Legal semiotics, globalization, and governance

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

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Abstract

When US and Chinese leaders refer to human rights, they invoke entirely different conceptions. Trouble follows incoherence and the normative gaps that this incoherence produces. This contribution suggests the power of semiotics to understand, analyze, and engage with both the constitution of meaning from which these collectives build and understand themselves, but also the power of law and governance to organize human activity at the most granular level. The contribution starts with a consideration of the semiosis of law, globalization, and governance. It then applies these insights to examine human rights legalities as a semiotic contestation-a system of interpenetration centered in law but structurally coupled with globalization and governance. The role of nihilism as a legal construct ends the examination. Semiotics provides a basis for navigating what appears to be incoherence built into the simultaneous infusion of multiple meanings and key terms of contemporary legal and institutional life.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationResearch Handbook on Legal Semiotics
PublisherEdward Elgar Publishing Ltd.
Pages61-85
Number of pages25
ISBN (Electronic)9781802207262
ISBN (Print)9781802207255
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 17 2023

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Social Sciences

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