Abstract
Building on and extending relational sociology, this article establishes a relational sociology of rights. I argue that rights should not be viewed as substances but as social constructs that derive their meanings and significance within a relational setting. To illustrate how rights are constructed relationally, I introduce a new analytic concept: the rights project, the context-specific endeavor of marginalized communities to envision, claim, and achieve rights on their own terms and in their own ways. The relational construction of rights projects occurs locally, regionally, and globally. The concept of the rights project demonstrates how marginalized communities undertake diverse political and cultural endeavors tailored to specific relational contexts, developing distinct goals, priorities, and strategies in the name of rights. A relational sociology of rights allows us to gain a more nuanced understanding of the conditions of possibility for marginalized communities beyond the Euro-American registers of rights.
What are rights? Rights is a loaded term, widely used in scholarship, advocacy, and policymaking to address oppression and liberation, exclusion and inclusion, and regulation and resistance among various marginalized communities. Some scholars stress the ongoing importance of rights as a tool for advocacy and social change, especially on the international stage (Hafner-Burton 2012; Keck and Sikkink 1998), yet others criticize the legalistic, individualistic, and liberal notion of rights (Armaline, Glasberg, and Purkayastha 2015; O’Bryne 2012). Since the 2000s, a postcolonial critique of human rights has gained acceptance among critical scholars who seriously consider the epistemic violence inherent in the Euro-American notion of human rights (Asad 2000; Mutua 2001; Pearce 2001). Despite differing understandings of rights, the notion is increasingly circulating around the world (Armaline et al. 2015; Sjoberg, Gill, and Williams 2001) through encounters with global norms (Merry 2006). For example, the rights of marginalized communities, such as women, migrants, and LGBTQ people, are often evaluated through global human rights indicators, which rank or map countries based on their achievements and setbacks in rights (Merry 2016). In this global landscape, how is the notion of rights constructed not just as indicators but in practice? How is the notion of rights envisioned, articulated, and enacted not just in relation to but also in opposition to, or even beyond, the global human rights discourse?
This article addresses these questions by establishing a relational sociology of rights. Building on and extending relational sociology, I argue that rights should not be viewed as fixed substances—a given set of entitlements and privileges—but as social constructs that derive their meaning and significance within a relational setting. To illustrate how rights are constructed relationally in a global context, this article introduces a new analytic concept of “rights project.” By rights project, I mean the complex endeavor of marginalized communities to envision, claim, and achieve rights on their own terms and in their own ways through context-specific efforts. This involves the mobilization, coordination, and deployment of symbolic and material resources in a range of relational contexts. The relational construction of rights projects occurs not only locally within national boundaries but also on regional and global levels in relation to legal, political, and cultural arrangements; a nation-state’s historical trajectory; and its relational standing within the global political and economic landscape. The concept of a rights project demonstrates how marginalized communities undertake diverse political and cultural endeavors tailored to specific relational contexts in the name of “rights,” developing distinct goals, priorities, and strategies to realize such rights. I argue that the concept of a rights project allows us to denaturalize the powerful and politically charged notion of rights while acknowledging its enduring significance in a globalized world.
By developing a relational sociology of rights, this article makes key theoretical, conceptual, and empirical contributions. Theoretically, I build on relational sociology (Desmond 2014; Emirbayer 1997; Somers 1994a) to consider the relational construction of rights in global and transnational contexts. I heed postcolonial sociologists’ call for attending to the colonial and imperial relations that shape the social world and analytic categories (Bhambra 2007; Connell 2014; Go 2016; Patil 2022), including the notion of rights. I also extend the scope and direction of relationality to include emerging global powers and interactions within the Global South and non-West. Conceptually, I advance the political and cultural sociology of rights (Armaline et al. 2015; Somers and Roberts 2008) by introducing a novel analytic tool for understanding the variety of rights politics, struggles, and contestations around the world. The concept of a rights project amends the limits of existing approaches to rights by attending to how the very notion of rights is envisioned, articulated, and enacted differently in various relational settings, contexts, and scales. Empirically, I draw from the case of LGBTQ rights politics to reconsider the critique and dismissal of the notion of rights within gender and sexuality studies (e.g., Duggan 2003; Richardson 2005). A relational sociology of rights critically reflects on Euro-American centrism, not only the notion of rights but also the radical critique against it, and seeks to understand how rights remain a potent locus of contextualized resistance, empowerment, and resilience for marginalized communities beyond the West/Global North (e.g., Roychowdhury 2020). This article presents a theoretical attempt to foster a more nuanced understanding of the conditions of possibility for marginalized communities beyond the Euro-American registers of rights.
Competing notions of rights in globalization
The notion of rights has been highly contested, ranging from discussions on the philosophical foundations (e.g., Bentham, Burke, Dewey, Marx, Weber) to historical junctures (e.g., the Holocaust, the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the U.S. “war on terror” after 9/11) that led to the global rise and spread of the notion (Armaline et al. 2015; Sjoberg et al. 2001; Turner 1993). The term is often depicted as having various equal segments (e.g., political, socioeconomic, cultural), often associated with different “generations” of rights (Frezzo 2011). Rights are often discussed and defined in relation to ideas such as citizenship (Beaman 2016), membership (Somers 1994b), recognition (Fraser 2000; Honneth 1996), and dignity (Misztal 2013). Some scholars emphasize that the notion of rights is shaped by what is being violated, thus understanding rights in connection to oppression, suffering, and injustice (Baxi 1998; Sjoberg et al. 2001). However, much work acknowledges the challenge of clearly defining the concept of rights, addressing its diverse range and meanings (Baxi 1998), its multiple registers (Somers and Roberts 2008), and its flexible and expandable nature as it intertwines with other cultural and political ideas, such as liberty, justice, welfare, and self-determination (Frezzo 2011; Turner 1993). The complexity arises from the sociological fact that the notion is socially constructed and its meaning has shifted over time (Baxi 1998) and been a subject of debate among different traditions of thought. For instance, Dembour (2010) suggests the understanding of human rights varies across strands of scholarship, viewing rights as entitlements, agreements, claims, and discourses.
I find that these competing notions of rights have largely emerged and developed through three distinct approaches—universalist, particularist, and relational, particularly in the context of globalization. Here, I describe how each approach conceptualizes rights, with an empirical focus on LGBTQ rights. This comes with three analytic benefits. First, LGBTQ rights are a widely contested area in the public and scholarly discussion on the globalization of rights discourses (Ayoub 2016). The mobilization for and against LGBTQ rights around the world provides fertile ground to explore the universal notion of rights and its discontents. Second, the globalization of LGBTQ rights has generated a diverse range of local responses (from pro- and anti-LGBTQ groups) in relation to indigenous conceptions of sex, gender, and sexuality, associated with historical traditions, cultural systems of meanings, and social and political norms (Boellstorff 2006). This allows us to examine the particularist notion of rights and the ensuing challenges. Third, the global and local contestations over LGBTQ rights are increasingly discussed in relation to the historical legacies of colonialism and the global hierarchy between the West and the Rest (Rao 2020). This brings us to the relational notion of rights and its potential expansion.
Universalist Approach
The universalist approach holds that rights are universal across different cultures. For some scholars, human rights derive from human nature (e.g., shared ontological frailty and moral sympathy; Turner 1993), and their universality is a given fact. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights encapsulates this idea by affirming that all human beings are “born free and equal in dignity and rights” and that therefore, “everyone is entitled to all the rights” listed in this international document (UN General Assembly 1948). Many scholars of this approach acknowledge that human rights can take different forms in different times and spaces. However, these variations are considered part of universality; they maintain the universal principle of human rights and evidence its universal relevance (Dembour 2010). Donnelly (2007), for instance, notes that human rights are fundamentally universal at the level of concept despite having multiple forms at the level of implementation. Baxi (1998:150) similarly suggests an aspirational universality, noting “what is universal about human rights is the logic of aspiration, not the reality of attainment.”
