Search

In many developing countries, trade is not facilitated by formal legal protections such as property and contract rights. Instead, informal trade occupies the vast majority of domestic transactions, often unaccounted for by general economic models and wealth measurement tools. This type of trade is often absent of formal legal protections, or if they exist, they are seldom enforced in developing country trade. Yet despite the lack of formal legal mechanisms and institutions in informal markets, trade continues to flow smoothly and with little apparent conflict. What mechanisms, whether formal or informal, support and facilitate this movement of goods and keep conflict to a minimum? How effective are the underlying legal or quasi-legal institutions that promote trade in informal markets and do they adequately protect the buyer and seller from potential disputes? Would formalization and better enforcement of formal legal rights to domestic trade facilitate or impede the operation of the informal marketplace?This study will consider the informal market for goods in Latin America, primarily addressing domestic trade in urban Colombia. The analysis will be interdisciplinary, combining the research tools of law, economics, sociology and international trade policy. The purpose of the study is to identify the mechanisms that facilitate informal trade, determine their effectiveness in protecting buyers and sellers and preventing disputes, and discern the viability and usefulness of implementing formal legal protections on the informal market. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the perceived crisis of ethics in the legal profession in the light of the insights of the classical sociology of Durkheim and Weber and the moral philosophy of Alasdair McIntyre. We apply Durkheim's critique of contractual society in The Division of Labour and Professional Ethics and Civic Morals to the analysis of the isomorphism between corporate law and the capitalist system it serves: in particular, the transformation, in practice, of lawyers from officers of the court to the unreserved servants of their powerful clients. The paper explores the extent to which lawyering can be understood as a 'practice' in the sense identified by Alasdair McIntyre, and the changing balance in this practice between the influence of internal and external goods. This balance reflects the conflict identified by Weber between value rationality (wertrational) and instrumental rationality (zweckrational), a conflict, we argue, mediated by the adherence of lawyers to the much derided 'trait' model of the profession. This fragile equilibrium has been disturbed in the UK as in other jurisdictions by, on the one hand, the interweaving of legal practice with the instruments of innovation which have accompanied financial deregulation and the accompanying boom, and on the other, the application of rational preference models of market regulation, justified through a discourse of derision, to publicly funded legal services. Accounts of a crisis in ethics and morale among lawyers can be understood by reference to the concept of anomie, where the impact of external goods on the 'practice' of law has eroded its standing as a cornerstone of civil society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law and sociology often share an interest in and, at times, a commitment to identifying and (re)enforcing disciplinary boundaries. As a result, opportunities to share insights and examine common questions are often overlooked. Drawing upon the work of social theorist Bruno Latour, together with the writings of Max Weber and Dorothy Smith, this paper will examine how methodological practices in sociology might inform (and be informed by) practices of critical lawyering. In particular, Latour's project of "deploying controversies," elaborated in Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (2005), parallels many practices of reflective lawyering, and his critique of the (sociological) quest for fixity and stasis has value across disciplines. This paper will focus on Latour's use of "uncertainties" - about groups, action, objects, facts, and accounts - to begin to examine some of the commonalities between his "sociology of associations" and critical, reflective lawyering. Controversies, actual or anticipated, are central to law; in fact, lawyers are often criticized for generating unnecessary controversies as a means of ensuring relevance and full employment. Latour offers an alternative view of controversies as significant for understanding the social world and a method for deploying those controversies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will analyze the attitudes of class representatives and their attorneys about the class action device, and the extent to which those attitudes mirror the findings of the scholarly literature that has examined the attitudes of lawyers and clients in individual cases. The paper's theoretical frame will be the idea of Procedural Justice, which posits that participants generally preference the fairness of a given adjudicative procedure over monetary results. Their lawyers, on the other hand, tend to preference the monetary results over the procedure.Thus, for example, do representative plaintiffs, who are typically more invested in the class action process than class members, preference the fairness of the procedure over monetary compensation? Are they even more concerned with procedural fairness than individual plaintiffs, given that they have agreed to take on the role of representative plaintiff? In that way, do they become "superguardians" of a fair process? Are class action cause lawyers more concerned with non-monetary relief than their counterparts in individual cases, given the opportunities class actions present for more widespread relief and changes in the conduct of the defendant?After analyzing these questions, the paper will suggest ways that class actions might be structured to better achieve the underlying goals of the cause lawyers who bring them. