POLT08006 2022 Globalisation, International Relations and Human Rights

 In the 21^st century, the Globalisation, International Relations and Human Rights agenda has broadened and deepened significantly to include a wide range of issues and actors. Our world seems to be more and more connected in ever increasingly complex ways.  However, many remain disconnected and all the more distant. The Globalisation and International Relations component of the module will look at such distances, and explore attempts to shrink them by actors such as the No Sweat Movement, Clean Clothes Campaigns etc. We will look at case studies such as the Genocide in Rwanda, its causes and the failure of the International Community to prevent it, and we will explore concepts such as responsibility. Introducing Geopolitics, we will further discuss, how political actors spatialise international politics. The HR component of the module analyses the promotion and protection of all people everywhere from political, legal, and social abuses and looks at the workings of the UN Human Rights Council. 

This study examines the power of the logo, noting its increasing capacity for making the product subservient. It then reaches its core argument - the now uneasy struggle between corporate power and anti-corporate activism - via sweatshop labour, submerged identity and subversive action.

A new book on the state of the world today -- from one of the most respected and revered political commentators alive Noam Chomsky- philosopher, political writer, fearless activist. No one has done more to question the hidden actors who govern our lives, calling the powers that be to account. Here he presents Who Rules the World?, his definitive account of those powers, how they work, and why we should be questioning them. From the dark history of the US and Cuba to China's global rise, from torture memos to sanctions on Iran, this book investigates the defining issues of our times and exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of America's policies and actions. The world's political and financial elite are now operating almost totally unconstrained by the so-called democratic structure. With climate change and nuclear proliferation threatening our very survival, dissenting voices have never been more necessary. Fiercely outspoken and rigorously argued, Who Rules the World?is an indispensable guide to how things really are.

A shocking expos of genocide denial It is twenty-five years since the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi of Rwanda when in the course of three terrible months more than 1 million people were murdered. In the intervening years a pernicious campaign has been waged by the perpetrators to deny this crime, with attempts to falsify history and blame the victims for their fate. Facts are reversed, fake news promulgated, and phoney science given credence. Intent to Deceive tells the story of this campaign of genocide denial from its origins with those who planned the massacres. With unprecedented access to government archives including in Rwanda Linda Melvern explains how, from the moment the killers seized the power of the state, they determined to distort reality of events. Disinformation was an integral part of their genocidal conspiracy. The gnocidaires and their supporters continue to peddle falsehoods. These masters of deceit have found new and receptive audiences, have fooled gullible journalists and unwary academics. With their seemingly sound research methods, the Rwandan gnocidaires continue to pose a threat, especially to those who might not be aware of the true nature of their crime. The book is a testament to the survivors who still live the horrors of the past. Denial causes them the gravest offence and ensures that the crime continues. This is a call for justice that remains perpetually delayed.

A Movement of Movements charts the strategic thinking behind the mosaic of movements currently challenging neoliberal globalization. Leading theorists and activiststhe Zapatistas Subcomandante Marcos, Chittaroopa Palit from the Indian Narmada Valley dam protests, Soweto anti-privatization campaigner Trevor Ngwane, Brazilian Sem Terra leader Joo Pedro Stedile, and many morediscuss their personal formation as radicals, the history of their movements, their analyses of globalization, and the nuts and bolts of mobilizing against a US-dominated world system. Explaining how the Global South and the experience of indigenous peoples have provided such a dynamic and practical inspiration, the contributors describe the roles anarchism and direct democracy have played, the contributions and limitations of the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre as a coordinating focus, and the effects of and responses to the economic downturn, September 11, and Washingtons war on terror. Their statements, at once personal and visionary, offer a dazzling new insight into the political imagination of the global resistance movements.

