Law & Humanities Blog

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Call For Papers Posted: 07 Jul 2011 01:15 PM PDT Special Issue of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law Visual Semiotics of the Spaces We Inhabit Edited By Sarah Marusek, Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii Hilo In our everyday lives, we live and dwell in a variety of places that, upon first consideration, do not seem either legal or political. Upon closer examination, the spaces where we live and do things reveal a uniquely visual semiotics of place that generate meaning and contestation through structure, signage, and symbolism. As sites of power. these places can be urban, rural, or simply in between. The ways in which power manifests itself here is as law, legality, governance. Visual representations of meaning in our quotidian terrain of habitation constitute our relationships and govern who we are and how we understand our place in the world. The visual engagement with the semiotic construction of who we are as individuals, as a collective, and the presence of both within different communities is visibly marked by the banal as well as by the overtly distinct. In the routine places of our lives, identities fostered by rules and structures challenge us to reconsider how we conceptualize ourselves, each other, the state, and the spectrum of rights therein. Themes of consumption, reproduction, sexuality, religion, ownership, race, ethnicity, equality, access, death, and culture contribute to this visually semiotic relationship between law, power, and place. The International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, a peer-reviewed international journal published by Springer, will publish a special issue on "Visual Semiotics of the Spaces We Inhabit". Articles are invited to focus specifically, but not exclusively, upon the following ideas: 1. Spatiality that gives meaning to how and where we live 2. Visible constructions of governmentality and discipline 3. Everyday contestation of rights involving a visual sense of legality 4. Constitutive approach to law involving semiotics 5. Meaning of law through visual symbols, cues, and other modes of semiotic communication Comparative and interdisciplinary approaches are particularly welcome. Article proposals in US English (max. 1000 words) will be sent to Sarah Marusek marusek@hawaii.edu no later than 15 March 2012. Date of submission: Article proposal in US English (max.