Between Oñati and the world: Institution building for science – A personal testimony

The International Institute for the Sociology of Law was inaugurated precisely at the time I was so lucky to find myself in the position to start what I now feel I may legitimately call a socio-legal career. A career which has largely unfolded at a place not that distant from Oñati: Lisbon. Under these circumstances, answering the kind invitation of Martin Ramstedt to give an account of my working experience at the IISL, it makes sense to (1) summarize my own way to the sociology of law, (2) describe the development of the IISL as I was privileged to witness it since its inauguration, (3) survey the tasks I had to carry on during my directorship (1998-2000), and (4) recount the main opportunities I since then had to contribute to the Institute’s activities. Throughout this long period of involvement in the Oñati Institute’s life, I could appreciate its development as an institution, in the strong sense of the term. I will, therefore, (5) take the opportunity to tentatively revisit here the concept of institution, and to appreciate its relevance for reflecting our practice as scientists.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The force of science and the force of organizations: some exploratory thoughts applied to the example of the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law

A challenge in the current discussion of sociological theories is to find ways of combining systems theory with theory of social agency. The theoretical framework here introduced suggests one possible combination and is applied to reflections on the Oñati Institute’s past and future. What justifies this exercise is that it is time for the Institute to appreciate on what social forces it can count; and it is worth for sociology – of law – to take advantage of this opportunity to develop its tools for the approach of social forces

Sociology of Law and the Challenge of the Current Financial Crisis

The current crisis is, to a significant extent, a cognitive crisis. What is at stake is the development of a thorough understanding of what is going on, and finding ways to make the results of this analytical effort accessible to as many people involved as possible. Sociology of Law has an obvious role to play in these efforts. Issues such as the relationship between economy, politics, and law on the one hand, and the way people construct practically relevant knowledge in complex societies on the other, have a long tradition in our domain. The crisis also has a severe impact on the conditions under which we carry out our research business. So our work on these topics should also be conceived as part of a broader effort in the defence of science in the culture of world society, which corresponds exactly to the initial vocation of the RCSL

Rights perceived and practiced 2nd Part Results of the surveys carried out in Brazil, India, Mozambique and the United Kingdom, as part of the project “Domestic Work and Domestic Workers Interdisciplinary and Comparative Perspectives"

The following analysis gives an account of the data collected in Brazil, India, Mozambique, and United Kingdom within the framework of the research project Domestic Work and Domestic Workers. The annexed tables on which it is based are structured exactly the same way as the ones presenting the data collected in Portugal, introduced in a former working paper (Guibentif, 2011). Financed by a Portuguese entity, and sustained mainly by a team based in Lisbon, the project was in condition to collect a considerable amount of data in Portugal, where we could interview a sample of nearly 700 people. For financial and organizational reasons, it was impossible to carry out a comparable research operation in other countries. With the efficient support of colleagues involved in the international research network set up for the project, we succeeded in applying the same questionnaire as in Portugal to more modest samples in Brazil, India, Mozambique, and United Kingdom. We want to express here our warm thanks to Maria Lígia Barbosa, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Ramapriya Gopalakrishnan, from Chennai, India, and Nelson Chapananga, from Nampula, Mozambique, who organized these surveys. Given the more limited number of questionnaires under analysis, it is not possible to draw conclusions comparable to those that could be derived from the analysis of the Portuguese data. In Portugal, without being in condition to measure the precise representativeness of our sample, we can show that interviewees’ characteristics correspond to some extent to what we know nowadays about domestic workers in this country. And the plausibility of the information collected on several questions allows us to make a positive global evaluation of the data’s quality. This is not the case for the data collected in other countries. So our aim here is merely to identify the main common features, as well as the main differences, always keeping in mind the results of the Portuguese survey, as a frame of interpretation. As far as the features of domestic work in the countries analyzed are concerned, our data cannot lead us to conclusions, but to hypotheses to be confirmed, when possible, by other researches carried out in the compared countries. However, we are in condition to formulate statements on domestic work in general, as conditioned by different societal and national contexts.FC

Rights perceived and practiced results of a survey carried out in Portugal as part of the project “Domestic Work and Domestic Workers Interdisciplinary and Comparative Perspectives"

The Project will provide an interdisciplinary and comparative analysis of the phenomenon of domestic work, including some new empirical research. It mainly concerns the nature of the legal regulation of domestic work and domestic workers, contextualized by socio-legal and socio-economic analysis. Its focus is on law and society, including the impact of changes in the law on society, and will encompass both issues arising from domestic work and issues concerning domestic workers. The Project is focused on Portugal, where there has been no study of the legal implications of the nature of domestic work and the employment relationship, the identity of the workers, or the wider impact of the commodification of such domestic work. It will also consider, in a comparison, the United Kingdom, Brazil, India and Mozambique.FC

