In search of new stories:human rights narratives in the transnational governance of sport, the Internet, and corporations

The narratives that we tell shape the contours of legal reality. The doctoral thesis enquires about how this world-building quality of narrative transpires in the new stories told under the rubric of international human rights law – especially those that define how human rights regulation develops within transnational governance spheres at the putative margins of international law. A key contention of the thesis is that the international human rights regime is undergoing a process of intensive transnationalisation, affecting both the framework of legal governance and the socio-cultural narratives on which it is based. This entails an on-going contestation about the nature and uses of human rights, a re-arrangement of regulatory power dynamics between stakeholders, and the diversified usage of human rights claims. The thesis uses insights from narrative theory to account for the contingencies, assumptions, interests, and values that are obscured through the recourse to the legal form of human rights within transnational governance. It does so by analysing the narrative choices in the governance of eligibility requirements for the women’s category within sports law; the positioning of online platforms as human rights duty-bearers; and the temporal connections between major regulatory initiatives within business and human rights. As a result, the thesis brings attention to the politics of these choices and critically questions the trajectory they give to the protection of human rights in a transnational, globalised context.