Full e-thesis link is provided below. If the link is broken, the thesis can also be found in the University of Nottingham e-Theses Repository.
Abstract:
The largely structural or legal‐functional accounts of rights that legal philosophers such as Dworkin, Feinberg, and Rawls developed are short on explanatory power, asking what content needs adding to the notion of rights to make it more complete? An operative theoretical framework for rights would aid rights discourse, thus this research suggests that framing rights as narratives of hospitality provides a more complete conception. Communication technologies are the lens used to explore this conception of rights. Rights within society have normatively been viewed through public, private, and human rights perspectives, with rights as a mediated concept underpinning each. The aim of this thesis was to gain an understanding of how narrative hospitality can be used to understand rights examining why that mediation needs accounting for. Rights as a holistic concept were investigated using legal philosophical approaches to find the essence of what a right is, framing rights as requests for hospitality to alleviate personal suffering. The ends of this research provide an approach enabling examination of philosophical concepts of rights within a technological framing. I provide a wide-ranging examination about the concept of rights, establishing how narrative hospitality is essential to understanding rights.
School of Law
Supervisors: Ralph Sandland, Liz Dowthwait, Abigail Barr
Keywords: rights, law, legal philosophy
