Human Rights as a Battle Field for Human Diversity: An Analysis Based on the Critical Sociology of Boaventura de Sousa Santos

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes that all human beings are equal in dignity and rights. However, there are many and powerful reasons to question the supposed universality attributed to human rights. The principal objective of this article is to carry out a criticism of the Universalist conception of human rights under the light of the contributions of the sociology of Boaventura de Sousa Santos. This author proposes, based on intercultural dialogues about the different concepts of human dignity, a cosmopolitan and emancipatory reconstruction of human rights that is capable of avoiding its current Eurocentric slants and responding to the demands of our culturally pluralist and democratic societies.