Despite the global popularity of rights language, nagging suspicions remain about the compatibility between the practice of rights claiming and democracy. Does rights claiming advances democratic freedom and equality or does it undermine participatory practices while reinforcing dominant forms of power? Should marginalized individuals and groups make rights claims to challenge oppression and injustice or should they seek an alternative language and form of political contestation? Making Rights Claims provides a unique entrée into these important and timely questions. Rather than simply taking ... More

Despite the global popularity of rights language, nagging suspicions remain about the compatibility between the practice of rights claiming and democracy. Does rights claiming advances democratic freedom and equality or does it undermine participatory practices while reinforcing dominant forms of power? Should marginalized individuals and groups make rights claims to challenge oppression and injustice or should they seek an alternative language and form of political contestation? Making Rights Claims provides a unique entrée into these important and timely questions. Rather than simply taking a side in the debates for or against rights claiming, Zivi argues that we first need to understand the relationship between rights and democracy anew. Combining insights from speech act theory with recent developments in democratic and feminist thought, she develops a theory of the performativity of rights claiming and argues that if we understand and study rights claims as speech acts that create the world they seem to represent, we will see that it is through rights claiming, that we constitute and reconstitute ourselves as democratic citizens, shape our communities, and transform constraining categories of identity in ways that may simultaneously advance and challenge aspects of democracy.