Social Sovereignty

Abstract

Questions of sovereignty are unavoidable when considering the production of social power within the context of modernity and globalization. If sovereignty refers to the existence of a highest or supreme power over a set of people, things, or places, then we ought to question whether sovereignty can be legitimately `located' in an agent like a state. Is not supremacy more accurately associated with the structures of relations that set the terms for - or are constitutive of - a domain of social existence (bodies of law or webs of codes)? This social sovereignty offers us a way to understand not only how both state and nonstate actors can together be central to the governance of social domains, but also how communities can fashion sovereign `societies' as opposed to states. The case of globalized financial markets is explored as a pointed example of a transboundary form of social sovereignty.

Indigenous Rights, Sovereignty and Resource Governance in the Arctic

“…14 This recognises that sovereignty can be attached to a wide range of state and non-state structures, and that 'what is at stake in sovereignty is not the status of the agent (such as state) but of a body of relations that shape spheres of life operating within or even across state boundaries'. 15 Among the permanent participants of the Arctic Council, several are transboundary non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The ICC, for instance, represents Inuit Downloaded by [Northeastern University] at 15:33 19 February 2015 of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Chukotka (Russia).…”

The State, the Rebel and the Chief: Public Authority and Land Disputes in Assam, India

“…Thus, despite the plethora of claims for institutional power in the Dhansiri area, none of the institutional players in the Atur Kimi dispute proved ready to blatantly undercut the others. The different actors involved realized that they lacked a de facto sovereign position — they did not have a final say in the everyday ordering of society (Latham, 2000; Rodgers, 2006) — and therefore chose to engage only selectively in acts of contestation. Even the NSCN‐IM had refrained from openly challenging the position of the district council and the DHD militia in order to avoid institutional conflict.…”

“…Especially in political contexts such as Northeast India, where the state has never acquired de facto sovereign control over the people and the territory, the portrayal of these political actors as institutional constructs ready to undercut one another, has proven to be of little analytic value. In these unsettled political contexts, none of the claimants of public power have a final say in the ordering of society (see Agnew, 2005; Latham, 2000). Rather, as the case studies will demonstrate, in order to exercise authority these actors are bound to adopt a politics of negotiation, accommodation, and only selective contestation.…”

“…3 3 My definition is based on Robert Latham's interpretation of social sovereignty (2000: 3) in which ‘the bodies of relationships that effectively structure practices and agency in a given area’ are central, and on the work of Hansen and Stepputat (2006). …”

Assemblages of sovereignty and anti-sovereign effects on the Irish border

“…;Borneman and Fowler 1997;Lake 2003;Latham 2000;Prokhovnik 1999;Rudolph 2005). Several attempts have been made within the social sciences to come to terms with this situation, proposing diff erent qualifi cations of sovereignty such as "eff ective, " "classic, " "globalist, " "integrative, " and "imperialist" (Agnew 2005), "constructivist" (Reus-Smit 2001;Wendt 1992), "embedded" (Cañás Bottos 2009), and "fl oating" (Kostakopoulou 2002).…”