Australia/Pacific

This article examines whether the content of the International Human Rights Covenants and the costs associated with their ratification influence the decision of countries to join. The author evaluates three theoretical perspectives-rationalism, world polity institutionalism, and the clash of civilizations-with data for more than 130 countries between 1966 and 1999. Rationalists contend that treaty ratification is tightly coupled with internal sovereignty arrangements, human rights practices, and ideological commitments, all of which become more important as treaty enforcement strengthens.

This article aims at drawing on sociological insights into reconciliation processes which emerge out of ethnic, national and state conflicts. First, the concept of reconciliation is interrogated as an instrument for sociological enquiry. The article locates the concept’s lexical origins in western/northern Christian traditions and identifies the usages of religious connotations in secularised strands of conflict resolution theory and praxis.

This paper examines sociologists' current interest in the topics of human rights and globalization. Some describe a world where everyone has rights (or at least a modicum of rights), because we are all human, and we all interact and communicate with one another in a global environment which will (it is argued), result in greater toleration and recognition of differences.

There is a wealth of evidence that disabled people experience far higher levels of unemployment and underemployment than non-disabled peers. Yet hitherto sociologists have paid scant attention to the structural causes of this issue. Drawing on a socio/political or social model of disability perspective this paper argues for a reconfiguration of the meaning of disability and work in order to address this problem. It is also suggested that such a strategy will make a significant contribution to the struggle for a fairer and equitable global society.

Although the study of citizenship has been an important development in contemporary sociology, the nature of rights has been largely ignored. The analysis of human rights presents a problem for sociology, in which cultural relativism and the fact-value distinction have largely destroyed the classical tradition of the natural-law basis for rights discourse. This critique of the idea of universal rights was prominent in the work of Marx, Durkheim and Weber.

This article defends the claim that human rights is a legitimate subject of inquiry for sociologists, and proceeds to present the case for a particular application of sociological theory to the understanding of gross human rights violations. Sociology, it claims, is equipped to study the dynamics of social institutions – socially constructed language-structures within which social action is framed – and since the mid-20th century, human rights has become such an institution.

This article discusses the transformation of the classical nation-state, as articulated in contemporary struggles for recognition. Elaborating neoinstitutional world polity theory, it analyses global institutional changes that underlie those transformations. It is claimed that the worldwide diffusion of the classical nation-state model itself has had paradoxical consequences, which have in the long run generated a new model of multicultural citizenship, legitimating the decoupling of state membership, individual rights and national identity.

In the last decade, human trafficking has emerged as a new area of research for sociologists and other scholars across a wide range of fields. Globalization has exacerbated the illicit trade of people and their parts within and across territorial borders, generating concern among activists and academics and prompting the development of a burgeoning literature with varying concerns and viewpoints. This article reviews what we know about human trafficking dynamics and trends, its causes, and current responses, including critiques of anti-trafficking efforts.

Since the late 1990s, a growing body of literature has researched the cross-national diffusion of policies that affect lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities. Studies stemming from world society consider how state ties to newly emergent global norms regarding the treatment of LGBT communities are a driver of this process. A shortcoming of these studies, however, is that they do not adequately consider which type of ties to global norms are most meaningful for policy adoption.

The authors examine the impact of the international human rights regime on governments' human rights practices.