How did you choose your research topic?

The first time I thought about this topic was when I was advocating for the first Swiss initiative for a law binding corporations to respect human rights. In that campaign, the starting point was that corporations have become so powerful that they ought to be forced to respect human rights. However, the power exercised by corporations and the relation of that power to the invoked rights remained undeveloped. I discovered that this is a more general trend, which is also true across the broader literature on business and human rights.

What I contribute to that debate is to take a step back, and to think through how a different understanding of power and rights can expand the possibilities to grapple with the link between corporations and human rights.

Can you describe your thesis questions and methodology?

My research has been led by the question “Does power oblige?”, in the sense that I analyse and conceptualise the ways in which power is relevant for human rights — and obligations. I use a Foucauldian understanding of power in order to analyse how human rights are mobilised as tools for domination and resistance (conduct/counter-conduct) by and against corporations, and how that instrumentalist use of human rights shapes the corporation as a subject in the global (dis-)order.

My conceptualisation of power in Foucauldian terms has three crucial implications. Firstly, I see power as ubiquitous — and not as something that exists in a certain quantity and can be held onto — and as a plurality of different modes of power — and not only rooted in a monopoly over violent power. Secondly, I consider sovereign power as an outdated mode of power that is far less important than it is considered to be in much of political theory. Thirdly, I see power as relational: it links between two or more subjects. Depending on the mode of power, those links play out differently. And the different power relations have different impact on the implicated subject. In my understanding, power -relations manifest themselves in different ways, for instance through physical constraints or normalised routines. In my analysis, I focus on one specific dimension some of those power-relations have, namely human rights. I understand human rights as a dimension of some power-relations between two or more subjects. 

I then push this conceptualisation further through the description and analysis of three case studies, each focusing on a different kind of power. My first case study looks at the Siemens corporation in a historical perspective. I draw out the nascent human rights dimensions in the obligations that Siemens undertook in relation to its employees. Analysing this example through the lens of pastoral power, I demonstrate how Siemens is shaped into a liberal and caring corporation. My second case study analyses the regulation of social media companies and social media companies’ regulation of their users in terms of disciplinary power, and draws out how this impacts the subjectivity of these companies, of the social media users and of the states engaged in regulatory attempts. I demonstrate how WhatsApp’s and Facebook’s subjectivity is impacted by their technological response to state-regulation — and how states and users’ subjectivities are impacted by the corporations’ exercise of disciplinary power. In my third case study, I use the lens of governmentality in order to look at one specific operationalisation in a legal formulation that carves out space for the population impacted: the requirement that the corporation contributes to the economic development of the host state in order to become a protected foreign investor. Across these three case studies, the focus of the analysis shifts from the dominating (conducting) subject, to the intricacies of human rights dimensions in the power-relation, to the resisting (counter-conducting) subject. 

What are your major findings?

Looking at diverse Foucauldian power-relations situates my thesis at the crossroads of two conundrums: the first relating to international law, the second relating to the Foucauldian conceptualisation of law. 

The first conundrum concerns the question how human rights may play out in relation to subjects other than states. Here, human rights discourse tends to keep sovereign power at the heart of its conceptualisation. I use Foucauldian conceptualisations of power and rights in order to push beyond this focus. I identify a plurality of Foucauldian modes of power that bear human rights dimensions — interlinking subjects — be they humans, corporations or states. 

The second conundrum concerns Foucault’s conceptualisation of law. Foucault links law very closely to sovereign power. So, when he shifts the focus to other modes of power, he also shifts his attention away from (positive) law. He ends up contrasting a very positivistic understanding of law against a very wide understanding of social norms — and eventually, he conflates the two when he sees law operating more and more as a norm. Foucault’s conceptualisations of rights take place largely detached from this thinking about law and norms. I put those strands of his thought into conversation and focus on different technologies of power in which I identify dimensions of human rights. This allows me to push beyond Foucault in order to identify a plurality of rights and to introduce considerations of legal pluralism into my analysis.

In short, I demonstrate in my thesis that human rights and the subjects depend a lot on the context in which they are situated. I conclude by drawing out reference points for future struggles, for the identification and conceptualisation of Foucauldian human rights and their impact on the implicated subjects. I invite the reader to overcome potential fear from fragmentation of subjects and law and to navigate power-struggles with more openness for ways of constructive resistance. 

What could be the social or political implications of your thesis? 

I offer an innovative way to think about the role of corporations and their rights and obligations. Beyond that, I provide for a conceptualisation of human rights that radically moves away from the centrality of states for the establishment of human rights. In my conclusion, I operationalise a Foucauldian approach to discourse analysis in order to provide practical steps to conceptualise human rights as relations between two subjects – whether one of them is a state or not. What is crucial is to pay more attention to the margins, to the spaces that dominated subjects carve out themselves, where they can determine themselves how they are humans that rights ought to protect. 

What are you doing now? 

I work at the Swiss Federal Supreme Court and I am a lecturer at the University of Geneva.

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Dorothea Endres defended her PhD thesis in international Law on Development Economics on 22 February 2024. Professor Janne Nijman (right) presided over the committee, which included Professor Nico Krisch, Thesis Director, and, as External Reader, Professor Sundhya Pahuja, Law School, University of Melbourne, Australia.

Citation of the PhD thesis: 
Endres, Dorothea. “Foucauldian Rights Shaping Fragmented Subjects: How Human Rights Dimensions of Foucauldian Power-Relations Shape the Corporation as a Subject”. PhD thesis, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, 2024.

Access: A short abstract of the PhD thesis is available on this page of the Geneva Graduate Institute’s repository. As the thesis itself is embargoed until June 2027, please contact Dr Endres for access.

Banner image: Dominique Reymond as Foucault in Foucault en Californie by Lionel Baier. © Nora Rupp.
Interview by Nathalie Tanner, Research Office.