Living Human Rights: From Rights to Everyday Justice

Human rights are frequently framed as legal guarantees, constitutional principles, or international norms. Yet their significance ultimately depends on how they shape everyday life. This session introduces the concept of living human rights, defined as the realization of human dignity through everyday experiences of care, recognition, inclusion, and equitable access to social, cultural, and political life.

The session invites sociological inquiry into the processes through which human rights become meaningful beyond legal and policy frameworks. It seeks to understand how dignity is negotiated, measured, institutionalized, and contested across diverse settings, and how rights are translated into everyday practices by public institutions, professional actors, educational systems, cultural initiatives, and local governance.

We welcome theoretical, empirical, and comparative studies addressing themes such as human rights indicators, access to justice, psychosocial well-being, ethics of care, cultural and educational rights, transitional justice, memory, social inclusion, policy implementation, and rights-based approaches to development and peace. Papers examining methodological innovations in assessing human rights or interdisciplinary perspectives on justice are especially encouraged.

By positioning human rights as lived social realities rather than solely legal entitlements, this session aims to deepen sociological understandings of how dignity is experienced, protected, and advanced across diverse societies. It seeks to foster dialogue on the relationship between rights, institutions, and everyday justice in an increasingly interconnected world.