Human Rights in Canada

Canadians framed their grievances with reference to Christianity or British justice rather than human rights. A historical sociological approach to human rights reveals how rights are historically contingent|This book shows how human rights became the primary language for social change in Canada and how a single decade became the locus for that emergence. The author argues that the 1970s was a critical moment in human rights history-one that transformed political culture|and foreign policy. Human Rights in Canada is one of the first sociological studies of human rights in Canada. It explains that human rights are a distinct social practice|and how new rights claims are built upon past claims. This book explores governments' tendency to suppress rights in periods of perceived emergency; how Canada's rights culture was shaped by state formation; how social movements have advanced new rights claims; the changing discourse of rights in debates surrounding the constitution; how the international human rights movement shaped domestic politics and foreign policy; and much more. In addition to drawing on secondary literature in law|and it documents those social conditions that made human rights significant at a particular historical moment.

A central theme in this book is that human rights derive from society rather than abstract legal principles. Therefore|and materials produced by non-governmental organizations.|and political science|archival research|history|law|litigation and case law|newspapers|opinion polls|social movements|sociology|this study looked to published government documents|we can identify the boundaries and limits of Canada's rights culture at different moments in our history. Until the 1970s