Sociologists following this approach focus on the global diffusion and adoption of universal rights and norms, often using world society theory (Boli and Thomas 1997). These global norms emerge from intergovernmental agencies and diffuse through mechanisms including international covenants, treaties, and agreements, which are considered key components of the “international human rights regime” (Hafner-Burton 2012). Sometimes, they come from intergovernmental organizations like the UN or EU (Whelan and Donnelly 2007) or from international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and transnational social movement organizations (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Much work has focused on the global trend of the liberalization of norms and policies, such as same-sex relationships and marriage (Fernández and Lutter 2013).
The universalist approach permeates not only the discussion of achievement and progress of rights but also their abuses and violations. The premise is the existence of a universal grid that guides us to define and gauge such achievements or violations of rights. For example, the rights of LGBTQ people are increasingly recognized and even celebrated in some parts of the world, but they face entrenched violations and hostility in other areas (Ferguson 2022; Velasco 2023). Various UN agencies, international organizations, and NGOs have tried to address the global polarization of LGBTQ rights, for example, through the Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in 2007 (O’Flaherty and Fisher 2008) and the presidential memorandum on International Initiatives to Advance the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Persons, approved by U.S. President Obama in 2011 and reaffirmed and augmented by President Biden in 2021. Biden’s (2021) updated memorandum pledges, in response to “human rights abuses of LGBTQI+ persons abroad,” that U.S. governmental agencies shall consider economic and diplomatic measures while “building coalitions of like-minded nations” in the global fight against LGBTQ discrimination. These UN- or U.S.-led initiatives epitomize the prevalent universalism in the contemporary debate on the globalization of rights by defining the problem and establishing solutions for people in other countries according to the universal notion of “LGBTQ rights.”
Particularist Approach
The particularist approach problematizes the very notion of universal rights. Often dubbed “cultural relativism,” this approach demands great respect for cultural differences in specific settings (Brown 2008). Supposedly universal norms, such as human rights, are dismissed as a theoretical fantasy of little relevance in understanding human behavior in divergent cultural traditions or as a cultural imposition that enforces the ideas, beliefs, and values of one—usually Western—culture on another. According to this approach, human practices should be interpreted by the standards of the culture in which they occur, not via preexisting universal norms. Hence, “different cultural and civilizational traditions have diverse notions of what it means to be human and for humans to have rights” (Baxi 1998:153). A pivotal example is the American Anthropological Association’s criticism in 1947 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Concerned with the necessity to recognize the validity of different ways of life (Merry 2001; Rentein 1988), the statement asked: “How can the proposed Declaration be applicable to all human beings, and not be a statement of rights conceived only in terms of the values prevalent in the countries of Western Europe and America?” (American Anthropological Association 1947:539).
Among sociologists, Pearce (2001) has argued that Euro-American universalism led to the erasure of existing traditions and practices of rights throughout Africa, which was then portrayed as evidence of the absence of human rights, justifying colonial invasion and intervention. In her critique of Euro-American universalism, Pearce (2001:52) introduces the idea of collectivity-based rights—as opposed to individual-based rights—prevalent in various African cultures, wherein “rights accrue to one by virtue of one’s membership in specific groups.” Patel (2021) refers to these attempts to capture the particular experiences of various communities as “indigenous sociology.” As a postcolonial intellectual movement following juridical decolonization, indigenous sociology emerged in newly independent Asian and African nation-states to indigenize social science practices and emphasize the understanding of particular local values intrinsic to their own societies. Indigenous sociology embodies the particularist approach by proposing and demonstrating “an alternative epistemic voice to displace the power of [N]orthern sociology” and its Euro-American universalism (Patel 2021:375).
From the perspective of particularism, the UN- or U.S.-led global initiatives to combat LGBTQ human rights abuses raise critical issues. At the level of epistemology, key concepts, from the demographic category of “LGBTQ” to evaluative terms like “human rights violations” or “equal rights,” might not be commensurable across different geographic and cultural contexts. Mahmood (2005) calls for rethinking the Western assumptions on freedom, resistance, and liberation and for recognizing they are culturally and historically located constructs in light of local subjects’ aspirations, desires, and capacities. Failure to recognize and respect such situated differences could easily lead to what Spivak (1988) calls “epistemic violence” by erasing and subjugating the local sites of meaning-making and knowledge production. At the level of implication, even the best-intentioned agendas of Western nation-states and advocates could reproduce the imperial narratives of Western saviors versus non-Western savages/victims, given the legacy of colonialism and empire (Mutua 2001). Building on these critiques, queer theorists would take issue with the U.S. presidential memorandum’s aim to speak for and save others as an instance of “homonationalism,” through which LGBTQ rights discourses are mobilized to produce the binary of modern and progressive Western nations versus conservative and backward non-Western nations (Puar 2007).
The particularist approach has been a powerful tool for criticizing the universal human rights discourse by highlighting distinctive conceptions of rights rooted in distinct historical experiences and cultural systems of a given society. It has paved the way for understanding cultural differences “in one’s (indigenous) own terms” (Patel 2014:608) that “cannot be ranked on an evolutionary scale” in comparison to other (i.e., Western) societies (Brown 2008:365). Nonetheless, postcolonial feminist scholars, in their critique of indigenous sociology and other anti-colonial efforts, point out that the particularist approach often reproduces nationalist, elitist, and patriarchal perspectives (Patel 2014; Patil 2013). These particularist efforts have the effect of replacing Western colonial domination with indigenous patriarchal dominance (Patil 2013) while perpetuating colonial narratives of cultural essentialism and hierarchy (Patel 2021). Furthermore, this approach’s tendency to essentialize culture as a distinct life-world with internal coherence has facilitated authoritarian governments’ justifications of their domination, exploitation, and violence in the name of “authentic cultural practices” (Afshari 2011). Authoritarian regimes have built on the cultural logic of particularism to provide a rationale for political homophobia, accusing LGBTQ movements of imposing “Western norms” that contradict local values and promote “foreign interests” (Currier 2018). The account of culture in the particularist approach as coherent, homogenous, static, and “bounded,” as if discrete islands, ignores the complex and continued history of “cross-border dynamics” (Patil 2013) from colonialism to contemporary economic and cultural globalization.
Relational Approach
The relational approach considers both universalism and particularism as forms of substantialism because they both presume durable, coherent, and self-subsistent things, whether they are universal norms or bounded entities of nation-states (Emirbayer 1997). This approach emphasizes that social constructs, including gender (Connell 1995), race (Goldberg 2009), identity (Somers 1994a), and power and agency (Emirbayer 1997), derive their meaning and significance within a relational setting (Desmond 2014; Emirbayer 1997). From this perspective, rights would be better understood not as substances that can be granted, possessed, or lost but as social relationships and processes that “enable or constrain actions” (Young 1990:25). Historical analysis suggests, for instance, that rights were not granted automatically based on class divisions or land ownership but were achieved through “the chain of relations” between individuals and within communities, where one can “become a citizen” (Somers 1994b). Rights exist within an intricate “configuration of relationships and institutional arrangements,” encompassing the “de jure right to membership in a political community—the scale of which can vary from local to national to global” (Somers and Roberts 2008:413).