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notions of legitimacy and legitimation have become areas of major social scientific interest during recent decades. The first part of this paper presents an overview of sociological concepts of legitimacy and their origin in legal theory and classical social theory. It also discusses their normative character, which has been explored to a surprisingly limited extent, despite the well-known Weberian effort in this direction.The publication of Faktizität und Geltung established Habermas as the dominant theoretician of legitimacy and legitimation. The second part of the paper discusses the apparent lack of alternatives to his approach. Could this be an example of Wissenschaft als Zeitgeist whereby Habermas's work reflects more general trends and ideological transformations within society and social science alike? Habermas's analysis of the interplay between legitimacy and the rule of law (Rechtsstaat) and his characterization of his work as sociology of law are also examined. The third part of the paper considers sociology of law as being situated in the borderland between social and legal sciences and argues for a constant dialogue with both sciences. This is particularly important in the conceptualization and analysis of complex social and legal phenomena which draw the attention of both disciplines, and questions surrounding the legitimacy of law fall into this field. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two and a half decades, theoretical and empirical work on law and culture in society has increasingly deployed the vocabulary of "legal consciousness." This paper argues that the vocabulary first appeared in the legal academic work of Critical Legal Studies, and was then appropriated by sociolegal scholars to address perceived deficiencies in the "gap studies" of mid-century sociologies of law. In the process, legal consciousness contributed to the development of a more mutually constitutive view of the relationship between law and society. For all these benefits, however, this paper argues that by imperceptible degrees legal consciousness work began to lose its way. Most particularly, by the late 1990s it often became difficult to discern just what was legal about legal consciousness. Legal consciousness research since then has begun to address this problem, almost inadvertently, by delimiting its focus to specific doctrinal areas presumed to correspond to specific domains of social life. While this move has better helped to ground legal consciousness work, it sidesteps the real problem: Scholars of law, culture, and society need a workable, robust definition of "law." Such a definition itself requires a more fully developed theory of the law-culture-society nexus. This paper concludes by suggesting some of the work such a theory, along with its corresponding definition of "law," should do in order to be methodologically useful. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal and social systems are normative systems. Legal and social theoretical inquiries consequently tend to focus predominantly if not exclusively on normative questions regarding law and society. Agamben's concern with bare life and his engagement with Bartleby's response "I would prefer not to", point our attention to the non-normative backdrop of existence in which normativity is situated and from which it cannot be extracted. What is the significance of this concern with the non-normative from which the normative cannot be extracted? This paper will argue that the concern with the non-normative constitutes an enlarged thinking about normativity in which normativity is simultaneously refused and embraced for the sake of its continued existential significance. The paper will also relate this enlarged thinking to the regard for the sacrificial dynamics of legal and social normativity and give concrete examples of how this regard can be embodied or expressed in legal reasoning. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From microstoria to ethnomethodology:crime-in-action in contemporary Syrian societyZouhair GhazzalLoyola University Chicagozghazza@luc.eduWhat is common to microstoria and ethnomethodology is that both strongly ascertain their preference for small-scale objects of research: "Small is beautiful," runs the common motto, or "Less is more," and "God is in the details." Thus, even though microstoria is mostly concerned with historical data, while ethnomethodology is in its essence anchored in the anthropological and sociological, what brings the two together is a fondness for "thick description" within carefully selected ranges of data, snubbing claims for longue durée exhaustiveness. Historians tend, however, whatever the scale of their research, to believe in broad historical formations, or in objective social structures that affect the behavior of individuals, while microstoria, in spite of shifting its scale of research