Why is it that human rights are considered inviolable norms of justice at local and global
scales although the number of their violations has steadily increased in modern history? On the
surface this paradox seems to be reducible to a straightforward discrepancy between idealism
and reality in humanitarian affairs but Imagining Human Rights complicates the picture by
offering interdisciplinary perspectives on the imaginary status of human rights. By that the
contributors mean not merely subject to imagination open to interpretation or far too abstract
but also formative of a social imaginary with emphatic identifications and shared values. From
a variety of disciplinary perspectives they explore critical ways of engaging in rigorous
interdisciplinary conversations about the origin and language of human rights personal dignity
redistributive justice and international solidarity. Together they show how and why a careful
examination of the intersection between disciplinary investigations is essential for imagining
human rights at large. Examples range from the legitimacy of land ownership rights and the
inadequacy of human faculty to make sense of mass violence in visual representation to the
stewardship of human rights promoters and the genealogy of human rights.
