Democracy, human rights and the punitive discourse

This presentation is part of my postdoctoral research, which is being done at Nucleo de Estudos da Violência (Center for the Study of Violence), of the University of Sao Paulo. My research consists in analysing how the expressions "human rights", "democracy"  and "punishment" are being mobilized by the political and human rights movement discourses.

One of the main questions that appeared in my research concerns the way the expressions "human rights" and "democracy" have been confused  and used as justification for demanding severe criminal penalties. In other words, both human rights and democracy categories are mobilized to support the reproduction of an undemocratic and non-humanistic system of penalties. As the empirical material, I am working work with newspaper articles and, more specifically, editorials written by politicians and human rights activists on the issues of human rights and democracy.