Human Rights and Memory

Memories of historical events like the Holocaust have played a key role in the internationalization of human rights. Their importance lies in their ability to bridge the universal and the particular—the universality of human values and the particularity of memories rooted in local human experiences. In Human Rights and Memory, Levy and Sznaider trace the growth of human rights discourse since World War II and interpret its deployment of memories as a new form of cosmopolitanism, exemplifying a dynamic through which global concerns become part of local experiences, and vice versa.

“In this inspirational text about the impact of human-rights principles and normative cosmopolitanism on both the nation-state and international relations, Levy and Sznaider address the dominant moral problems of our time. Why should I care? Who is my brother? What should I remember? Through a defense of cosmopolitan ethics, they provide convincing answers to the perplexities of rights from Hannah Arendt onwards, namely, the specific rights of citizens versus the universal Rights of Man. Human rights matter because modern states can no longer abuse their own citizens with impunity in the name of national unity. Given the slide toward authoritarianism and state security, the task of defending both cosmopolitanism and human rights has a definite political urgency to which Human Rights and Memory offers a decisive response.”—Bryan S. Turner, Presidential Professor, the City University of New York, the Graduate Center, “Offering a comprehensive and elegant defense of both human rights and cosmopolitanism, Levy and Sznaider have developed a spirited account of the ethics of care against the security state and the politics of fear.”—Bryan S. Turner, Presidential Professor, the City University of New York, Graduate Center, “This excellent book shows that the human rights regime gives rise to a geography of human rights that founds a new geography of power both within and between states. Within states it empowers powerless groups, and between states it empowers powerful states to intervene. This is part of a cosmopolitan realism that Levy and Sznaider are promoting and practicing very convincingly—a must-read.”—Ulrich Beck, Munich University and the London School of Economics, “Human Rights and Memory is a useful contribution to the sociology of cosmopolitanism, rights and memory, and will prove to be a handy text for researchers and postgraduates in the field.”—Peter Manning, British Journal of Sociology, “[Human Rights and Memory] raises new questions and should motivate rich lines of future empirical inquiry. I highly recommend it to scholars and graduate students in sociology, philosophy, law, political science, and history, to all who share an interest in memory and human rights.”—Joachim J. Savelsberg, Memory Studies

Daniel Levy is Associate Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University.Natan Sznaider is Professor of Sociology in the School of Behavioral Sciences at the Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo, Israel.