Human rights and the search for community

Some critics contend that the concept of universal human rights reflects the West's anticommunitarian, self-centered individualism, which disproportionately focuses on individual autonomy. In this book Rhoda Howard refutes this claim in a review of both left and right, Western and Third World communitarian views. These views underly cultural relativist attacks on universal human rights. Howard argues that communities can exist in modern Western societies if they protect the whole spectrum of human rights, especially if they protect economic rights as well as civil and political. Community depends on, but in its turn is essential to, the realization of universal human rights. Thus Howard also criticizes the modern Western practice of what she calls social minimalism, or lack of a sense of obligation to others.