Taking this relational approach to the global level, postcolonial sociologists highlight relational linkages on a transnational scale, arguing that “ideas, meanings . . . [and] practices in one place are influenced, shaped by, and fuel those elsewhere” (Goldberg 2009:1274). Most notably, Go (2016:142) calls for “postcolonial relationality,” which “attends to the mutual constitution of the powerful and powerless, the metropole and colony, the core and the postcolony, [and] the Global North and Global South.” Reconciling the theoretical tension between Euro-American-centric sociology and postcolonial thought, postcolonial relationality advocates for a mode of relational thinking “taken to the geopolitical scene, scaled upward and outward to critically apprehend imperial interactions and their enduring legacies” (Go 2016:142). Being attentive to the complex global-local connections could offer rich opportunities for reconsidering Eurocentric categories of social relations and mechanisms, such as modernity (Bhambra 2007), the political (Chakrabarty 2000), and the social (Go 2023). Patil (2022:168) illustrates this postcolonial relationality by urging a shift in our analytic focus from the confined imagery of “society” or nation-states to “webbed connectivities,” or “the multiscalar racial, colonial, and imperial networks that have mattered for productions of sex, gender, and sexuality.” Through this process of “rescaling,” Patil (2022:170) contends that we can gain a deeper understanding of how seemingly disparate histories of race, empire, and coloniality, such as the transatlantic slave trade, have been “constitutive of the very architecture of the colonial modern world and its formations of sex, sexuality, and gender.”
Whereas the universalist approach views the UN- or U.S.-led global LGBTQ initiatives as key mechanisms for the global diffusion of rights and the particularist approach takes them as a form of Western imposition on non-Western others, the postcolonial relational approach would criticize both for their paradoxically symbiotic relationship. Connell (2014), for instance, argues that the rise of particularism (which she calls “mosaic epistemology”), as a rejection of Eurocentric universalism, unintentionally reinforces the Eurocentric framework by replicating how colonialists perceive the world, with distinct cultures in silos as objects of study and domination. Echoing this critique, Patel (2014) insists that both universalism and particularism can be effects of the Eurocentric episteme. 1 Moving beyond universalism and particularism, the postcolonial relational approach pays attention to the “cross-border” (Patil 2013) and “cross-fertiliz[ing]” (Connell 2014) relations, networks, and connections between knowledge systems in a globalized world. Taking this approach in understanding rights in globalization, one must equally weigh engagement and interaction by the colonized, the periphery, the non-West, and the Global South. Hence, scholars have paid attention to the interactional and reciprocal processes of translation, which involve cultural mechanisms such as “dubbing” (Boellstorff 2006), “friction” (Tsing 2005), and “vernacularization” (Merry 2006). Recent empirical work in global and transnational sexuality studies resonates with this postcolonial relational approach, implicitly or explicitly. Queer activists in non-Western societies, for example, can align with a global (i.e., Western) LGBTQ rights discourse (Chua 2018). However, they must carefully navigate and negotiate their relationships with globalized rights-based strategies, international NGOs, and foreign donations because these global-local negotiations are crucial in maintaining local cultural and political legitimacy (Chua 2014; Currier 2012; Lakkimsetti 2020).
Highlighting historical and global relations, connections, and networks, the postcolonial relational approach foregrounds the construction of rights within the context of colonial histories and ongoing power imbalances between former Western empires and colonized societies. This work attempts to trace constitutive linkages among seemingly disparate sites, events, and constructs in the “web of imperial networks” (Patil 2022) or “colonial matrix of power” (Mignolo 2007) and to identify “how the colonial shaped the contemporary” (Goldberg 2009:1279). Although extremely valuable, its emphasis on Global North-South relations overlooks newly emerging forms of relationality, including the increasing connections and competitions between and among the Global South and the non-West. The relational production of ideas, knowledge, and values—including rights—must take into account dynamics of relationality beyond the North-South binary. This includes the enduring legacies of non-Western empires (e.g., the Japanese empire), the newly emerging global powers (e.g., China, Russia, India), and the increasing South-South dynamics, interregional referencing, and the rising “soft power” in different regional blocks. This article extends this postcolonial relational approach to understand how rights are constructed relationally in globalization, beyond the Global North-South dyad.
Rights Projects
This article extends the relational approach to the construction of rights in a globalized world by broadening the scale, scope, and direction of relationality. To examine the relational construction of rights, I introduce a new analytic concept: a rights project. By rights project, I mean the concerted efforts to envision, claim, or achieve recognition, entitlement, and a sense of worth and belonging in the name of one’s rights. A rights project involves the context-specific and collective endeavor of, and sometimes for, marginalized communities to define, rationalize, and enact what they believe are “rights.” Rights can denote a justifiable claim to perform a specific action or to have a certain immunity or privilege based on legal, cultural, moral, or other context-specific grounds. Hence, the meaning of “rights” in a rights project can encompass a range of ideas, such as liberty, freedom, equality, justice, dignity, inclusion, welfare, autonomy, and self-determination (Frezzo 2011; Turner 1993). The flexible, malleable, and expandable nature of the notion of rights (Baxi 1998; Dembour 2010; Frezzo 2011; Somers and Roberts 2008; Turner 1993) makes it a robust “category of practice” (Brubaker 2005), available for various individuals and communities to utilize for diverse political and cultural objectives. Following Brubaker’s lead in considering concepts such as identity (Brubaker and Cooper 2000), nation (Brubaker 2004), and diaspora (Brubaker 2005), the concept of a rights project aims to translate the widely circulated category of practice into a category of analysis by focusing on how rights become a project, for whom, and what it does in a relational context rather than asking what rights are substantively.
The notion of a project is particularly useful in developing this relational approach to the construction of rights. Drawing from Schutz (1967), cultural sociologists have articulated the concept of projects to emphasize how human action “is constructed within an imaginative horizon of multiple plans and possibilities” (Mische 2009:696). If a project can be defined as “an intentional act directed to the future as an anticipated action” (Heiskala 2011:234), in which “one action makes sense only in relation to others in a string of actions aimed at a specific end” (Tavory and Eliasoph 2013:911), then we should pay attention to the “relational dynamics of project formation” through which a project is embedded in “multiple temporal horizons” (Mische 2009:697–98). In this sense, a rights project is situated within multiscalar structures and scales of social relations, from interactional to institutional, from historical past to imagined futures, and from local to regional to global. Embedded and produced within these relational configurations, each rights project becomes highly context-specific, with the form and content varying according to the macro-level global structures and histories, to the meso-level institutional and organizational logics and arrangements, to the micro-level subjectivities. 2 Emerging from multiple spheres and spaces, a rights project constructs particular definitions of rights and attempts to find solutions to how such definitions can be justified and how they become significant as a means of social change. Accordingly, each rights project develops distinct goals, priorities, and strategies, associated with different sets of key actors and institutions. In other words, the concept of a rights project allows us to capture actors’ collective efforts, in the name of rights, to speculate, plan, strategize, and optimize toward meaningful ends in a multiscalar relational context.
The concept of a rights project advances our understanding of the social construction of rights in global times, responding to the shortcomings of the existing three approaches to rights. First, rights projects firmly situate the notion of rights on multiple relational scales in the context of globalization. Prior universalist scholarship developed the concept of a “human rights regime,” typically defined as “norms and decision-making procedures accepted by international actors to regulate an issue area [of human rights]” (Donnelly 1986:602), often centering on the UN and its legislative bodies, declarations, and treaties. The regime concept focuses on the ratification and implementation of universal human rights norms by participating states despite increasing concerns about noncompliance and “empty promises” due to states’ lack of capacity or commitment (Hafner-Burton 2012; Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui 2005). The regime concept is useful for understanding macro-level international interactions between and among states and NGOs, especially legal aspects, such as the impact of international human rights law on domestic legislation or movements (Ayoub 2016; Tsutsui 2018). However, the notion of a regime presumes a single-scale worldwide order governed by the same universal rule, which confines the question to implementation versus nonimplementation of universal rights, leaving little room for explaining the variety of ways rights can be imagined, articulated, or enacted.
