RIGHTSSpace and the conflict of rights and !eedoms

What are rights? Where do they come !om?

MANY KINDS OF RIGHTS

Human rights

Employee rights

Traveller’s rights

Patient’s rights

Attorney-Client privilege

Union rights

Members of Wisconsin’s public service unions protest at the statehouse in Madison in opposition to ‘union-busting’ measures proposed by the Governor, March 2011.

Stranded: Today, Canada, the EU, and the US (among others) a% have a passenger bi% of rights--ensuring a minimum standard of accommodation in the event of delays, cance%ations, or over-bookings.

VARIOUS RIGHTS = RIGHTS IN CONFLICT

So many rights are being articulated at once:

Even the international human rights texts have ‘overlapping’ and simultaneous rights (e.g. “rights of the child”, “right to privacy”, “right to the body” versus “right to agency”

DO WE HAVE RIGHTS?

How do we know we have rights? How do we know our rights have been violated?

How do we address rights violations?

Where do express our discontent or take our grievances?

WHERE DO RIGHTS COME FROM?

Do they come from a religious power? The state? Institutions? Group membership?

How might we see rights as having a geography? In what ways are rights spatially relevant?

Rights at work: the supermarket theory

UNIVERSAL, BUT...

Human rights are activated in response to a perceived violation.

The knowledge of that violation, your rights, and the mechanisms to have your rights accommodated, is not universal.

Rights are spatially bounded, conditionally guaranteed by states, employers, institutions (e.g. Miranda warnings in the US, Ontario Human Rights code)

Rights are performative. We activate rights and call them into being.