Beth J. Singer is Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.
Singer's theory of rights, an impressive development of social
accounts by pragmatists George Herbert Mead and John Dewey, was
developed in Operative Rights (1993). This successor volume
includes applications, lectures, replies to critics, and
clarifications. For Singer, Dewey, and Mead, rights exist only if
they are embedded in the operative practices of a community. People
have a right in a community if their claim is acknowledged, and if
they would acknowledge similar claims by others. Singer's account
contrasts with theories of natural rights, which state that humans
have rights by virtue of being human. Singer's account also differs
from Kantian attempts to derive rights from the necessary
conditions of rationality. While denying that rights exist
independently of a community's practices, Singer maintains that
rights to personal autonomy and authority ought to exist in all
communities. Group rights, an anathema among individualistic
theories, are from Singer's pragmatist perspective a valuable
institution. Singer's discussion of rights appropriate for minority
communities (e.g., the Bosnian Muslims and the Canadian Quebecois)
is particularly illuminating. Her book is a model of careful
reasoning. General libraries, and certainly academic libraries,
should have Singer's Operative Rights. The volume under review is a
good addition for research libraries and recommended for graduate
students and above."[Singer] examines the views of Rousseau, Mill,
and T. H. Green on human rights and those of Dewey and G. H. Mead
on the relationship between rights and the democratic process...
Recommended. * Choice *
[Singer] examines the views of Rousseau, Mill, and T. H. Green on
human rights and those of Dewey and G. H. Mead on the relationship
between rights and the democratic process.... Recommended. *
-Library Journal *
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