A rights project situates the articulation and practice of rights at what Merry (2009:6) calls “the global-local interface.” At this conjuncture, seemingly domestic ideas, beliefs, and values, including the notion of rights, always “interact with conditions and expressions tried and tested elsewhere” (Goldberg 2009:1273). Thus, they must be contextualized within the larger global landscape, where global forces operate within the relational and interactive dynamics between “here” and “elsewhere.” Instead of privileging universal norms and institutions via the UN, a rights project emphasizes how local actors attempt to envision and practice rights simultaneously in reference to, in opposition to, and beyond global human rights law and its inherent universalism. From this perspective, the UN- or U.S.-led global initiatives on LGBTQ rights and their interventionist effects can be understood not as an unintended consequence of universalism but as a rights project that arose from the exceptional status of the U.S. empire in the current global order (Puar 2007). Similar state-led initiatives on LGBTQ rights in Israel, often criticized as “pinkwashing,” can be seen as a rights project stemming from Zionism and settler colonialism in Palestine (Atshan 2020). In contrast, the state promotion of LGBTQ rights in Taiwan, which I discuss in detail, cannot be equated with similar attempts in the United States or Israel given the different global-local interface in which the rights project is produced. The concept of a rights project helps us better understand how distinct notions of rights, with different forms, content, and implications, arise in varied geographic and cultural contexts.
Second, rights projects emphasize meaning-making processes and mechanisms on the ground. Political sociologists have challenged the predominant legal and state-centric conceptualization of rights by understanding rights as a product of social struggle “from below” (Armaline et al. 2015; Frezzo 2011; Sjoberg et al. 2001; Stammers 1999). For instance, Armaline et al. (2015:146) introduced the concept of “the human rights enterprise,” defined as “the ongoing process to define and realize human rights as a struggle over power and political voice.” This concept pays attention to the power dynamics between the state and social movements in shaping the overall conditions of human rights, with its empirical focus on collective mobilization against state violence and neoliberal privatization in the United States. Although useful in highlighting how grassroots mobilization contributes to the societal improvement (or deterioration) of human rights, the human rights enterprise concept tends to presume the key actors (the state vs. social movements), means and strategies (organized grassroots mobilization), and goals (achieving power and political representation) of the enterprise. 3 The scope of the enterprise is also confined to the nation-state, losing the global relational perspective of how the enterprise “here” is constructed in relation to conditions and efforts “elsewhere.”
The concept of a rights project offers a conceptual tool that pays attention to the on-the-ground relational dynamics of building, making, and practicing rights without presuming particular actors, means, strategies, or goals of such endeavors. It helps us understand how people define “rights” and the “violations” and “achievements” thereof on the ground—that is, how they establish what they mean by “rights,” what they do with rights, and what such efforts mean to them as they are embedded in particular relational constellations. These on-the-ground efforts sometimes align with the legalistic notion of rights when marginalized communities demand state recognition and legal entitlement. For instance, marginalized groups in India (e.g., Dalits, Kashmiris, and Adivasis) assert their irreducible rights to autonomy, dignity, and self-determination based on the Indian Constitution while also going beyond the confines of courts through insurgent politics (Kannabiran 2021). In other circumstances, rights projects go against or beyond the preconceived universal notion of rights and its legal manifestations, resulting in ambivalent or contradictory consequences. Vulnerable migrant women, for instance, make conscious and agentic decisions concerning not just legal and material benefits but also the “cost of rights,” such as moral respectability, and hence may refrain from seeking and claiming rights-based measures (Choo 2013). Facing an incapable state and legal system, women experiencing violence sometimes negotiate their rights by “becoming capable” as an alternative way to access political power and social justice (Roychowdhury 2020). The concept of a rights project helps us understand how marginalized groups claim, negotiate, and exercise rights beyond the state’s legal recognition, such as through global discourse (Soysal 1994), market relations (Canaday 2023), or moral transformation (Mahmood 2005). In other words, rights projects provide an analytic tool for understanding how people define rights on their own terms and what they do with such newly defined rights in a given (but also changing) relational context.
Third, rights projects attend to the relational construction of rights across various local, national, regional, and global scales. Postcolonial sociologists have expanded the scope of relationality to the global level, examining the power relations between the West and non-West, Global North and South, former empires and colonies, and global metropoles and peripheries and their impact on various social and cultural formations (Go 2016; Patil 2022). For instance, Go (2018:367) presents Bourdieu’s concept of the field as a way to demonstrate the postcolonial relational approach, highlighting “trans-, intra-, or inter-imperial” interactions and struggles between actors over different kinds of capital. The field concept highlights the transnational construction of the “human rights field,” in which “a whole host of actors engage with human rights discourses and mechanisms: from nation-states to a variety of institutions and NGOs at the international, regional, and national levels; as well as activists from different social movements” (Bhatia 2023:261). Combined with historical analysis, the human rights field identifies how human rights became “fielded” (Go and Krause 2016) post-WWII, prioritizing international law and legal expertise under increasing U.S. hegemony (Dezalay and Garth 2006; Stampnitzky 2016). Although useful in highlighting the relations between actors occupying different positions within the field and competition over the “rules of the game,” the field concept primarily focuses on the “social space of relations” (Go and Krause 2016:8) rather than the relational meaning-making processes within, across, and beyond such space.
A rights project offers a category of analysis that foregrounds meaningful actions, interactions, and processes that construct the competing spaces of rights, from macro-level regimes to meso-level fields. A rights project is situated within multiple relational dynamics, not only between actors involved in the social space of rights-making (e.g., dominant vs. subordinate) or between different social spaces (e.g., empire and colonies) but also between “multiple temporal horizons” (Mische 2009), including the historical past, the contested present, and imagined futures. By envisioning, developing, and enacting a rights project, people strive to articulate their relationships to the larger political communities they aspire to belong to (or avoid) in their claims of rights, whether these be the nation-state or imagined communities of the region (e.g., “Europe”) or the globe (e.g., cosmopolitanism). For instance, a rights project can be constructed with primary reference not only to the U.S.-dominant transnational human rights field (Dezalay and Garth 2006) but also to rising global economic and military powers (e.g., China, Russia, Israel), regional blocs (e.g., BRICS, ASEAN), or regional imageries (e.g., “Global South”). It can be established and reconstructed as a response to geopolitical conflicts (e.g., war, genocide, ethnic cleansing), political shifts (e.g., regime changes), economic changes (e.g., financial crises), or cultural transformations. For instance, the fight against discrimination and violence toward LGBTQ communities can be linked to or embedded within coalitions with other marginalized communities (Lakkimsetti 2020), national liberation movements (Atshan 2020), regional imageries of pan-Africanism or Europeanness (Currier 2012; Slootmaeckers 2023), pursuits of economic development (Rao 2020), or interactions with neoliberal authoritarianism (Amar 2013; Savcı 2020)—all of which indicate the differential construction of rights projects in various relational contexts.
Rights Projects as Relational Objects
An examination of rights projects leads to three relational inquiries. First, under what conditions does a rights project emerge? What are the global, regional, and local circumstances within which a particular rights project (but not others) is produced, maintained, and challenged? How does the emergence of a rights project in one context connect to or interact with ideas and practices elsewhere? Second, how does a rights project build its claims on the ground? How do people—often marginalized communities—envision, articulate, and enact a particular meaning of rights and distinct goals, priorities, means, and strategies to achieve such rights? How do these meaning-making processes take place among different groups, organizations, and institutions? Third, what are the relational effects and implications of a rights project? If the construction of a rights project often converges with other political and cultural formations, and hence cannot be reduced to the adoption of a law or policy, representation in parliament, or changes in attitudes or media portrayals, how can we understand the complex, often ambivalent and contradictory, effects and implications of a rights project within and beyond a particular relational context? In other words, how do rights become a project and become meaningful within a constellation of relations?
