Legal linked data ecosystems and the rule of law

This chapter introduces the notions of meta-rule of law and socio-legal ecosystems to both foster and regulate linked democracy. It explores the way of stimulating innovative regulations and building a regulatory quadrant for the rule of law. The chapter summarises briefly (i) the notions of responsive, better and smart regulation; (ii) requirements for legal interchange languages (legal interoperability); (iii) and cognitive ecology approaches. It shows how the protections of the substantive rule of law can be embedded into the semantic languages of the web of data and reflects on the conditions that make possible their enactment and implementation as a socio-legal ecosystem. The chapter suggests in the end a reusable multi-levelled meta-model and four notions of legal validity: positive, composite, formal, and ecological

Towards a Critical Sociology of Dominant Ideologies: An Unexpected Reunion between Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski

This article aims to demonstrate the enduring relevance of Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski’s ‘La production de l’idéologie dominante’ [‘The production of the dominant ideology’], which was originally published in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales in 1976. More than three decades later, in 2008, a re-edited version of this study was printed in book format as La production de l’idéologie dominante, which was accompanied by a detailed commentary, written by Luc Boltanski and entitled Rendre la réalité inacceptable. À propos de « La production de l’idéologie dominante » [Making Reality Unacceptable. Comments on ‘The production of the dominant ideology’]. In addition to containing revealing personal anecdotes and providing important sociological insights, this commentary offers an insider account of the genesis of one of the most seminal pieces Boltanski co-wrote with his intellectual father, Bourdieu. In the Anglophone literature on contemporary French sociology, however, the theoretical contributions made both in the original study and in Boltanski’s commentary have received little – if any – serious attention. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature, arguing that these two texts can be regarded not only as forceful reminders of the fact that the ‘dominant ideology thesis’ is far from obsolete but also as essential for understanding both the personal and the intellectual underpinnings of the tension-laden relationship between Bourdieu and Boltanski. Furthermore, this article offers a critical overview of the extent to which the unexpected, and partly posthumous, reunion between ‘the master’ (Bourdieu) and his ‘dissident disciple’ (Boltanski) equips us with powerful conceptual tools, which, whilst illustrating the continuing centrality of ‘ideology critique’, permit us to shed new light on key concerns in contemporary sociology and social theory. Finally, the article seeks to push the debate forward by reflecting upon several issues that are not given sufficient attention by Bourdieu and Boltanski in their otherwise original and insightful enquiry into the complexities characterizing the daily production of ideology

Multidisciplinary Teamwork in a UK Regional Secure Mental Health Unit a Matter for Negotiation?

Multidisciplinary teamwork in healthcare is strongly advocated in policy documents and the professional literature, but evidence about its value is sparse. This paper argues that multidisciplinary rhetoric disguises the complexity of the relational processes involved. These processes are explored with reference to a qualitative study, conducted during 2002–2004, of a UK medium secure forensic mental healthcare unit. Although some instructive examples of selective collaboration emerged from the present study, in general, non-medical professionals felt that their capacity to negotiate new ways of working was thwarted by medical dominance. Patients, the recipients of interventions from a range of professions, mostly bracketed them together as an all-powerful 'they'. Multidisciplinary working promoted only limited partnership in this organizational setting, and became primarily a process through which structural differences were reproduced. The paper draws on insights derived from symbolic interactionist theory to explore the achievement of, and failure to achieve, collaboration across professional boundaries. It will be argued, firstly, that organizational constraints on multidisciplinary collaboration together with actors' attempts to overcome them can be usefully analysed in terms of a dialectic between role-taking and role-making; and, secondly, that the impact of professional power differences can be understood through analysis of organizations as autopoietic systems