Sociology of legal subjectivity

It is argued here that the concept of “legal subjectivity” should be recognized as an indispensable piece of sociology of law’s theoretical tool kit, designating a priority research domain. In defence of this argument, the concept is specified, critiques that were addressed to it throughout the recent history of sociology of law are discussed, and a conceptual framework is presented, with a view to its empirical operationalization. This conceptual framework, inspired by systems theory, approaches a certain form of subjectivity as a characteristic of modernity, located at the interface between communication and individual psychic activity. Apart from applications to crucial contemporary issues – such as changes in the experience of citizenship, their causes and their possible consequences – it could help sociology of law to better contribute to a reflexive research about current changes in the scientific field itself.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Theories and Human Beings in Gunther Teubner’s Work

In conjunction with a wide-reaching and ambitious diagnosis of our time, Gunther Teubner develops a complex conceptual framework in social theory, based notably on Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory and Jacques Derrida’s Deconstruction. To scrutinize more precisely his way of working with theories not only could be beneficial to theoretical scholarship in social sciences. It also could provide material for reflections on the relationship between social systems and individual consciousness, a topic approached at several occasions in the work of Gunther Teubner, and in particular in Constitutional Fragments. A topic, however, which would deserve much deeper a discussion, given its relevance for the understanding of Constitutionalization processes.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

À quoi servons-nous, nous autres juristes, citoyens d’une société complexe?

À quoi sert le droit ? rend compte d’un diagnostic inquiet de l’époque actuelle. Un diagnostic particulièrement préoccupant pour un juriste ; en effet, « pour la première fois, nous envisageons le scénario d’une société postjuridique » (p. 1). Deux éléments de ce diagnostic s’expriment en de multiples endroits de l’ouvrage. L’un, mis en évidence déjà dans le prélude, est la « concurrence des normativités » (p. 3) ; le « débordement de la normativité par la normalisation » (p. 298), un phénomène « radicalement neuf, et vraiment préoccupant » (p. 311), qui tend à marginaliser l’outil juridique. L’autre, rappelé avec insistance dans les dernières pages de l’ouvrage, est l’évolution qui mène à « une société radicalement individualiste » (p. 554), voire « hyperindividualiste » (p. 78), une société où « la norme semble s’estomper et toutes les bornes s’évanouir ; [où] l’individu manque de repères, et la violence menace » (p. 246).info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Reconnaissance et complexité sociale – Deux approches de la réalité juridique

La théorie de la reconnaissance d’Axel Honneth est basée sur une conception plus globale de la réalité sociale qui mérite d’être confrontée avec celle qui sous-tend la démarche de la sociologie du droit. Cette confrontation met en évidence les innovations qu’introduit la théorie de la reconnaissance dans l’étude de la place des individus dans la réalité actuelle, réalité qu’elle invite à mieux concevoir comme tissée de processus dynamiques. Elle enrichit ainsi l’apport de la théorie de la société à la sociologie du droit. En même temps, elle est l’occasion pour celle-ci de prendre la mesure de la pertinence, à la fois pour l’approche de son objet, et pour l’identification de son propre statut, d’une conceptualité rendant compte de la différenciation fonctionnelle, une conceptualité qu’il vaut la peine de tenter d’articuler avec la théorie de la reconnaissance, ce qui sera ici tenté à titre exploratoire. Summary Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition is based on a broader conception of social reality worth being confronted with the conception that underpins current socio-legal research. This confrontation reveals, on the one hand, the innovative potential of the theory of recognition in the approach of the individual’s place in contemporary social reality, and of this reality in terms of dynamic processes. On the other hand, it leads to a reassessment of the relevance of a conceptual scheme taking functional differentiation into account, both for the observation of the research objects of sociology of law, and for the definition of the position of this discipline itself in social reality. Considering this relevance, it makes sense to articulate such a conceptual scheme with the theory of recognition. This is what we will attempt to carry out, as a tentative thought exercise

Entre agir sociétal et subjectivités: pour un concept du politique dérivé de Niklas Luhmann

Dès le moment où l’on admet – et Luhmann est de plus en plus explicite sur ce point au fil des années – que les systèmes sociaux, s’ils se différencient des systèmes psychiques, sont aussi dépendants de ceux-ci, qui fournissent une part vitale de leur environnement, la question ressurgit : dans la mesure où les subjectivités sont nécessaires à la communication humaine, comment celle-ci prend-elle en compte leur pluralité ? Une réponse classique à cette question est celle de Hannah Arendt : la pluralité humaine est ce qui fonde la politique. Partant de ce constat, et sachant que Luhmann a consacré une part importante de ses écrits au système politique, on examinera dans ce chapitre le traitement que Luhmann réserve aux subjectivités individuelles dans la discussion de ce système . On constatera que ce traitement reste marginal, ce qui conduit à envisager de possibles développements de la théorie systémiste du politique. En conclusion, on appréciera brièvement la pertinence du modèle auquel pourraient conduire ces développements.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio