Abstract
International legal scholars have long been concerned with the transnational lawmaking process, including the development, interpretation, and implementation of international norms. Yet there has been insufficient attention devoted to the micro-level details by which international law operates. Anthropologists can shed unique insights to this process by uncovering power dynamics, disaggregating institutions and actors, and revealing local practices on the ground. In this essay, I will analyze global supply chain governance through an ethnographic lens in order to examine the role of corporate actors as translators of international law. I argue that an anthropological approach can illuminate how corporations shape international law in practice by uncovering technologies of governance, relations of power, and chains of translation in the transnational lawmaking process.
Highlights
International legal scholars have long been concerned with the transnational lawmaking process, including the development, interpretation, and implementation of international norms
I will analyze global supply chain governance through an ethnographic lens in order to examine the role of corporate actors as translators of international law.[1]
Understanding how corporations shape international law requires an analysis of corporate personhood, where corporations are treated as “actors embedded in complex relations, and entities that produce and undergo transformation, with all the friction that entails.”[8]
Summary
International legal scholars have long been concerned with the transnational lawmaking process, including the development, interpretation, and implementation of international norms. There has been insufficient attention devoted to the micro-level details by which international law operates. Anthropologists can shed unique insights to this process by uncovering power dynamics, disaggregating institutions and actors, and revealing local practices on the ground. I will analyze global supply chain governance through an ethnographic lens in order to examine the role of corporate actors as translators of international law.[1] I argue that an anthropological approach can illuminate how corporations shape international law in practice by uncovering technologies of governance, relations of power, and chains of translation in the transnational lawmaking process
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