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Two paradoxes constitute the discourse of human rights. One concerns the relationship between “the human” and “the political”; the other invokes the opposition between the universalist moral character of human rights and the practical, particular context in which they become manifest. This chapter argues how and why these paradoxes will not go away – a good thing, too – over and against classical and contemporary writers who have argued for the priority of one or the other. After elucidating the powerful and enduring character of these paradoxes in history and political theory, I argue that human rights discourse only makes sense in terms of the arguably more primary discourses of democracy, political virtue, and justice if it is to avoid being a deceptive, rhetorical cover for dubious political practices.

One of the dominant features of the age of globalization is the rampant expansion of organization. In particular, formal, standardized, rationalized, and empowered forms of organization expand in many domains and locales. We discuss these features of organization, showing that hyper-rationalization and actorhood are main themes of organization across presumably distinct social sectors and national societies. We explain the ubiquity of such organizational forms in institutional terms, seeing the global culture of universalism, rationality, and empowered actorhood as supporting the diffusion of managerial roles and perspectives.

The system of government-run poor relief in England, dating from the sixteenth century, was not replicated in Europe until the mid- to late 1800s. In order to understand why, poor relief must be placed within the socio-economic framework of capitalism, a system of surplus appropriation which originated in the novel class relations of English agriculture. The English way of dealing with poverty was distinctive and this distinctiveness was rooted in the unparalleled expansion of capitalism in that country in the early modern era. Assistance to the poor in England emerged alongside a qualitative social change, wherein an economy rooted in custom was transformed into one based on the competitive social relations of capitalism. The main conclusion of this article is that the welfare state was not a product of industrialization but of the class structure of agrarian capitalism.