We live in a time when the most appalling social injustices and unjust human sufferings no longer seem to generate the moral indignation and the political will needed both to combat them effectively and to create a more just and fair society. If God Were a Human Rights Activist aims to strengthen the organization and the determination of all those who have not given up the struggle for a better society, and specifically those that have done so under the banner of human rights. It discusses the challenges to human rights arising from religious movements and political theologies that claim the presence of religion in the public sphere. Increasingly globalized, such movements and the theologies sustaining them promote discourses of human dignity that rival, and often contradict, the one underlying secular human rights. Conventional or hegemonic human rights thinking lacks the necessary theoretical and analytical tools to position itself in relation to such movements and theologies; even worse, it does not understand the importance of doing so. It applies the same abstract recipe across the board, hoping that thereby the nature of alternative discourses and ideologies will be reduced to local specificities with no impact on the universal canon of human rights. As this strategy proves increasingly lacking, this book aims to demonstrate that only a counter-hegemonic conception of human rights can adequately face such challenges.

Around the world, curriculum – hard sciences, social sciences and the humanities – has been dominated and legitimated by prevailing Western Eurocentric Anglophone discourses and practices. Drawing from and within a complex range of epistemological perspectives from the Middle East, Africa, Southern Europe, and Latin America, this volume presents a critical analysis of what the author, influenced by the work of Sousa Santos, coins curriculum epistemicides, a form of Western imperialism used to suppress and eliminate the creation of rival, alternative knowledges in developing countries. This exertion of power denies an education that allows for diverse epistemologies, disciplines, theories, concepts, and experiences. The author outlines the struggle for social justice within the field of curriculum, as well as a basis for introducing an Itinerant Curriculum Theory, highlighting the potential of this new approach for future pedagogical and political praxis.

“In this extraordinary memoir, one of the foremost human rights advocates of the last half century shares her brutally and hilariously honest story of finding God.” —Gary A. Haugen, president and CEO, International Justice Mission For years, Holly Burkhalter was a heartbroken idealist working on the front lines of change around the world—a witness to the brutalities of genocide, sex trafficking, rape, slavery, greed and injustice. Throughout her career she found herself angrily, sometimes hilariously at odds with a God who seemed distant at best and tyrannical at worst. Until the day she found herself drawn into a community of fellow activists who loved, worshiped, and served another God altogether—a God who hated injustice, too. And who had a plan for combating it. Us. It was the greatest, most radiant surprise of her life. Today Holly engages deeply with the questions that kept her from faith for most of her adult life: How could a good God allow brutality, mental illness, and AIDS? Why does God seem indifferent when we are in great need? What is our part in pushing back the darkness? Through riveting stories from her life, she wrestles these questions to the ground. Sometimes she wins. Sometimes the questions do. Either way, Good God, Lousy World & Me will transform your understanding of God’s presence and purpose—and ours—in a broken world. Now includes a small group discussion guide.

This book examines race, religion, and politics in the United States, illuminating their intersections and what they reveal about power and privilege. Drawing on both historic and recent examples, Stephanie Mitchem introduces readers to the ways race has been constructed in the United States, discusses how race and religion influence each other, and assesses how they shape political influence. Mitchem concludes with a chapter looking toward possibilities for increased rights and justice for all.

Visual Imagery and Human Rights Practice examines the interplay between images and human rights, addressing how, when, and to what ends visuals are becoming a more central means through which human rights claims receive recognition and restitution. The collection argues that accounting for how images work on their own terms is an ever more important epistemological project for fostering the imaginative scope of human rights and its purchase on reality. Interdisciplinary in nature, this timely volume brings together voices of scholars and practitioners from around the world, making a valuable contribution to the study of media and human rights while tackling the growing role of visuals across cultural, social, political and legal structures.

This book, the seventeenth instalment in the 24-volume series Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, explores the interrelationship between ideology, the state and human rights education reforms, setting it in a global context. The book examines major human rights education reforms and policy issues in a global culture. It focuses on the ambivalent and problematic relationship between the state, globalisation and human rights education discourses. Using a number of diverse paradigms, ranging from critical theory to historical-comparative research, the authors examine the reasons for, and the outcomes of human rights education reforms and policy. The authors discuss discourses surrounding the major dimensions affecting the human rights education, namely national identity, democracy, and ideology. These dimensions are among the most critical and significant dimensions defining and contextualising the processes surrounding the nation-building, identity politics and human rights education globally. With this as its focus, the chapters represent hand-picked scholarly research on major discourses in the field of human rights education reforms. The book draws upon recent studies in the areas of globalisation, equality, and the role of the state in human rights education reforms. Furthermore, the perception of globalisation as dynamic and multi-faceted processes clearly necessitates a multiple-perspective approach in the study of human rights education. This book provides that perspective commendably. It also critiques current human rights education practices and policy reforms. It illustrates the way shifts in the relationship between the state and human rights education policy. In the book, the authors, who come from diverse backgrounds and regions, attempt insightfully to provide a worldview of current developments in research concerning human rights education, and citizenship education globally. The book contributes, in a very scholarly way, to a more holistic understanding of the nexus between nation-state, human rights education both locally and globally.

Critiquing the State-centric and legalistic approach to implementing human rights, this book illustrates the efficacy of relying upon social institutions.