The Social Life of Human Rights Law: Local Legal Meanings and Evers Law: Local Legal Meanings and Everyday Practice
Keywords:
human rights law, legal consciousness, everyday law, vernacularization, qualitative research, Tehran, local legal meanings, rights practiceAbstract
This study aimed to explore how human rights law is understood, translated, negotiated, and practiced in everyday social life among residents and rights-related practitioners in Tehran. This qualitative study used a conventional thematic design based on semi-structured interviews. Twenty-four participants from Tehran were selected through purposive maximum-variation sampling, including community members, legal practitioners, social workers, civil-society volunteers, and local administrative actors who had experience with rights-related issues in daily, professional, or community contexts. Data collection continued until theoretical saturation was achieved. Interviews were conducted face-to-face, lasted 45–75 minutes, and focused on participants’ understandings of human rights, encounters with legal institutions, informal rights practices, and the local meanings attached to dignity, justice, equality, and responsibility. Audio-recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis with the assistance of NVivo software. Credibility was enhanced through member checking, peer review, prolonged engagement with the data, and an audit trail. Five main categories were identified: human rights as moral language before legal doctrine; translation of rights through family, workplace, and community relations; cautious rights claiming and strategic silence; institutional trust, procedural uncertainty, and legal distance; and everyday dignity as practical human rights. Participants rarely described human rights as abstract international law. Instead, they connected rights to respectful treatment, fair procedures, access to services, gendered expectations, employment relations, and ordinary experiences of being heard or ignored. Human rights language was used selectively, often shaped by perceived institutional responsiveness and social consequences. The findings show that human rights law gains social meaning through everyday interpretation, relational negotiation, and practical encounters with institutions. Local legal consciousness does not simply reproduce formal legal norms; rather, it transforms human rights into moral, social, and strategic vocabularies of dignity, fairness, and recognition. Strengthening human rights implementation therefore requires not only legal reform but also accessible procedures, public legal education, institutional accountability, and culturally meaningful forms of rights communication.
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