to the very small, is not exempt from looking at individuals in terms of the objective world of rules and structures. Ethnomethodology by contrast shuns away from Durkheimian pretensions that "social facts" are situated "outside" individual actions, and believes in no preordained structures, promoting instead an analysis of concrete day-to-day interactionist situations that would describe how actors improvise and invent as they go along.This paper would like to explore, in the context of microstoria's and ethnomethodology's overlapping and conflicting methodologies, and within the range of historical and anthropological horizons, how an approach to criminal records in contemporary Syrian society is possible. To begin with, the study of an unfolding crime in Syria represents several logistic and analytic difficulties. First among them is the difficulty at collecting data exhaustively, in particular the taping of police interrogations, and the investigative judge's sessions, with suspects and witnesses, not to mention the court hearings. We are therefore left with the documents that each case-file contains, and upon which the court based its ruling. But we're yet confronted with another problem, that of the unavailability of a continuum of historical records: since the files are preserved on average for no more than 20 to 25 years, it is difficult to properly analyze and evaluate the evolution of the criminal system. We therefore have to content ourselves for the most part with written documents, as they have been delivered to us by the judicial authorities, which could be both a blessing and a curse. But in either case, some of the methodological criteria of microstoria and ethnomethodology are met, such as the micro analysis of a limited number of texts that would help us to discern the bigger picture, or the interpretation of texts as the process through which actors document criminal events. The paper, based on a couple of contemporary cases from the city of Aleppo (north of Syria), shall explore how best to make use of the findings of microstoria and ethnomethodology in the domain of the practice of criminal law in an Islamic society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Luhmann's work impresses not only by its comprehensiveness, but also by its dynamics and inventiveness. So there are strong scientific and pedagogical reasons to carefully analyse, beyond the contents, the way it has been produced. This is the aim of this paper, based on a comparison between Luhmann and other leading authors in the social theory of law. Luhmann himself supplies several keys to his working procedures (clear structure of the whole work; comments on his Zettelkästen; relevant elements in his systems theory such as their chapters on science as social system, evolution and so on). What these procedures perform is a remarkable distance, compared with other authors, between the theoretical work and its environment (research results, academic debates, historical circumstances, personal experiences). Even if this environment is far from being ignored. A more tricky issue is the relationship, within his theoretical "workshop", between the Zettelkästen and his papers, his writings in the narrow sense of the word. A crucial issue since we meet here the very process of Luhmann's writing, i. e. thinking. Luhmann's theory offers suggestive concepts for tackling this question, such as the distinction between conscience and communication and the concept of structural coupling. This is however, the point where there might be a special worth in using also concepts of other authors. No wonder: if they have one thing in common with Luhmann, it is that they are all writers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends a sociological framework for legal change-the recursivity of law. Part I reviews the theory of the recursivity of law as a systematic framework for comparisons of lawmaking and law practice across national jurisdictions. Part II presents a brief overview of a global movement towards the development and diffusion of global norms for corporate bankruptcy law that converge around the primacy of reorganization. Part III analyzes the decade-long recursive cycles of corporate bankruptcy reforms and out-of-court restructurings in Korea, most notably those precipitated by the Asian Financial Crisis and the forceful interventions of the IMF and World Bank. These reforms reflect the struggles of Korea's transition from a state-led development model of economic growth to a market-led rule-governed model of market activity. Part IV examines a principal theoretical advance of this paper-how to explain "switching" among legislative, administrative and judicial sites of lawmaking as differing actors seek loci of legal change that advance their often competing interests. The paper concludes with discussion of implications for lawyers of lawmaking and legal change, and the prospects for a rapprochement between scholars of comparative law and the sociology of law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I offer a critique of contemporary professional history, particularly its fetishization of "sociological" complexity, and an alternative. The métier of contemporary professional history is the placement of an ever-expanding array of subjects in relation to each other within a continuum called historical time. To "historicize" a subject is to locate it in its appropriate historical-temporal context. Current historical practice