributions feature new and timely conclusions drawn from multidisciplinary fields including law, public policy, sociology, Asian studies, gender, sexuality, and ethnic studies and include direct testimonies from citizens of East and Southeast Asia. Globalization and Civil Society in East Asian Space will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, political science, and Asian studies more broadly.

(unseen), $12.95. Donnelly explicates and defends an account of human rights as universal rights. Considering the competing claims of the universality, particularity, and relativity of human rights, he argues that the historical contingency and particularity of human rights is completely compatible with a conception of human rights as universal moral rights, and thus does not require the acceptance of claims of cultural relativism. The book moves between theoretical argument and historical practice. Rigorous and tightly-reasoned, material and perspectives from many disciplines are incorporated. Paper edition Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Immiserizing growth occurs when growth fails to benefit, or harms, those at the bottom. It is not a new concept, appearing in some of the towering figures of the classical tradition of political economy including Malthus, Ricardo, and Marx. It is also not empirically insignificant, occurring in between 10% and 35% of cases. In spite of this, it has not received its due attention in the academic literature, dominated by the prevailing narrative that 'growth is good for the poor'. Immiserizing Growth: When Growth Fails the Poor challenges this view to arrive at a better understanding of when, why, and how growth fails the poor. Taking a diverse disciplinary perspective, Immiserizing Growth combines discussion of mechanisms of this troubling economic phenomenon with empirical data on trends in growth, poverty, and related welfare indicators. It draws on political economy, applied social anthropology, and development studies, including contributions from experts in these fields. A number of methodological approaches are represented including statistical analysis of household survey and cross-country data, detailed ethnographic work and case study analysis drawing on secondary data. Geographical coverage is wide including Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, the People's Republic of China, Singapore, and South Korea, in addition to cross-country analysis. This volume is the first full-length treatment of immiserizing growth, and constitutes an important step in redirecting attention to this major challenge.

Human 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. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. 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.

This important overview explores the connections between Singapore's past with historical developments worldwide until present day. The contributors analyse Singapore as a city-state seeking to provide an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of the global dimensions contributing to Singapore's growth. The book's global perspective demonstrates that many of the discussions of Singapore as a city-state have relevance and implications beyond Singapore to include Southeast Asia and the world. This vital volume should not be missed by economists, as well as those interested in imperial histor.