Rethinking Activism: Social Movements and the State over the Longue Durée

Abstract

This chapter explores the social and political production of human rights advocacy over the last 250 years, focusing on how social movements and human rights organizations relate to structures of political power, in the form of the modern nation state, and more particularly, variant forms of governmental power that exist in parts of the contemporary world. My main contentions are uncontroversial: that the practice of human rights activism is shaped by social and political context, and in turn have power to influence those social and political structures; that the changing context of globalization requires that human rights advocates need to rethink their approaches. What follows is an analysis of precisely what needs to be rethought and why. In this regard, I draw upon research into the changing nature of political authority in Africa and the Greater Middle East.