Social Sovereignty

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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.