From Duties to Rights: Global Historical Perspectives

The aim of this workshop is to begin conceptualizing the history of duties and their relationship to rights. Historians have long treated duties as afterthoughts, if at all. Whereas legal scholars are well-aware of the importance of ‘duties’ and ‘duty-bearing’ for litigation, historians have tended to neglect them in their accounts of the development of human rights. How might the history of rights look different after a consideration of duties from the early modern period to our current times? What methodological tools should a history of duties employ? Are there transhistorical patterns or narrative arcs to be uncovered over the longue durée? Finally, how might a history of duties be useful for understanding current struggles over justice and responsibility, both within societies and between human and non-human beings ?