Business, Peace and Human Rights: The Regulatory Significance of Pop Culture Products

Abstract

Popular cultural products are potentially powerful factors in the development of social norms and expectations. Compelling narratives and stories might conceivably be as significant as laws and regulations in how a society constructs its values frameworks, while also informing the design of regulation intended to advance those values. Proceeding from a legal scholarship tradition, this chapter explores a research agenda on how corporate social responsibility themes (especially the nexus of business, human rights and peace) have been treated in big-screen movies, still a principal pop culture product. It considers how this treatment might impact public demand for or receptivity to regulatory efforts to narrow the governance gap on adverse corporate social impact. While there are limits to Hollywood's supposed universal cultural reach or resonance, movies and other cultural artifacts might under some conditions be vehicles for stimulating, at scale, popular engagement on corporate responsibility. Show more