Building from a relational approach, I understand rights projects as a “relational object” of study instead of a group-based or place-based object (Desmond 2014:560). Relational sociologists have utilized a diverse array of methodological approaches to understand the web of relationality, ranging from archival (Patil 2022) to ethnographic (Desmond 2014) research. Relational analysis is often presented as opposed to the logics of comparison due to the latter’s assumption of coherent and discrete entities as units of analysis, such as nation-states, thus its substantialism and methodological nationalism (Desmond 2014; Emirbayer 1997). Although agreeing on the limits of the substantialist assumptions of comparison, this article advocates for the compatibility of the relational approach with comparative analysis in the study of rights projects. To examine a rights project as a relational object, one must look into the “configurations of relations among different actors and institutions” as well as “[p]eople’s own interpretations of relational configurations” (Desmond 2014:547, 560), sometimes across multiple social spaces and national boundaries. The logic of comparison itself, however, does not necessarily reproduce substantialist assumptions (e.g., bounded identities and territories). For instance, building ethnographic comparisons within or across field sites or cases (Lichterman and Reed 2015) can enhance a relational analysis. Comparative ethnographic research can yield new relational insights by exploring how findings from one context translate to other contexts (Simmons and Smith 2019) and by rendering ties, connections, and networks visible across cases. Following Goldberg (2009:1278–79) in combining the logic of comparison with the relational approach, I next demonstrate the relational construction of rights projects in two different contexts.
The relational construction of rights projects in two sites
To provide empirical grounding, I draw on qualitative research on the construction of rights projects by LGBTQ communities in two sites: Taiwan and Singapore. As part of a larger book project, I conducted fieldwork in Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea from 2015 to 2022, for a total of 24 months. Due to space limitations, this article focuses on Taiwan and Singapore. Following Desmond (2014), I conducted a relational ethnography of rights projects in each site, tracking a wide array of actors and organizations involved in the relational construction of LGBTQ rights projects. These included LGBTQ movement organizations, NGOs, social service groups, identity-based community groups, cultural and religious groups, ally groups, political parties, corporate-based groups, legal and medical experts, academics and journalists, and high-profile queer and trans individuals in the communities. During the fieldwork, I attended public events, such as pride parades, rallies, vigils, cultural events, and press conferences, and (semi)closed events, such as organizational meetings, training sessions, fundraising parties, end-of-year parties, networking sessions, and LGBTQ-inclusive educational and entrepreneurial workshops. I combined participant observation with in-depth interviews with 160 activists, organizers, and community members involved in the relational construction of LGBTQ rights projects in Taiwan (n = 84) and Singapore (n = 76). My fieldwork was supported by a collection of policy and legal documents, administrative records, organizational materials from various groups, and relevant issues of local newspapers and magazines. I paid attention to the multiple scales of relations, from interactional to institutional, historical past to imagined futures, and local to global, in the making of LGBTQ rights projects.
My empirical findings from two non-Western contexts suggest the notion of “LGBTQ rights” is neither simply being accepted as a global norm (as in the universalist approach) nor rejected as a Western imposition (as in the particularist approach) but, rather, translated and reconstructed in multiple relational settings, becoming particular projects that involve a web of social relations and actors. In this relational construction, rights projects are not merely organized along the historical power hierarchies between the West and non-West (as in the postcolonial relational approach) but also along newly emerging dynamics of relationality at multiple scales. In Taiwan, queer activists pursue the rights of LGBTQ communities in the name of “equality,” engaging in legal changes and translating their legal achievements onto the international arena, combining forces with state actors. In Singapore, queer activists endeavor to claim the rights of LGBTQ communities in terms of “diversity,” building partnerships with transnational corporations and fostering communities within the private sector. These two cases demonstrate how “LGBTQ rights” cannot be simply equated with the legislation of single-issue agendas specific to identity-based groups (e.g., same-sex marriage, anti-discrimination, legal gender recognition) or necessarily associated with a set of agents and strategies observed in the West (e.g., “coming out” and visibility politics, legislative advocacy, public demonstrations) but must be understood as a context-specific project constructed on multiple relational scales and contexts.
The Equality Project
In recent decades, LGBTQ communities in Taiwan have seen increasing legal inclusion, including LGBTQ-inclusive education, anti-discrimination in employment, and legalization of same-sex marriage (Kuan 2019). In addition, openly LGBTQ politicians (Miao Poya and Huang Jie) have been elected to city councils and parliaments, and an openly trans woman (Audrey Tang) served as a top official in the cabinet. As an advanced economy with robust democracy, this can be seen as an achievement of “LGBTQ rights” that resembles a global trend. Resonating with this perspective, scholars have suggested various legal constructs, such as electoral reforms, ruling regime change, and movement–countermovement dynamics, to explain these “achievements” (Chang 2020; Ho 2019; Wei 2023). Yet instead of viewing “LGBTQ rights” as a given substance, I argue that Taiwanese queer activists and community members constructed and reconstructed the meaning of “LGBTQ rights” not merely in relation to domestic factors but also in relation to the geopolitics in which Taiwan is embedded: the hegemonic rise of China and increasing international isolation of Taiwan. The concept of a rights project helps us understand how Taiwanese activists and community members define the aims, strategies, and meanings of “LGBTQ rights” through various political and cultural endeavors in this relational context.
My findings suggest that Taiwanese queer activists, especially during their campaign for marriage equality in the past decade, envisioned, articulated, and enacted what I call the “equality project” in their pursuit of LGBTQ rights. The equality project prioritizes “equality” as a fundamental principle in defining and realizing rights. Unlike similar efforts in the pursuit of equality in institutions such as the military, marriage, and family in the United States and elsewhere (Bernstein 2015; Richardson 2005), the equality project in Taiwan does not define equality merely in terms of similar legal status for LGBTQ and cisgender heterosexual individuals. Rather, it encompasses the rights of LGBTQ communities as part of the broader political and social progress toward building an “equal” society. Instead of solely focusing on same-sex couples’ right to marry, Taiwanese activists linked the unequal status of LGBTQ communities in the country with their nation-state’s unequal status in the global sphere. They connected their demands for LGBTQ equality with the nation-state’s aspiration to achieve equal recognition as a sovereign democracy. In this process, Taiwanese activists’ efforts—the equality project—extended beyond legal mobilization to pressure the government, lawmakers, and courts, notably engaging the global arena via international mechanisms and campaigns. “LGBTQ rights” merged into a larger demand for Taiwan’s equality: as a nation-state on equal footing with other countries, offering equal treatment to its members (see Jung 2024).
The Taiwanese state set the stage for the emergence of the equality project. Since the early 2000s, the Taiwanese government has made commendable strides in legal recognition of LGBTQ individuals, including the legislation of LGBTQ-inclusive education (2004), anti-discrimination laws in education and employment (2004, 2008), the inclusion of cohabiting same-sex households in an anti-domestic violence act (2007), and the constitutional decision (2017) and subsequent legislation of same-sex marriage (2019). Many of these legal advancements occurred during the ruling period of the liberal Democratic Progressive Party (DPP; 2000–2008 and 2016–present), through active state-civic partnerships with various NGOs, including women’s and LGBTQ organizations. However, the increasing legal inclusion of LGBTQ individuals is not solely a partisan political outcome. When the conservative Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang [KMT]) regained power in 2008, the ruling KMT and President Ma Ying-jeou passed the “Implementation Acts” to ratify two international covenants—the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR; in 2009; Chen 2017). The Ma government (2008–2016) later ratified three other major international human rights treaties: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (2011), the Convention on the Rights of Children (2014), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2014). All these international rights treaties address the issue of sexual orientation and gender identity, providing tools for Taiwanese queer activists to pressure the government to uphold international standards of LGBTQ rights.
The Taiwanese government has adopted the promotion of “human rights,” including LGBTQ rights, as part of a strategy to assert its sovereignty and claim equal status as a nation-state in the international community. Since China replaced Taiwan in the UN in 1971, Taiwan has faced increasing isolation in diplomatic, economic, and cultural relations due to its “de facto state” status (Pegg 1998). Preserving the state’s international standing has been of critical importance to Taiwan’s government regardless of the ruling party. For instance, from the early 1990s to the late 2000s, both the KMT and DPP attempted to gain access to UN-related activities and UN membership but were repeatedly denied (Huang 2003). Given this context, former President Ma’s drive to internalize international human rights treaties reflects a shift in the state’s strategy from seeking international membership to exceeding membership standards by proactively promoting human rights even without formal membership. Ma’s foreword for the first state human rights report encapsulates how the KMT government acknowledged the precarity of its international standing and adopted the language of human rights to emphasize its sovereign capacity on par with, if not surpassing, imagined international standards: As soon as I took office as president, I declared that the country should move forward with the ratification of the two covenants as early as possible and complete the process of incorporating them into ROC [Republic of China, Taiwan] law . . . thereby improving our human rights safeguards and bringing them more closely in line with international practice. . . . These developments stood as an official declaration to the world of our country’s commitment to the protection of human rights, and constituted concrete action toward that end. . . . Our submission of this initial human rights report highlights the fact that even though the ROC is excluded from the United Nations human rights system, our government and civil society still participate actively in international human rights affairs and fight tenaciously for the promotion and protection of human rights [italics added]. (Ma 2012)
Taiwan’s internalization of international human rights treaties is exceptional for three reasons. First, the ratification and implementation of human rights instruments was self-imposed and self-guided; these acts were not requirements of UN membership because Taiwan was not a member nation. Second, these self-imposed international instruments were designed to be fully incorporated into Taiwan’s domestic legal system, including the courts and government agencies. This contrasts with most UN member countries, where these instruments are often only symbolic due to a lack of enforcement mechanisms or state capacity to implement them (Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui 2005). Third, the Taiwanese state plays a proactive role in the coordination of human rights reviews and monitoring of implementation, whereas many UN member states take a defensive or resistant stance in relation to international instruments (Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui 2007; Hathaway 2001; Keith 2002). In the adoption, implementation, and monitoring of international human rights standards, the Taiwanese state has consistently attempted to exceed and outperform the given UN standard. A human rights officer from the de facto EU delegation in Taiwan observed, “There’s a tendency of the Taiwanese government wanting to be the role model, the perfect student in the class of the international community” despite not officially belonging to that class. 4 State promotion of LGBTQ rights in Taiwan is thus not equivalent to the homonationalist and pinkwashing projects in the United States, Europe, or Israel, which build on and reproduce the imagined divide between the LGBTQ-friendly and civilized West versus a homophobic and backward non-West (Ammaturo 2015; Atshan 2020; Puar 2007). Instead, the state’s actions have to be understood within the changing relationality between postcolonial nation-states in shifting geopolitics.
This becomes apparent in Taiwanese queer activists’ engagement with the equality project, which aligns closely with the Taiwanese state. After years of legal and political mobilization, in May 2017, Taiwan’s constitutional court issued a groundbreaking decision on the legality of same-sex marriage (Ho 2019; Kuan 2019). Lawmakers passed a bill to officially recognize same-sex marriage two years later, in 2019 (Chang 2020; Wei 2023). Numerous international media outlets hastened to cover the news, with headlines like “first in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.” However, many reports sidestepped Taiwan’s political status, referring to it with carefully chosen phrases like “the self-ruled island” (Hollingsworth 2019). The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, portrayed Taiwan as subordinate to China, declaring on its social media account, “Local lawmakers in Taiwan, China, have legalized same-sex marriages in a first for Asia.” Taiwanese activists and citizens rebuked this attempt to take credit for the legislation and to diminish their sovereignty. Similarly, the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) sparked controversy when its online list of countries recognizing same-sex marriage included Taiwan under the disrespectful name of “Taiwan, Province of China” along with a paradoxically celebratory note that “All people should be able to choose freely whether to enter a partnership, when and with whom!” A prominent queer activist parodied the UN Women’s message on their social media account: “All people should be able to choose freely to be called by their real national identity!” This incident highlights how the legal achievement of marriage equality was not only about gaining legal rights to equal treatment but also about securing recognition for Taiwan’s equal status as a sovereign democracy.
The equality project in Taiwan does not simply replicate the notion of LGBTQ rights as universal rights or center around an indigenous agenda that is incommensurable and untranslatable. The equality project is a relational construct produced from Taiwan’s unique position in global geopolitics—a de facto nation-state that constantly needs to prove its sovereign statehood to the rest of the world in opposition to China’s increasing security threat. Although this project draws from international human rights norms, it radically reconstructs the meaning of “LGBTQ rights” in symbolic entanglement with the notion of “equality.” Social movement scholars have examined how the marriage equality movement in Taiwan was framed not only “as an issue of basic human rights . . . but also [of] inclusion and equity in the broader social environment” that brings together “the meanings of Taiwanese, democracy, human rights” (Wang and Sun 2024:237). The marriage equality project aimed less at individualistic rights and associated entitlements (e.g., housing, health care, and inheritance) and more at envisioning “an advanced Taiwan—an independent and autonomous democracy based on equality and human rights” (Kao 2024:142–45). The movement drew on a variety of symbolic strategies, such as painting the six letters of “Taiwan” or filling the shape of Taiwan with rainbow colors, to present marriage equality as “a new symbolic frontier for . . . Taiwan’s sovereignty” (Jung 2024:472). Taiwan’s equality project demonstrates how the pursuit of rights can be a context-specific political project that constructs new definitions of rights and builds on new aims, framings, and strategies to realize such rights in a relational context at multiple scales.
The Diversity Project
In illiberal Singapore, LGBTQ communities have had to navigate legal exclusion, having long faced the criminalization of same-sex relations under Section 377A of the Penal Code (Radics 2013). Within Singapore’s illiberal political regime, LGBTQ communities encounter official barriers to conventional forms of political action and mobilization, such as protests, demonstrations, petitions, lobbying, and voter engagement (Chua 2014). This restrictive environment results from the government’s tight control over citizens’ freedom of speech, assembly, and association, aimed at preventing any challenge to authoritarian power under the guise of “national interest” and “social harmony” (George 2012). The state’s discrimination against LGBTQ communities persists through regulations governing LGBTQ visibility in public education and media (Chua 2014). Even after the repeal of Section 377A of the Penal Code in 2022 (Abdullah 2023), stringent regulations on LGBTQ rights remain. Despite being a member of the UN and other international organizations advocating for enhanced protection for LGBTQ communities, Singapore distances itself from global human rights norms by emphasizing national and regional particularities. This is evident in Singapore’s nonsignatory status to major international human rights treaties such as the ICCPR or ICESCR, which mandate adherence to global human rights norms and submission to international monitoring mechanisms (Chan 2009).
Given these illiberal conditions, Singapore can easily be portrayed as a place where “LGBTQ rights” hardly exist. However, if we understand rights as a relational project rather than a substance granted or denied by the state, we can better comprehend how Singaporean queer activists and community members have reformulated the meaning of “LGBTQ rights” not as legal recognition of identities or relationships within the existing domestic legal system but as a social privilege one can partially achieve in relation to the neoliberal economy. My findings suggest LGBTQ communities in Singapore developed alternative—albeit compromised—avenues to pursue their rights, which I call the “diversity project.” The diversity project places the notion of “diversity” at its core, associating LGBTQ rights with societal, cultural, and economic value. It highlights the importance of a “diverse” population, including LGBTQ communities, for the betterment of society and the economy. Instead of framing their demands in terms of universal human rights protected by international norms (e.g., UN human rights mechanisms) or other sources of universality (e.g., the Constitution), Singaporean queer activists leverage the emerging discourse of diversity to advocate for the contributions of the “diverse” LGBTQ population to the multicultural fabric of society and the globalized economy. Within the diversity project, the notion of “LGBTQ rights” is interwoven into a neoliberal framework, aligning with the state’s governance and the operational strategies of global corporations.