celebrates expansion, for expansion enriches the continuum of historical time by producing an ever-greater density of relations among historically-located subjects. My paper proposes a distinct conceptualization of history, predicated on a retrieval of Walter Benjamin's theorization of historical materialism, which proposes a theory of history radically distinct from historians' current concerns. I explain the three components of Benjamin's theory - the discontinuity of historical time, the destructive power of the working class, and the tradition of the oppressed - and show how each induces a fundamental upheaval in received conceptions of memory and historical time that feeds a conception of historical practice as "constellation" - the galvanic seizure upon the past by the present at an instant of recognition - that creates new knowledge for the present - "the time of the now." I use four moments from the history of class, colonization and settlement in the Atlantic world to suggest the potency of "constellation." By pointing to how law is implicated in the constitution of each moment I draw "the legal" into the orbit of Benjamin's historical materialism and away from the discourse of historical complexity by which it has been so thoroughly penetrated. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal Pluralism is an elusive notion that means different things to different people. The fundamental starting point is to define or identify "law" in some way, but this is always subject to challenge. This paper will explore two alternative approaches to legal pluralism: one defines law in terms of a particular concept; the second, rather than define law, uses a test to identify law. The paper will argue that the second approach is superior for sociological and theoretical reasons ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Toward a Theory of Legal Evolution Richard D. Schwartz (Abstract of a paper to be delivered at session S39, LSA Chicago, 2004) The field of Law and Society has not yet achieved a dominant paradigm. There are several reasons for this: complexity of subject matter and recency of the field being two. Perhaps we are closer, however, than most of us have thought. A dominant paradigm could play a vital part in cumulating and ordering our knowledge. Thomas Kuhn's detailed discussion of dominant paradigms in physics demonstrates the importance of such a model. How close have we come to enunciating a dominant sociolegal paradigm? As a sociologist of law, I have looked in particular at the works of the classical sociology of law theorists: Ehrlich, Durkheim, and Weber. More recently, we have two sociological approaches in the work of Donald Black and Philip Selznick. Although I will begin with these five sociologists of law, my intention is to recruit some important nonsociological contributions as I try to synthesize what we know of sociolegal dynamics. My approach in this paper is to use the evolution of law, historically and comparatively, as the focus of attention. A dynamic theory seeks to explain how legal systems evolve, how they persist, and (in significant instances) why they fail. The dynamic we seek to understand in our field is, of course, the interrelation between law and society. My starting point is that law, to be effective, requires a societal belief in its legitimacy. My paper develops that theme as a contribution to an emergent sociolegal paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the proposition that analyses of class appear to be missing from the law and society radar screen. For example, where does the voluminous empirical research on recent American welfare reform fit within law and society scholarship? And where are the global economic justice issues? Is class missing? If so, why? And where can we find it? [Please note: if you have received some number of paper and panel proposals regarding class issues, then I would be delighted to serve as a chair and/or discussant of such a panel, in lieu of presenting this paper.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I shall first argue that the role and the reach of regional human rights institutions should be expanded so that they participate more fully in developing human rights jurisprudence. National policies on human rights intersect with region-specific problems and contexts as well as national governmental capacities, and a more explicit system of power sharing between the international and the regional human rights systems could more accurately assess whether departures from international human rights standards are premised upon legitimate national constraints. In the second part of the paper, I shall go on to sketch particular methods that regional institutions could usefully adopt when adjudicating and mediating the gaps between national and international human rights standards. I argue they should be guided by three juridical devises: the principle of subsidiarity, the principle of margin of appreciation and the principle of complimentarity. Application of these principles would ensure that international human rights standards continue as the benchmark of human rights reforms within states, and thus prevent regional institutions from too much regional exceptionalism or the creation of regional human rights 'ghettos'. At the same time, it would recognize the empirical and pragmatic contexts at the national and sub-national level that influence the rate of implementation of international standards of human