Reflexive rights in a glocal human order: towards a new humanity

Abstract

Our contemporary society is currently undergoing a process of change and transformation by subjecting itself to reflexive processes. Since the beginning of the twentieth century humankind has been witnessing a shift within modernity where the former industrial society faces the challenge of redefining its traditional foundations. In modern society risks know no boundaries and every human being is potentially subjected to their negative effects, independently of their own will. The consciousness of living in a global human risk society brings out important aspects of peoples lives when contacts between cultures become widespread and society witnesses the emergence and proliferation of many transnational ways of life, where everyone is supposed to live individually in a worldwide community simultaneously local and global. The increasing auto-biographical features designing people’s lives enhances the importance of finding new rules able to address not only the new concerns regarding family and working conditions but also the major issues affecting our social order. Today, this is done through the activism of contemporary civil society organisations, which allow individuals to actively participate in the redefinition of their social settings. Human rights, as an essential roadmap for living collectively, represent a reflex of this changed society. Through the language of human rights the voice of the most defenceless flows and a cross-cultural dialogue able to reach consensual agreements on basic rights full realisation presents itself as an essential feature for the future wellbeing of individuals everywhere