Small places: the home-coming of human rights in the Netherlands

Human rights as Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, begin in small places: 'Unless they have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere'. In this inaugural lecture on the sociology of human rights, Barbara Oomen sets out a model for understanding how human rights acquire meaning in such places. Next to the laws involved, like the constitutional dispensation of a given country, it is important to look at legal culture and legal consciousness and the actors involved. She applies this model to come to an understanding of the paradox of human rights in the Netherlands. Whilst human rights play... Mehr ...