Despite tight regulation over the legal and political mobilization and public presence of LGBTQ communities, the Singaporean state does not simply shut down and repress them altogether. This requires a closer look at the state’s relational standing in the global economy. The Singaporean state has long rationalized its political illiberalism by citing the country’s economic liberalism and performance (Low 1998). Adopting capital-intensive, export-oriented industrial strategies along with a technocratic and managerialist bureaucracy, the government cultivates a “business-friendly” environment that includes favorable infrastructure, trade regulations, business licenses, corporate tax rates, and a low-wage labor force. These efforts have attracted foreign direct investment and multinational corporations since the 1970s (Haque 2004). Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Singapore embraced neoliberal economic reforms, further liberalizing and deregulating its economy to continue attracting global capital and labor (Liow 2012). Since the 2000s, the growing significance of the globalized economy in upholding the state’s political legitimacy and Singapore’s positioning itself as a cosmopolitan city, an economic powerhouse, and a prominent global financial and tech hub has led to unforeseen opportunities for LGBTQ communities.
A notable example illustrating this trend can be found in the 2003 interview of then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong with Time Asia Magazine. In this landmark interview, Goh officially announced a shift in the enforcement of “repressive government policies” previously justified under the banner of social stability. This shift included allowing gay employees to join the government’s ranks, even in “sensitive” positions. Goh’s decision was influenced, at least in part, by the intention to be inclusive and not exclude “talented foreigners who are gay” (Elegant 2003). The government’s revised stance on homosexuality was shaped by the broader national context, in which LGBTQ individuals could find partial recognition through their economic contributions (Tan and Jin 2007). The implications of this conditionally tolerant stance toward LGBTQ communities became even more pronounced during the tenure of Goh’s successor, former Prime Minister (and current Senior Minister) Lee Hsien Loong. This was reflected in his 2007 parliamentary address discussing the retention of Section 377A of the Penal Code. Lee (2007) elaborated on the reasons necessitating the statute’s continuation, but he also underscored the importance of integrating the LGBTQ population into Singaporean society and economy: In Singapore, there is a small percentage of people, both male and female, who have homosexual orientations. . . . They include people who are responsible and valuable, highly respected contributing members of society. . . . We should strive to maintain a balance, to uphold a stable society with traditional, heterosexual family values, but with space for homosexuals to live their lives and contribute to the society. . . . Homosexuals work in all sectors, all over the economy, in the public sector and in the civil service as well. They are free to lead their lives, free to pursue their social activities.
In this address, LGBTQ individuals are conditionally accepted to the extent they are perceived as “responsible, valuable, and contributing members of society” despite the absence of legal and political rights. Their value is not derived from the universal principle of human rights but from their economic contributions to the broader society and economy. The notion of diversity is inherent in the state discourse of a multicultural and multiracial society, where the promotion of “social harmony” between different groups is emphasized as a driver of stability and prosperity. During this time, the conditional relaxation of the government’s stance on LGBTQ communities was evident in the annual gay parties organized by Fridae, a Singapore-based gay web portal. These parties received official government permits to operate from 2001 through 2004, coinciding with the Singapore Tourism Bureau’s campaign to attract global tourists and businesses (Yue 2012). Similarly, Singapore’s Censorship Review Committee recommended a more flexible approach to handling homosexual themes and scenes in theater performances in its 2003 report. This shift was motivated by the desire “to attract talent” and provide “an environment with less restrictive censorship guidelines and more diverse [artistic] choices,” leading to a significant increase in performances exploring queer themes (Lim 2005:392).
In line with the state’s conditional acceptance of LGBTQ communities as a “diverse” population that brings creativity and productivity to the national economy, the notion of “diversity” has become increasingly prominent within the realm of transnational corporations in Singapore. Corporate diversity discourse has gradually been adopted by the business world as a novel management strategy to enhance the visibility of various marginalized groups, including LGBTQ communities, within the workforce to target a more “diverse” customer and client base (Raeburn 2004). Queer activists in Singapore, facing political constraints in organizing, have turned to transnational corporations and their corporate diversity initiatives to advocate for recognition and relevant entitlements for LGBTQ employees in the name of “diversity” (Jung 2022). Due to their significant economic contributions to Singaporean society, transnational corporations enjoy a certain level of autonomy in terms of their corporate policies and initiatives as long as they do not fundamentally challenge the government’s authority. This offers a “liminal and limited space of inclusion for queer employees” (Jung 2022:879). Queer activists have capitalized on these corporate diversity initiatives, turning corporations into a new frontier where they strive to increase queer and trans visibility, push for better treatment (e.g., nondiscrimination policies, same-sex partnership recognitions, LGBTQ-inclusive employee benefits such as trans health care), and engage in activities such as consciousness raising, community building, and fundraising for LGBTQ communities.
The diversity project in Singapore also demonstrates the relational construction of rights in a globalized context. In claiming and exercising “LGBTQ rights,” queer activists in Singapore neither draw from the universalist norms of the UN nor surrender to the state’s illiberal mobilization of the idea that national interest precedes universal rights. Instead, they tap into the cracks of the neoliberal authoritarian state with the notion of “diversity.” In these context-specific efforts, the neoliberal notion of diversity leads to conditional recognition and tolerance of differences insofar as such differences contribute to society and the economy. Research has shown that corporate diversity discourses often fall short of their intended goals by obscuring underlying power structures and inequalities in the name of diversity and inclusion (Berrey 2015; Embrick 2011). Scholars have also cautioned against the neoliberal co-optation of diversity culture in workplaces and activist organizations (Swan and Fox 2010; Ward 2008). This observation is applicable to Singapore’s diversity project, where “LGBTQ rights” are largely intertwined with the neoliberal logics of diversity. In this framework, one’s socioeconomic status becomes a primary—if not the only—path to accessing the privileges, entitlements, and resources often denied to queer and trans citizens (Jung 2022; Teo 2021). As such, the diversity project exemplifies another instance of how “LGBTQ rights” can become a context-specific project in unexpected settings, such as corporations, where marginalized communities redefine what “rights” mean and how they can be pursued within a relational context.
Discussion: A relational sociology of rights
Sociologists have long been skeptical about the notion of rights, largely due to the “inherently value-laden, illusory, and philosophically speculative nature of rights as moral entities” (Somers and Roberts 2008:386). Instead, the study of rights has been led by legal scholars and political scientists who approach rights as a legal concept with an empirical focus on courts, governments, international NGOs, and international human rights law and instruments (Clement 2011:128), equating “the story of human rights” with “the story of the United Nations” (Armaline et al. 2015:4). Cultural anthropologists, on the other hand, who continue to engage with human rights practices on the ground, often reproduce the particularist notion of rights as an incommensurable culture (Brown 2008). In our sociology classrooms and in public discussions, we see an increasingly pessimistic dismissal of the notion of rights altogether as a Western colonial imposition. At the same time, a surge of right-wing politicians and groups are adopting and appropriating the notion of rights to suppress, police, and even destroy marginalized communities. This article is a theoretical attempt to salvage the notion of rights from this conceptual and empirical conundrum by introducing the new concept of the rights project from a relational perspective.
I argued that rights must be understood not as substances but as relational constructs produced at multiple relational nexuses. I propose the concept of a rights project, which denotes the concerted efforts of marginalized communities to envision, claim, or achieve “rights” on their own terms and in their own ways. These endeavors are situated within a range of relational contexts, from interactional to institutional, past to future, and local to global. Within these contexts, “rights” gain specific meanings and significance, enabling or disabling certain actions. Rights become a particular project at the relational nexus of global politics and economy, the relative positioning of the nation-state, and the legal and organizational arrangements wherein the notion of rights emerges as relevant and meaningful for particular communities or agendas. Each rights project develops distinct aims, priorities, and strategies, legitimizing particular actors, institutions, and spheres for envisioning, articulating, and practicing rights. Different rights projects arise from distinct intersections at the global-regional-local interfaces, where the very definition of rights, their significance, and their effect on various constituents are reconstructed. As I demonstrated with two cases of LGBTQ rights projects, rights projects as relational constructs can intertwine with other notions (e.g., “equality” and “diversity”) and political and cultural formations (e.g., national sovereignty and the neoliberal economy). Marginalized communities pursue and establish rights not only in relation to but also beyond global human rights law and state recognition.
