Vulnerability and Human Rights (Essays on Human Rights)
Bryan Turner's Vulnerability and Human Rights is a concise but wide-ranging discussion of cutting-edge themes in sociology, seen through the prism and oriented toward the realization of the human rights paradigm. Avoiding foundationalist fallacies, it seeks to establish a grounding for the idea of human rights in our unavoidable vulnerability. The book will make a major contribution to the growing contemporary discussion in the field. --John Torpey, University of British ColumbiaProfessor Turner's work stands as a genuine contribution to an area of human rights analysis much written about but little felt as a problem for individuals--in microscopic no less than macroscopic dimensions. He examines how the process of life-taking is the perverse reverse of life-giving. It thus merits thoughtful reading and analysis by those for whom such weighty matters still form part of the sociological vocabulary. Professor Thomas Cushman's new series for Sanford G. Thatcher and Penn State University Press merits serious attention. If this first volume in the series is an indicator of things to come, it also deserves wide professional support. --Irving Louis Horowitz, Contemporary SociologyProfessor Turner's work stands as a genuine contribution to an area of human rights analysis much written about but little felt as a problem for individuals--in microscopic no less than macroscopic dimensions. He examines how the process of life-taking is the perverse reverse of life-giving. It thus merits thoughtful reading and analysis by those for whom such weighty matters still form part of the sociological vocabulary. Professor Thomas Cushman's new series for Sanford G. Thatcher and Penn State University Press merits serious attention. If this first volume in the series is an indicator of things to come, it also deserves wide professional support. --Irving Louis Horowitz, Contemporary Sociology