rights. Finally, I give some examples of human rights that would benefit from this mediated institutional approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a sociological analysis of abolition movements. I will ask, who are the possible main protagonists against the death penalty. A glance into history and the today's abolition movements reveals great variety of possible protagonists. Perhaps the most striking dichotomy distinguishes between 'reformers from above' and 'reformers from below'. By looking at many today's East European countries (or to Turkey) 'reformers from above' (state elites) seems to prevail. Mostly, the 'reformers from above' intent by fighting against death penalty to augment the state's reputation in relation to foreign countries. Reforms in death penalty are seen as raison d'Etat. Another possibility is, that reforms from above are motivated with the aim to change internal power balances in favor for the central state. This motivation can be found in the reforms of many continental European realms of eighteenth and nineteenth century. Many kinds of social reforms, including reforms of the penal law and the death penalty, experienced in the Western World following a different pattern. There are many middle class bound organizations, NGO's or other pressure groups trying to campaign against death penalty. Perhaps this pattern of reforms from below roots in the Anglo-Saxon World of the eighteenth century. These 'reformers from below' seem not to be motivated by raison d`Etat but ideological in forms of humanism, religious conviction, or the fight for a civil society. 'Reformers from below' are also advancing their power position by fighting against the death penalty because they can gain political influence in the course of reforms. The paper seeks to clarify following points: 1. To what kind of extant is the position towards the death penalty a 'symbol' of social competition? This network of social competition includes both power struggles within states and power struggles between states. 2. In what kind of situation the symbol 'death penalty' becomes the attributes of money (perhaps like Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital)? In this sense, to have much cultural money means to have a clement penal code. The more clement, the richer (better). The harsher, the more shameful. This means: what are the social preconditions that punitive brutality will be limited. (This would be also concept directed against functional arguments, that underlines death penalty is necessary or death penalty is not necessary because of). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to stimulate a reflection about the sociology and criminology research difficulty of observing qualitative reforms in the penal system. When the literature identifies the changes within the framework of the penal system, the reforms highlighted are always related to the idea of the increase in the punitive and repressive character of the criminal law as they refer, in general, with a specific and emergency legislative process (Garland, Wacquant). However, without denying the existence of these changes, this paper supports the need for building a sociological concept of the reform of criminal law which makes it possible to identify the safeguarding of the penal system, but at the same time making room for the emergence of innovating ideas. We understand by innovating ideas the ideas "able to produce a qualitative change in the criminal law" (Pires). As useful concept to help us to identify, describe and understand the inertia and/or the change of the criminal law, this work defends the usefulness of the concept of modern penal rationality (Pires) as starting point for the analysis. Le présent travail vise à susciter une réflexion sur la difficulté des recherches sociologiques/criminologiques d'observer réformes qualitatives dans le système pénal. Quand la littérature identifie les changements dans le cadre du système pénal, les réformes mises en relief sont toujours liées à l'idée de l'augmentation du caractère punitif et répressif du droit pénal ainsi qu'elles réfèrent, en général, à un processus législatif ponctuel et d'urgence (Garland, Wacquant). Toutefois, sans nier l'existence de ces changements, le présent travail soutient la nécessité de construire un concept sociologique de réforme du Code Pénal qui permet d'identifier le maintien du système pénal, mais aussi l'émergence d'idées innovatrices. Nous entendons par idées innovatrices les idées « capables de produire un changement qualitatif dans le régime du droit pénal » (Pires). Comment peut-on construire un système pénal plus juste et moins punitif et répressif? Comme concept-outil pour nous aider à identifier, décrire et comprendre l'inertie et/ou le changement du droit pénal, le présent travail défend l'utilité du concept de rationalité pénale moderne (Pires) comme point de départ de l'analyse. