Human Rights and Methodological Anxieties: A Critical Essay

The field of human rights research has been described as either lacking adequate methods or failing to pay due attention to methodological aspects. The present paper aims at contributing to the emerging debate. After a brief introduction, the paper places the problem within a broader frame, to then engage with four themes. First, it challenges the fantasy of academic and methodological neutrality. Second, it disputes the existence of any objective method, as opposed to a subjective style. Third, it suggests methodological concerns in the field of human rights fail to recognise that human rights are first and foremost a movement and not an academic discipline. Fourth, it describes human rights as product, object, and terrain of and for contention. On such bases, it concludes with the proposition of adopting human rights as counter-disciplinary practice.