“Economic, social and cultural rights are more important contributors to human dignity than are civil and political rights.” Do you agree?
Advice on Essay writing
• What is expected of you?
? read widely and critically analyse the literature on any given topic.
? have a coherent argument than runs throughout your essay and directly addresses the essay question.
? provide evidence to support your argument. Don’t forget to address arguments that are contrary to yours.
? source the content of your essay by using a recognised referencing system (e.g. Harvard or Cambridge systems) which shows where you sourced the information from.
? organise your information in a logical way – i.e. your essay should have a clear structure with an introduction, body and conclusion.
? address the question (including all its parts). Stay focused on the question without going off on a tangents and make sure that every paragraph contributes to addressing the question.
• The Introduction
‘Outline the argument and structure’
? It is important that you make a direct statement of your argument in your introduction. The examiner should not be left guessing about what it is you are attempting to argue. Try to answer the essay question in a nutshell. A sentence beginning with words like “This essay will argue that… because…’ might be helpful here. Make sure that you also explain the logic of your position by explaining why you take the position you do.
? You must directly address the essay question but try to avoid simply restating it; instead interpret or elaborate on it. It might be helpful for you to restate the question in a way that clarifies any ambiguities. If your response narrows the question in some way it would be helpful to justify why you have chosen to focus on the issues you have chosen. It might be valuable to make mention of other issues or approaches that you could have chosen but have not.
? Tell the examiner what the essay is going to cover by outlining the structure of the essay in a way the preview the major issues, concepts and theories you are going to use.
? It is perfectly acceptable to be explicit by using phrases like ‘This essay will argue…’, ‘this essay contends…’, ‘This essay begins with a discussion of…’ ‘The issue of sovereignty will be used to explicate…’, ‘The second section will argue….’
? Always review and edit your introduction after you have written the body of your essay. Make sure what you are introducing matches what you actually say.
? Remember: after reading your introduction the examiner should be perfectly clear on what position you are taking on the question (i.e. what your argument is); what evidence/issues/concepts you will use to argue it (i.e. what the essay will cover); and what limits you have placed upon the discussion.
The Body
‘Tell them’
? This is where you develop your argument, build your case, present your evidence and explain the relevant issues and theories.
? It might be helpful to think of your essay as a debate between competing explanations (or theories) on a topic. This doesn’t mean you should simply present the different sides of an argument and ‘sit on the fence’ – you should take a stand on a topic and argue your preferred case throughout the essay.
? Many students forget to be analytical and simply describe the major issues they have uncovered during their research. Don’t fall into this trap. It is important to continually analyse and interpret the descriptive evidence and explain how it impacts upon the essay question. It is through your analysis of the evidence/research that your argument is made and your case is presented.
? It is vital that you demonstrate how all of the information you are presenting is relevant to the essay question. If it is not relevant it shouldn’t be there.
? It might be helpful to think of each paragraph as a ‘mini-essay’ that contains one main point which is defined, clarified and supported with evidence. Each point should relate directly to the essay question. If it doesn’t, ask yourself why it is there.
? When using quotations make sure that you contextualise the quotation in a way that makes clear why it has been included. E.g.: ‘US Special Climate Envoy Todd Stern acknowledges the political constrains on governments when he defends Obama Administration climate policy by saying ‘we are jumping as high as the political system will tolerate.’ Where possible you should seek to critically engage with the ideas you reference – explain whether you agree or disagree with an author and why. If there is no good reason to use a quotation it is usually better to re-express the idea in your own words.
• The Conclusion
‘Summarise your argument’
? The conclusion should summarise the argument you have developed
? Remember that the whole point of the essay was to answer the essay question so your summary and all of the conclusions you make should be directly related the question at hand.
? Again, you may be explicit and use phrases like: ‘this essay has argued that…’, ‘as this essay has shown…’.
? It is (of course) a good idea to write your conclusion last. After you have written it, compare it to your introduction and make sure your argument, the points you said you were about to make/discuss etc, correspond to your argument and the points you are summing-up in the conclusion.
? Remember that the conclusion is the last thing the examiner will read so write it well. Really try and pull all of your analysis and evidence together and succinctly detail how it logically supports your argument (which should be reiterated for the reader). The well written conclusion (of a well written essay) should leave the reading agreeing with your argument, even if they didn’t at the beginning.
