Silva, Filipe Carreira da2014-06-022014-06-022014Silva, F. C. da (2014). Outline of a social theory of rights a neo-pragmatist approach (Workingpapers ICS 5/2014). Lisboa: Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboahttp://hdl.handle.net/10451/11072In this article I articulate a neo-pragmatist theory of human rights by drawing and expanding upon the American classical pragmatism of G.H. Mead. I characterize this neo-pragmatist theory of rights by its anti-foundationalist, relational, fictive, and constitutive nature. I begin by providing a reconstruction of Mead’s social pragmatist approach to rights, a contribution systematically ignored by contemporary sociologists of rights. Next I detail the cost of this disciplinary oblivion by examining how much neo-pragmatism, critical theory, and legal consciousness studies have meanwhile gained by engaging with Mead’s work on rights. Finally, I discuss the contributions of this historical-theoretical exercise to the rapidly growing sociology of rights. I show that by supplementing my neo-Meadian approach with a recent interpretation of Hobbes’s fictional theory of politics, there appear substantive gains in the empirical study of the origins, consequences, meaning, and denial of rights.engMead, George Herbert, 1863-1931Pragmatismoother