Background
Howard-Hassmann was born on September 3, 1948 in Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom. She is the daughter of Michael and Mary Howard. Her mother was Scottish, her father was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany.
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1978
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1986
(Some critics contend that the concept of universal human ...)
Some critics contend that the concept of universal human rights reflects the West's anticommunitarian, self-centered individualism, which disproportionately focuses on individual autonomy. In this book Rhoda Howard-Hassmann refutes this claim, arguing instead that communities can exist in modern Western societies if they protect the whole spectrum of individual human rights, not only civil and political but also economic rights.Howard-Hassmann supports the case for the universality of human rights by showing community to be inherent in and essential to the realization of universal human rights. She makes an original contribution to the study of universal human rights through her review of those types of communitarian thought that underlie cultural relativist attacks on human rights. Howard-Hassmann defends individual rights against conservative and leftist communitarian challenges emanating from both the Western world and the Third World. Exploring conservative viewpoints, she examines traditionalists of the Third Worldfocusing on African and Muslim traditionalist schools, as well as reactionary conservatives of the Western world. Howard-Hassmann then looks at challenges from the left, including collectivists, who see universal human rights as the products of cultural imperialism or capitalist exploitation, and status radicals, such as feminists or black activists, who are critics of liberalism.Howard-Hassmann also criticizes what she dubs radical capitalism” or social minimalism,” the idea that there is a very narrow range of true human rights, including the right to property, and that citizens are responsible for no one but themselves. A community, in Howard-Hassmann's view, is a group of people who all feel a sense of obligation to all others in the group. For a community to work in the modern world, everyone must be treated equally, enjoy societal respect, and be able to act autonomously in her or his everyday decisionmaking. Some critics contend that the concept of universal human rights reflects the West's anticommunitarian, self-centered individualism, which disproportionately focuses on individual autonomy. In this book Rhoda Howard-Hassmann refutes this claim, arguing instead that communities can exist in modern Western societies if they protect the whole spectrum of individual human rights, not only civil and political but also economic rights.Howard-Hassmann supports the case for the universality of human rights by showing community to be inherent in and essential to the realization of universal human rights. She makes an original contribution to the study of universal human rights through her review of those types of communitarian thought that underlie cultural relativist attacks on human rights. Howard-Hassmann defends individual rights against conservative and leftist communitarian challenges emanating from both the Western world and the Third World. Exploring conservative viewpoints, she examines traditionalists of the Third Worldfocusing on African and Muslim traditionalist schools, as well as reactionary conservatives of the Western world. Howard-Hassmann then looks at challenges from the left, including collectivists, who see universal human rights as the products of cultural imperialism or capitalist exploitation, and status radicals, such as feminists or black activists, who are critics of liberalism.Howard-Hassmann also criticizes what she dubs radical capitalism” or social minimalism,” the idea that there is a very narrow range of true human rights, including the right to property, and that citizens are responsible for no one but themselves. A community, in Howard-Hassmann's view, is a group of people who all feel a sense of obligation to all others in the group. For a community to work in the modern world, everyone must be treated equally, enjoy societal respect, and be able to act autonomously in her or his everyday decisionmaking.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081332579X/?tag=2022091-20
1995
Howard-Hassmann was born on September 3, 1948 in Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom. She is the daughter of Michael and Mary Howard. Her mother was Scottish, her father was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany.
Rhoda Howard-Hassmann attended four high schools in Ontario: T.A. Blakelock, Bell High School, Ripley District High School and Stanford Collegiate and Vocational Institute. She studied at McGill University from 1965 to 1976, earning a BA in Political Science in 1969, a MA in Sociology in 1972 and a PhD in Sociology in 1976.
Howard-Hassmann has held several visiting research and teaching appointments. She conducted doctoral research in Ghana in 1974 and 1977 for her Colonialism and Underdevelopment in Ghana. She was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, South Africa in August 1992.
Howard-Hassmann was a teacher in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary for one year, after which she spent 27 years as a professor in the Department of Sociology, McMaster University. She originated and directed McMaster's now-defunct undergraduate minor Theme School on International Justice and Human Rights (1993–99), one of the world's first undergraduate non-law programs in human rights.
In 1999 Rhoda changed her legal name from Rhoda E. Howard to Rhoda E. Hassmann, but she publishes her academic work as Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann. She has lived in Hamilton, Ontario since 1976.
Also she was a visiting professor in different Universities in Africa, Sweden and United States.
Rhoda was a visiting scholar at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, University of Utrecht, from July through December 2000.
Since 2003, Dr. Howard-Hassmann has held a Canada Research Chair in International Human Rights at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. There she held a joint appointment in the Department of Global Studies and the Balsillie School of International Affairs until 2014 when her appointment changed to the School of International Policy and Governance (part of the Balsillie School) and the Department of Political Science.
Howard-Hassmann is the author and editor of several books and articles on international human rights.
She is also co-editor of The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past (2008), Economic Rights in Canada and the United States (2006), and The International Handbook of Human Rights (1987), as well as Slippery Citizenship (with Margaret Walton-Roberts).
In 2014 Howard-Hassmann's did major research project on state-induced famine, focusing especially on North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
In 1989 her book Human Rights in Commonwealth Africa received an Honourable Mention for the Joel Gregory Book Prize from the Canadian Association of African Studies.
In 2006 she was named the first Distinguished Scholar of Human Rights by the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association.
In 2010, as a Senior Editor of the Encyclopedia of Human Rights, Howard-Hassmann shared in the honour of receiving the Dartmouth Medal from the Reference and User Services Association.
In 2014 Howard-Hassmann was named Distinguished Scholar of Human Rights by the Human Rights Section of the International Studies Association.
(Some critics contend that the concept of universal human ...)
1995Howard-Hassmann's interests over the years have included African studies, human rights in Canada, Canadian foreign and refugee policy, development and globalization studies, comparative genocide studies, women's studies, gay and lesbian studies, reparative justice and official apologies, human security, and theoretical and methodological issues in human rights.
Rhoda Howard-Hassmann married Peter J. McCabe in 1978, and she is the mother of one son, born in 1981.