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociologist who tries to understand the origins of legal positivism (LP) soon stumble over a major problem: the considerable confusion around the very definition of LP. Most of the authors agree to describe LP as a tradition that goes, roughly, from Jeremy Bentham to Herbert L. A. Hart, and to define it by the "separation thesis". But while some authors are gradually enlarging the definition of the separation thesis in order to make it more consistent with some critiques, thus losing the founding moment of LP in the dawn of legal thought itself, some others are questioning the adherence of no less than Bentham himself, the founding father, to LP.So what is LP actually about, and who founded it?Part of the answer, as I came to realize in the course of my own investigations, lies in the origin of the term "legal positivism" itself. But the answer we find is an unexpected one. In this paper, I shall demonstrate (1) that our current conception of LP does not date back further than 1940; (2) that all the confusion about LP's definition follows from the ambiguity of the 1940 initial definition; (3) that Bentham's place within LP is, indeed, questionable; and (4) that our conception of LP as a tradition needs a radical revision. This presentation is meant to contribute to a better understanding of both the issues related to the definition of LP and the sociological origins of LP. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The socialization of law students is a classical issue in the sociology of the legal profession. Major contributions originate from North America, and especially the U.S. As far as France is concerned, few is known about the impact of years spent in law school on professional values and occupational future. In such matters, national culture and history cannot be ignored, in spite of a trend towards globalization. Consequently, I propose to draw some conclusions from empirical studies (especially case studies) I conducted amongst law students and lawyers, especially in France and, to a lesser extent, in Toronto (Canada). More specifically, I will first point out the main results mentioned in the scientific literature about legal education as part of a process of professional socialization. Then, I will stress on the common points and differences between both post-secondary and professional contexts in France and in North America in order to better understand the issues that are at stake in France regarding the relationship between legal education and the legal professions. Finally, I will focus on some of the main results I found out with my data. This will lead to understand to what extent analyses mentioned in the literature apply to the French case. More generally, this paper aims at contributing to the analyses of the interaction between post-secondary education and the legal professions, their changes and their social reproduction. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines and commends an approach to the rule of law that departs from that common among lawyers. In particular, it does not offer, as lawyers typically do, a general definition that picks out characteristics of laws and legal institutions supposedly necessary, if not sufficient, for the rule of law to exist. Rather, it begins with teleology and ends with sociology. That is, it suggests we start by asking what we might want the rule of law for, and only then move to ask what we need in order to get it. And to answer that second question, it recommends looking beyond legal institutions to the societies in which they function, the ways they function there, and what else happens there which interacts with and affects the sway of law. For the rule of law to exist, still more to flourish and be secure, many things beside the law matter, and since societies differ in many ways, so will those things. So a universal, institution-based, answer to what the rule of law is, is implausible. And it will often mislead. Indeed it might well lead us away from the rule of law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dominated by social and legal philosophers, the present debate on justice oscillates between the poles of universality (Rawls, Habermas) and alterity (Levinas, Derrida). In my paper, I contrast them with a third position, a sociological theory of justice in which justice appears as the "contingency formula" of law (Luhmann). Here, the question of justice is no longer primarily a problem for philosophy but for concrete social practices in the changing self-descriptions of law. This opens perspectives for historical analyses to investigate into affinities of varieties of justice with changing social structures. More important is its potential to reformulate the concept of justice under present conditions which could give not only directives for legal sociological investigations but also normative impulses for a different understanding of justice in legal theory and practice.I expect to expand this project by a confrontation with Levinas' and Derrida's ideas on justice. Parallel to Luhmann's concept, justice in their view is neither an internal legal norm, nor is it an external social, moral or political program, but aims - now in contrast to the case of Luhmann - at the transcendence of law, which is unattainable to legal operations but whose demands they are continuously subject to. Luhmann's sociology does not address this question; instead, it is solely concerned with the immanence of law, the positivity of legal acts, legal rules, and law's relation with the social environment. To the extent that Levinas and Derrida emphasise the irreconcilable difference between positive law and such a form of justice, they formulate the transcendent dimension of law. Ironically, this would, precisely in Luhmann's sense, constitute an observation of law and world as unity of the difference of law / non-law which necessarily ends in paradoxes. From such a confrontation of contingency and transcendence in the concept of justice I expect to develop a deeper understanding for subversive practices of self-transcendance in law which are neglected in official legal theory and doctrine. