How can Speaking Rights to Power build political will to respond to human rights abuse? Through dozens of cases, this book shows how communication politics build recognition, solidarity, and social change. The book presents an innovative analysis of human rights rhetoric: strategic use of voice, framing, media, performance, and audience.

• PREFACE


• INTRODUCTION: Rhetoric For Rights


• 1) SPEAKING RIGHTS


• a. Why We Care: Constructing solidarity


• b. The message: Human rights as global social imagination


• c. Hearts and Minds: The politics of persuasion


• 2) HISTORICAL REPERTOIRES: ATTENTION MUST BE PAID


• a. Solidarity: The Dreyfus Affair


• b. Internationalism: The Spanish Civil War


• c. Symbolism: The Holocaust


• d. Globalization: Revolution 2.0


• 3) VOICES: HEROES, MARTYRS, WITNESSES, AND EXPERTS


• a. Heroes and martyrs


• i. Nelson Mandela


• ii. Aung San Suu Kyi


• iii. Mothers of the Disappeared


• b. Witnesses and experts


• i. Doctors Without Borders


• ii. Amartya Sen


• iii. Paul Farmer


• c. "The dog that didn't bark ": Death penalty campaigns in the U.S.


• 4) THE MESSAGE MATTERS: FRAMING THE CLAIM


• a. Poster children and sex slavery: framing human trafficking


• b. Reframing FGM: "Our bodies, our selves "


• c. Human rights in Colombia: when frames fail


• d. The rhetoric of recognition: Darfur vs. Congo


• 5) PLOTTING RIGHTS: THE POWER OF PERFORMANCE


• a. From tragedy to testimonial:


• i. Voices of Witness


• ii. The Vagina Monologues


• b. Allegory as protest performance: Indian Summer


• c. The Power of Parody


• 1. From Putin's penis to Pussy Riot


• 2. Speaking "truthiness " to power: the Colbert challenge


• 6) MOBILIZING MEDIA: IS THERE AN APP FOR THAT?


• a. Iran: The revolution will not be televised


• b. China: The Long March to human rights


• c. The Arab Spring: The Face book path to freedom


• d. Kony 2012: When buzz is not enough


• 7) AUDIENCES: CONSTRUCTING COSMOPOLITANS


• a. Building communities of conscience: Scholars at Risk


• b. Inter-ethnic solidarity: "My brother's keeper "


• i. The Japanese-American Citizens' League and Arab-Americans


• ii. African-Americans and the anti-apartheid movement


• iii. American Jews and Darfur


• iv. Armenian-Americans


• v. Dueling diasporas and burning bridges: Israel-Palestine


• c. Across the great divide: Men who care about violence against women


• i. Norm entrepreneurs: "a few good men "


• ii. Role change through small talk


• iii. Global Good Samaritans and gender-based asylum


• 8) CONSTRUCTING POLITICAL WILL


• a. Another world is possible


• b. The power of persuasion: The Liberian civil war


• c. Acting globally


• REFERENCES

Alison Brysk is Mellichamp Professor of Global Governance at the University of California-Santa Barbara.