The authoritative first-hand account of contemporary Venezuela, Hugo Chvez places the countrys controversial and charismatic president in historical perspective, and examines his plans and programs. Welcomed in 1999 by the inhabitants of the teeming shanty towns of Caracas as their potential savior, and greeted by Washington with considerable alarm, this former golpista-turned-democrat took up the aims and ambitions of Venezuelas liberator, Simn Bolvar. Now in office for over a decade, President Chvez has undertaken the most wide-ranging transformation of oil-rich Venezuela for half a century, and dramatically affected the political debate throughout Latin America. In this updated edition, Richard Gott reflects on the achievements of the Bolivarian revolution, and the challenges that lie ahead.

This major new book offers a highly original account of ethical and political subjectivity in contemporary culture. It makes a strong case for a nonunitary or nomadic conception of the subject, in opposition to the claims of ideologies such as conservatism, liberal individualism and technocapitalism. Braidotti takes a bold stand against moral universalism, while offering a vigorous defence of nomadic ethics against the charges of relativism and nihilism. She calls for a new form of ethical accountability that takes "Life" as the subject, not the object, of enquiry. This ethics is presented as a fundamental reconfiguration of our being in the world and it calls for more conceptual creativity in the production of worldviews that can better enable us to behave ethically in a technologically and globally mediated world. The nomadic ethical subject negotiates successfully the complex tension between the multiplicity of political forces on the one hand and the sustained commitment to emancipatory politics on the other. Transpositions provides an intellectually rich guide to the leading critical debates of our time and will be of great interest to scholars and students throughout the humanities and social sciences.

The fatal embrace of human rights and neoliberalism Drawing on detailed archival research on the parallel histories of human rights and neoliberalism, Jessica Whyte uncovers the place of human rights in neoliberal attempts to develop a moral framework for a market society. In the wake of the Second World War, neoliberals saw demands for new rights to social welfare and self-determination as threats to civilisation. Yet, rather than rejecting rights, they developed a distinctive account of human rights as tools to depoliticise civil society, protect private investments and shape liberal subjects.

The rise of international jihad and Western ultra-nationalism In the Management of Savagery, Max Blumenthal excavates the real story behind Americas dealings with the world and shows how the extremist forces that now threaten peace across the globe are the inevitable flowering of Americas imperial designs. Washingtons secret funding of the mujahedin provoked the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. With guns and money, the United States has ever since sustained the extremists, including Osama Bin Laden, who have become its enemies. The Pentagon has trained and armed jihadist elements in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya; it has launched military interventions to change regimes in the Middle East. In doing so, it created fertile ground for the Islamic State and brought foreign conflicts home to American soil. These failed wars abroad have made the United States more vulnerable to both terrorism as well as native ultra-nationalism. The Trump presidency is the inevitable consequence of neoconservative imperialism in the postCold War age. Trumps dealings in the Middle East are likely only to exacerbate the situation.

In the two decades following the fall of the Berlin Wall, global capitalism became entrenched in its modern, neoliberal form. Its triumph was so complete that the word capitalism itself fell out of use in the absence of credible political alternatives. But with the outbreak of financial crisis and global recession in the twenty-first century, capitalism is once again up for discussion. The status quo can no longer be taken for granted. As Eric Hobsbawm argues in his acute and elegant introduction to this modern edition, in such times The Communist Manifesto emerges as a work of great prescience and power despite being written over a century and a half ago. He highlights Marx and Engelss enduring insights into the capitalist system: its devastating impact on all aspects of human existence; its susceptibility to enormous convulsions and crises; and its fundamental weakness.

This volume sets out to describe the political and philosophical underpinnings of the idea of human rights by bringing together a collection of original essays by a group of highly distinguished theorists. Recognizing that Western insistence on the universality of the concept of human rights can also function as a diplomatic cover for post-colonial interventions, it insists that the campaign for human rights must take into account the varied social and economic environments in different nation states that affect the ways such demands can be implemented. This campaign is most effective when demonstrating international solidarity with those whose basic rights are jeopardized or denied.

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