This article responds to the call for a “new sociology of rights” (Somers and Roberts 2008) and a “critical sociology of human rights” (Armaline et al. 2015) by developing a relational sociology of rights. Scholars of human rights have proposed various conceptual tools, such as “human rights regime” (Hafner-Burton 2012), “human rights enterprise” (Armaline et al. 2015), “human rights markets” (Baxi 1998), “human rights industry” (Zigon 2013), and “human rights field” (Bhatia 2023), focusing on macro-level dynamics involving the state, capital, social movements, and international NGOs. Although useful, most of these are based on a substantialist notion of rights—rights as a universal norm, an indigenous culture, or a colonial and neo-imperial imposition. Instead of starting with a predefined notion of what constitutes rights, a relational sociology of rights insists on understanding rights as relational constructs and directs our attention to how the very notion of rights derives its meanings and significance in a relational context. The concept of a rights project illustrates how rights are socially constructed—they are envisioned, articulated, enacted, and achieved within various relational spheres, spaces, and scales, taking on different forms and meanings in different geographic, historical, and cultural contexts, which requires empirical examination of such relational construction.
This article situates the relational construction of rights on a global and transnational scale. This does not imply that the global human rights discourse formulated at the UN Human Rights Council, the European Commissioner for Human Rights, or the U.S. Department of State trickles down to the rest of the world and gets diffused, adopted, and implemented, as theorized in the universalist approach. Nor does it suggest that the notion of rights is inherently Western and thus unnatural to and necessarily rejected in the non-Western world, as posited by the particularist approach. Postcolonial relational sociologists have shed light on the interconnectedness among seemingly disparate sites and struggles, underscoring how colonial and imperial legacies persist in shaping the social world we inhabit (Bhambra 2007; Go 2016; Patil 2022). I extend this scholarship to decenter the dominant West-Rest or Global North-South dichotomy and consider different historical, geopolitical, and transnational relationships that influence the relational construction of rights. This encompasses the rise of new global powers, such as China, challenging U.S. hegemony (as observed in Taiwan’s “equality project”); the prevalence of neoliberal economies and corporate influence even in authoritarian contexts (illustrated by Singapore’s “diversity project”); and the growing interconnections and competitions among non-Western regions, the Global South, former colonies, and global peripheries (e.g., South-South dynamics, interregional referencing; see Chen 2010). A relational sociology of rights must account for how enduring colonial and imperial relations interact with emerging global and transnational relations in exploring how rights projects are politicized and contested within a globalized world.
This article largely draws from empirical cases in the sociology of gender and sexuality, focusing on studies of LGBTQ communities, to illustrate the benefits of the rights project concept. I engaged with a prevalent tendency in gender and sexuality studies, as well as other humanities and social science disciplines, to view the notion of rights as inherently liberal and individualistic, and thus constraining if not useless, leading to widespread abandonment of the concept. For example, queer studies scholarship has scrutinized the problematic associations between mainstream LGBTQ movements and liberal ideals of normalcy, respectability, and assimilation within the context of neoliberalization (Duggan 2003; Richardson 2005). Within this framework, “LGBTQ rights” are often equated with the privileges of White, middle-class, LGBTQ individuals, achieved at the expense of other marginalized queer communities. Although shedding light on the particular U.S. context in which “LGBTQ rights” have been pursued and enacted, the historical trajectory, experiences, and implications of U.S. queer politics cannot simply be transposed to understanding rights politics in other relational contexts. A relational sociology of rights helps decenter the U.S.-centric universalism inherent in both the conceptualization and critiques of rights. Through the concept of a rights project, one can better understand the trajectory of U.S.-based queer politics as a project that unfolded in relation to the U.S. empire, anti-Black and anti-immigrant racism, and neoliberalism. Similar pursuits of “LGBTQ rights” in other contexts may result in a different rights project with distinct aims, priorities, and strategies (Jung 2022; Kao 2024). As such, a relational sociology of rights prompts a departure from both the U.S.-centric foundations of the notion of rights and radical rejection of it, advocating for a decolonial approach to understanding how “rights” are embraced and utilized (Chua 2018), negotiated and achieved (Roychowdhury 2020), or even rejected (Choo 2013) within marginalized communities across diverse relational contexts.
A relational sociology of rights also enables a reconsideration of the state’s role in constructing rights projects. From a relational perspective, nation-states are not naturally bounded, internally organized, self-sustaining entities; instead, they are constructed through constant interactions—economic, political, military, and cultural—with other entities, defining and redefining their populations and territories (Emirbayer 1997:294–95). The boundaries and legitimacy of the state are not given (Mitchell 1999); they are constructed through political and cultural mechanisms, including regulation of marginalized communities (Puri 2016), rituals, and spectacles. Equally important, they are shaped by the everyday practices of people, which, in turn, shape individuals’ willingness and capacity for political engagement in dialectical ways (Annavarapu and Levenson 2021). Thus, the state cannot be viewed as an authoritative entity that grants or restricts “rights” to particular individuals or communities. Instead, the very power and authority of the state are partly shaped “through constant (and often contentious) interaction with residents on the ground” (Annavarapu and Levenson 2021:343). The concept of a rights project redirects our analysis from the state’s control over predetermined rights to the efforts of marginalized communities to define and enact rights as a context-specific project that sometimes aligns with (as in Taiwan’s “equality project”) but other times challenges or goes beyond (as in Singapore’s “diversity project”) the state’s legitimacy over rights. In pursuit of rights projects, the state serves not as the sole but one, albeit powerful, of many relational axes that marginalized communities negotiate with.
Future inquiries could explore how a relational sociology of rights can be extended to examine the struggles, resistances, and resilience of various marginalized communities in different relational contexts. Aligning with political sociology that emphasizes interactive meaning-making processes (Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003; Lichterman and Eliasoph 2014), a relational sociology of rights helps us understand how “social movements,” “collective action,” or “resistance” in the pursuit of rights should be defined and evaluated from the actors’ perspectives rather than by predetermined notions of what counts as meaningful political action. In this way, rights projects align with transnational feminist scholarship that delves into how women and other marginalized communities define, justify, and enact various forms and meanings of “empowerment” across different relational contexts, often with contradictory implications. This includes contexts such as workplaces (Ballakrishnen 2021), the criminal justice system (Roychowdhury 2020), humanitarian aid programs (Berry 2018), global health care initiatives (Vijayakumar 2021), and anti-trafficking rescue and rehabilitation programs (Shih 2023). By focusing on the internal contestations within individual rights projects, future empirical studies could examine how different notions of rights collide and compete over goals, priorities, and strategies. Expanding to the global and transnational scale, it is crucial to pay attention to how one rights project can be “influenced, shaped by, and [can] fuel” (Goldberg 2009:1274) other rights projects in disparate geographies and how rights projects not only wrestle with global human rights discourse but also affect and reshape it (see Lorca 2014). These theoretical and empirical inquiries will hold particular significance in an era of war, genocide, and climate crisis, as we seek to understand the complex pursuits and contestations over rights beyond the confines of Euro-American registers of rights.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the queer activists and organizers who have shared their journeys with me. I would also like to thank Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Paul Lichterman, and David John Frank for their guidance and support on the larger project from which this article stems. Poulami Roychowdhury, Tey Meadow, Haj Yazdiha, Paulina Garcia Del Moral, Jane Pryma, Joss Greene, Melanie Heath, and Marie Berry also offered helpful suggestions to improve the article. I also thank the anonymous reviewers of Sociological Theory for their generous feedback and suggestions, which strengthened the analysis.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project has received financial support for research and writing from the International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council, the Research Enhancement Fellowship from the University of Southern California, the Research Support Grant and Summer Research Award from Loyola University Chicago, the Faculty Research Grant from the Midwest Sociological Society, and the International Fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen.
