Understanding Social Action, Promoting Human Rights

Book excerpt: In Understanding Social Action, Promoting Human Rights, editors Ryan Goodman, Derek Jinks, and Andrew K. Woods bring together a stellar group of contributors from across the social sciences to apply a broad yet conceptually unified array of advanced social science research concepts to the study of human rights and human rights law. The book focus on three key methodological and substantive areas: actors, or social and political perspectives, including behavioral economics; communication, covering linguistics, media studies, and social entrepreneurship; and groups, via organizational theory, political economy, social movements, and complexity theory. Their goal is to provide a more comprehensive and more practical theory of social action, which necessarily requires a better understanding of individuals, organizations of individuals, and the ways in which both relate to other individuals and organizations.