Introduction

In recent years, the dramatic deterioration in respect for human rights across the globe has led to a proliferation of denial and fatalism. The impetus behind this edited collection is a determination to reject both. Debates on the protection of human rights have tended to be dominated by, on one side, those determined to celebrate ‘progress’ in the midst of calamity and, on the other, adherents to a bleak worldview who portray the protection of human rights as a naïve, peripheral and doomed venture. Though clearly both camps are diametrically opposed, there are certain commonalities; in particular both tend towards a polarising discursive stance that limits scope for productive debate. Dissenters are invariably portrayed by adherents to each position as simply wrong, and an intellectual chasm thus yawns.