ABSTRACT
Discussions of human rights in the social sciences today are dominated by a formalist approach that understands these rights as legally institutionalized norms – as the implementation of abstract principles and the products of offi cial institutions (namely, states and international organizations) prescribing and granting them from above to persons and groups. As a result, human rights are analytically juridifi ed, the legal-institutional inscription of socio-economic and civil-political rights (in national and supranational constitutions, multilateral treaties, etc.) overshadowing their cultural grounding and enactment by subjects imbedded in concrete lifeworlds.
