Dangerous rights: of citizens and humans

In this chapter I will explore the discrepancy between Arendt’s and Agamben’s pessimism concerning human rights, and the determined optimism of ‘well-meaning idealists’. I will explore the cosmopolitan project to abolish the distinction between citizens and non-citizens through human rights from a sociological perspective. As sociologists we are well-equipped to study how the legalisation of human rights works in practice. In the following section I consider how the legalisation of human rights is working in terms of what sociologists have traditionally seen as the three dimensions of citizenship within national states: civil, political and social rights. I will then go on to consider in more detail a critical example concerning the civil rights of non- citizens, looking at the relationship between national civil liberties and human rights in the case of terrorist suspects detained without charge or trial in the UK. I conclude by considering the dangers and the potentialities of human rights today.