How can we use narrative hospitality to understand rights?

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Saunders, Rachel (2025) How can we use narrative hospitality to understand rights? PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.

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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.

Item Type: Thesis (University of Nottingham only) (PhD)
Supervisors: Sandland, Ralph
Dowthwait, Liz
Barr, Abigail
Keywords: rights, law, legal philosophy
Subjects: J Political science > JC Political theory
K Law > K Law (General)
Faculties/Schools: UK Campuses > Faculty of Social Sciences, Law and Education > School of Law
Item ID: 81562
Depositing User: Saunders, Rachel
Date Deposited: 11 Dec 2025 04:40
Last Modified: 11 Dec 2025 04:40
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/81562

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