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasing awareness of the decisive role of social determinants, or 'particularizing forces, on the development of criminology in a given national context, there is no widely accepted conceptual framework for their investigation. Yet, in reviewing the literature, one can discern a sharp increase in scholarly interest on national development. Rather than review the detail of how particular studies conceived and investigated their national 'criminologies', our concern in this paper (subtitled 'issues of method') is to articulate heuristic ways of considering such research drawing from the sociology of knowledge and sociology of sociology literatures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I draw from whiteness studies and sociological race theory to examine American racialization. The framework I propose conceptualizes racialization in terms of three dimensions: formal, material, and symbolic; I apply these to analyze the racialized experiences of South Asian Americans (Americans who trace their ancestry back to the Indian subcontinent). My analysis presents racialization in terms of reflexive attributes rather than racial categories. Race is viewed primarily as access to 'whiteness,' with the negation of this access defined as 'otherness'; however, the dynamic model of race presented here can be also applied to other racial designations. To illustrate the utility of this framework, whiteness and otherness are examined as legal claims, ascriptions, and negations in the racialization of South Asian Americans, 1900 to present. Among the historic episodes analysed are the Thind decision and related court decisions on whiteness, changes in U.S. immigration policy and Census classifications, the 'model minority' stereotype, religious racialization, the political career of Bobby Jindal, and the recent "macaca" incident during the 2006 U.S. election campaign. I also discuss "blackness" as the primary (but not exclusive) category of "otherness" in the U.S. and present the implications of my analysis for American racialization in the 21st century. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Erving Goffman's (1967) concept of "action" and Stephen Lyng's (1990) concept of "edgework," this paper traces the evolution of voluntary risk taking activities and human agency in the transition from early to late modern society. Although both of these concepts refer to high risk activities such as gambling, high risk sports, interpersonal risk taking and the like, both approaches to voluntary risk taking also explore the broader normative and agentic implications of risk taking within historically-specific societal contexts. Thus, a comparison of the "action" and "edgework" perspectives reveal important structural changes that have been underway in Western society during the last century. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A gender-free society is one of the visions that have been developed in feminist, transgender and intersex theory as an alternative to the existing gender order. These visions depart from the idea that through social change, gender can be "undone" to the point that it is not relevant any more as a normalising instrument prescribing the classification into either male or female and heterosexuality as a norm. In this utopian state of society, being "female", "intersex" or "transgender" is no reason for disadvantages or discrimination - or more radically, these classifications do not exist anymore. The paper explores how this vision could be used on one hand as a tool for reflection on the current use of the categories of sex and gender in law as well as in gender and law scholarship. On the other hand it might serve as a direction for legal reform for the 21st century. Thereby one of sociology of law's "classical" issues has to be addressed: the question of the use of law as an instrument of social change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processes of judicial decision-making have been affected by different types of legal theory. In previous work I explore in depth the main theories that have influenced the traditions and arguments of judges in Latin America, and particularly in Colombia. At times, the dominant judicial style has been characterized as "formalistic". Latin American formalism, however, is a multi-faceted and complex phenomenon. One of the main traits of this formalistic type of adjudication tends to isolate judicial reasoning from social "needs", "interests", and "consequences". These vague concepts, when used in judicial rhetoric, frequently work as symptoms of the infiltration of "sociological" modes of jurisprudence that criticize and seek to transcend formalistic jurisprudence. In this paper I want to go through two intense historical moments (1935-1940 and 1992-2002)) in which tools of "sociological jurisprudence" have had a significant impact on judicial decision-making in Colombia. The challenge to traditional formalistic jurisprudence created in both moments a chiasm both in the profession and in public opinion at large. My purpose is to analyze the uses of new tools of "anti-formalistic" legal reasoning and the way, if any, in which they merged into the main currents of local legal consciousness. The types of sociological jurisprudence that were displayed differed starkly at each of the relevant periods and appealed to different actors and interests. The history of "sociological jurisprudence" in Latin America also reveals important differences from the intellectual "histories" of jurisprudence that nowadays usually get told from the perspective of U.S. intellectual developments. