Robin Stryker

LaDawn Haglund

"'Rights' language and practices have been used increasingly in the last decade to address conditions of economic, social, and cultural marginalization. It is still unclear, however, whether such efforts have been effective at promoting transformative social change. Have rights - as embodied in constitutions, statutory and judicial law, international conventions, resolutions, and treaties - fostered demonstrative improvements in the lives of the excluded? When, where, how, and under what conditions? This volume explores these questions through a systematic comparison of the mechanisms, actors, and pathways (MAPs) operating in a diversity of cases, analyzed by established scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds. The MAPs comparative approach provides insights into the conditions under which, and institutions through which, rights 'on the books' are more or less effectively translated into substantive rights realization. We suggest multiple pathways in which litigation may combine with non-legal mechanisms and strategies, including institutionalized and non-institutionalized politics and global and local networks and advocacy. The volume is unique in its synthesis and advancement of parallel issues and debates across different disciplines and geographic regions; it likewise brings into dialogue scholars of economic, social and cultural rights with the scholarship on civil and political rights. These cross-fertilizations allow us to conclude by proposing a series of testable hypotheses about how economic and social rights might be realized, as well as an agenda for future research to broaden and deepen empirical integration and theoretical synthesis in ways that can facilitate human rights realization worldwide."--Provided by publisher.

From Human Rights to Social Transformation

Closing the Rights Gap

Brian Powell

Richard T. Serpe

This book examines identity theory’s centrality within social psychology and its foundations within structural symbolic interaction, highlighting its links not only to other prominent sociological subfields, but also to other theoretical perspectives within and beyond sociology. The book provides a synthetic overview outlining the intellectual lineage of identity theory within structural symbolic interactionism, and how the “Indiana School” of identity theory and research, associated especially with Sheldon Stryker, relates to other symbolic interactionist traditions within sociology. It also analyses the latest developments in response to the push to integrate identity theory, which initially focused on role identities, with the study of personal, group and social identities. Further, it discusses the relationship between identity theory and affect control theory, providing a sense of the many substantive topics within sociology beyond social psychology for which the study of identity has important, sometimes underappreciated implications. The book concludes with a chapter summarizing the interrelated lessons learned while also reflecting on remaining key questions and challenges for the future development of identity theory.

Robin Stryker

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