Topic 10a: Human Rights
“Whatever their avowed purpose, do human rights only reduce suffering? Do they (promise to) reduce it in a particular way that precludes or negates other possible ways? And if they reduce suffering, what kinds of subjects and political (or antipolitical) cultures do they bring into being as they do so, what kinds do they transform or erode, and what kinds do they aver? What are the implications of human rights assuming center stage as an international justice project, or as the progressive international justice project? Human rights activism is a moral- political project and if it displaces, competes with, refuses, or rejects other political projects, including those also aimed at producing justice, then it is not merely a tactic but a particular form of political power carrying a particular image of justice, and it will behoove us to inspect, evaluate, and judge it as such.”
Wendy Brown – ‘‘The Most We Can Hope For . . .’:Human Rights & The Politics of Fatalism, The South Atlantic Quarterly 103:2/3, Spring/Summer 2004
“Where after all, do human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Ye they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world”.
Eleanor Roosevelt
“We do not accept that human rights constitute a new theology, a self-evident set of objective principles…To take for granted the universality of human rights based on God, reason, nature, or positive law serves only to obscure the historical factors behind the emergence of this ideologically powerful yet increasingly vulnerable modern concept. This book is premised on a more mundane set of explanations – that human rights derive in the first instance from ideas of justice expressed in the organized struggle of people seeking a better world; that western liberal states initially proclaimed allegiance to human rights in order to mobilize popular support for world wars; that postwar public pressure to fulfil such promises compelled states to negotiate the adoption of international laws recognizing human rights; that the resulting human rights framework inevitably reflected sovereign state interests more than public expectations; that the victorious powers, the United States in particular, played a “more equal than others” role in channelling human rights toward rhetorical promotion and away from practical protection; that the human rights idea in the UN was further split into numerous treaties and quasi-legal instruments, with oversight responsibility divided among a host of overlapping bodies with competing bureaucratic interests; that the weak set of existing enforcement measures, such as they are, came about primarily through civil society activization; and that, broadly speaking, the fragmented and relatively toothless international human rights system we have today is consequence of this overall political history.”
Roger Normand and Sarah Zaidi, 2008 Human Rights at the UN Bloomington:Indiana UP.
Anthony Chase
What is the source of human rights’ resonance and does that legitimize working on human rights transnationally? This article responds both to human rights critics (among them relativists, poststructuralists, and some Queer theorists) and supporters (legal, philosophical, and historical universalists) who assume human rights’ source is in some sort of singular foundation. This is a shared misconception. Human rights’ global resonance does not come from one foundation but rather flows out of human rights’ mutually dependent groundings in law, politics, institutions, and norms. A key element to the intersections among these groundings is the impact of transnational conversations in which local actors have had a substantial stake and which have contributed to human rights’ continuing rearticulations. The vitality of the intersections between human rights and bottom-up social movements is what gives the lie both to overly top-down conceptualizations of human rights as well as to overly structuralist dismissals of human rights. Each de-emphasizes the essential role of human agency, the saliency of transnational normative networks, and the ways in which individual and collective action anchor human rights in contemporary politics. This will be illustrated by reference to movements for rights regarding sexual orientation and gender identity, even (or especially) in the controversial context of the Arab world. If this argument has merit, then we can move beyond the question of whether or not human rights in the abstract are inherently legitimate or illegitimate. Instead, the question becomes the degree to which specific human rights and specific human rights claims have flowed out of everyday local struggles. It is the answers to that question that will indicate the legitimacy and resonance (or lack thereof) of specific human rights.
Generations of Rights:
Commentators sometimes talk of generations of human rights (not chronological order):
first generation: civil and political rights (right to life, abolition slavery, fair trial, prohibition of torture, recognition before the law etc.
second generation: social and economic rights such as right to work, social security, adequate standard of living and education
third generation: (more flexible enforcement mechanisms): right to development, environmental protection, peace, self-determination.
Timeline (mostly drawn from Martin Dixon Chapter 12 and NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “A Curious Grapevine” by William Korey (St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1998)