LAUSR

Rights as Weapons: Instruments of Conflict, Tools of Power—the latest book from Duquesne University’s Chair of Political Science, Clifford Bob—offers a provocative perspective on the rise of rights-driven conflict. Building on Bob’s previous books, The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism and The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics, this book continues his exploration of the capitalistic side of civil society and transnational activism networks. In Rights as Weapons, Bob takes a methodical approach to identifying and examining the different means by which rights may be used as, per his title, instruments of conflict and tools of power. For anyone interested in understanding the current climate of activism, identity politics, and social polarization, this is a must-read. The main thrust of Bob’s book is that practitioners and scholars alike are too easily distracted by the moral component of rights rhetoric, and should rather recognize rights as value-void vessels that can be used to frame any number of less than moralistic goals. In other words, Bob takes a strongly realist view towards rights, countering the presumption that rights are ‘innately liberating and inclusionary’ (214) and used as defensive concepts for those lacking the power to protect themselves. Instead he argues that rights may be used ‘offensively’, as ‘malleable political tools’ (214), which may be employed not only by oppressed groups but also by powerful groups and states as a means of achieving their separate goals. As one of his many examples, he quotes Michael Ignatieff’s observation that ‘many local activists today “espouse the universalist language of human rights but actually use it to defend highly particularist causes”’ (41). Indeed, in contrast to the ideal of intersectionality, Bob highlights the divisive nature of rights rhetoric. He notes that rights are often caught up in a politics of ‘“divisionality”: identifying first with one’s own group’ (183). This concept is familiar to those examining the rise of ‘identity politics’, a term which, though not explicitly used in this book, follows a similar definition and is particularly salient to the current United States (US) political environment, where groups increasingly align politically along religious, racial, and social lines. Bob structures his argument in three parts, according to three broad categories of offensive rights utilization: ‘Preparing for conflict’, ‘Contending with foes’ and ‘Thwarting third parties’. In each section he conceptualizes different utilizations of rights rhetoric, labelling them as rallying cries, shields, parries, camouflage, spears, dynamite, blockades, and wedges. Some of these concepts will already be familiar to the average reader: for example, in ‘Preparing for Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2019