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper will explore the use of the concept of 'social function of property' in Brazilian legal scholarship in the first decades of the XX century. Property had been seen as the idela typical individual or subjective right for decades, until the first attempts to create a social-democractic order took shape. In the first decades of the XX century different scholars advanced different criticisms to the idea of property. In the German speakin world the works of Eugen Ehrlich and Karl Renner suggested a sociological critique to law. Leon Duguit in France forged the term 'propriété fonction'. Catholic thinkers tried to build a bridge towards social reform with the idea of 'social function' with a moral inspiration. In the United States the work of John Commons was 'functionalized' the idea of property as well. The investigation will try to determine which of these 'schools' of thought had a greater impact in Brazilian legal scholarship and whether Brazilian lawyers and the Brazilian law changed as a result of such debate. The work will adopt the conceptual history approach well known in the history of ideas, as well as an empirical inquiry into actual litigation in Brazilian courts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a context in which the Law and society association invests considerable ressources in extending the reach of the movement far beyond the American borders, this presentation aims at coming back to other episods of internationalization of the socio-legal field. Trying the identify the entrepreneurs (exporters and importers), the institutions and the ressources of those first international academic networks, the paper builds on two specific moments : first, the institutionalization of legal sociology within the framework of the International Sociological Association during the 1960s under the lead of Renato Treves ; second, the international success of the marxist reelaboration of the theory law through French (Critique du droit) and Italian (Uso alternativo del diritto) legal doctrine and through judicial unionism (Magistratura democratica, Syndicat de la magistrature). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The various researches classified as interdisciplinary "Law and Society" study are often divided into two groups: studies of law's causes and effects using social science methods, and analysis of law's human meaning through the lens of the humanities. This split reintroduces the disciplinary pigeonholes that interdisciplinary scholars seek to escape. The paper focuses on the theoretical basis of "Law and Society" pedagogy, what should be taught to "Law and Society" students, and what should they know at a minimum, if anything? Is Law and Society a "discipline," and if not, what did they get for all that tuition money? The presenter is an Assistant Professor of Law and Society in a department where these issues are hotly debated. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Philippines and U.S. colonial empire as an example, this paper will show the ways that law serves as a vehicle for colonial hegemony, how the role of law is strictly connected to the construction of the state, and the way that law is also inseparable from issues of family, oligarchy, and social inequality. The Philippine and U.S. example will be related to the situation in other countries, especially in Asia, and different methods of colonial domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the same time as they consider Montesquieu the Father of Social Science or the main precursor to sociology, critics declare Montesquieu's methodology unreliable and find his claims to be lacking. They declare him the first sociologist of law even as they criticize him for his unfortunate attachment to natural law and to the English Constitution — the very qualities to which those who view him as a great political theorist point admiringly, while deploring his descriptions of particular countries and governments. This paper seeks the outlines of an understanding of Montesquieu that allows one to treat his work neither as confusedly marking a rupture between natural law/theology and positive law/social science, nor as simply the nexus between classical political thought and modern social theory. Reading The Persian Letters (1721) with The Spirit of the Laws (1748) shows Montesquieu to be as aware of the hazards of a one-sided ethnocentrism as of the perils of objectivity and relativism. Concerned with both French character and the possibility of doing justice to or by the laws of others, with both science and moral improvement, these works reveal an attempt to "rethink the real" which neither appeals to a metaphysical distinction between the real and the ideal (as normative theorists are wont to do) nor locates 'reality" simply in this world (as later positivists and social scientists, looking to Montesquieu, would have him do). Instead Montesquieu considers the conditions under which the distinction between the apparent and the real, whether the latter is located here or elsewhere, is abolished - the conditions of judgement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]