The Human Right to Dominate

At the turn of the millennium, a new phenomenon emerged: conservatives, who just decades before had rejected the expanding human rights culture, began to embrace human rights in order to advance their political goals.

In this book, Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon account for how human rights--generally conceived as a counter-hegemonic instrument for righting historical injustices--are being deployed to further subjugate the weak and legitimize domination. Using Israel/Palestine as its main case study, The Human
Right to Dominate describes the establishment of settler NGOs that appropriate human rights to dispossess indigenous Palestinians and military think-tanks that rationalize lethal violence by invoking human rights. The book underscores the increasing convergences between human rights NGOs, security
agencies, settler organizations, and extreme right nationalists, showing how political actors of different stripes champion the dissemination of human rights and mirror each other's political strategies.

Indeed, Perugini and Gordon demonstrate the multifaceted role that this discourse is currently playing in the international arena: on the one hand, human rights have become the lingua franca of global moral speak, while on the other, they have become reconstrued as a tool for enhancing domination.


Author: Nicola Perugini, Neve Gordon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 06/26/2015
Pages: 216
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780199365005

Review Citation(s):
Choice 12/01/2015

About the Author

Nicola Perugini is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Middle East Studies and Italian Studies at Brown University.

Neve Gordon is Professor of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University and author of Israel's Occupation.