TECHNOLOGIES OF NORMALIZATION
This online seminar series has now been published in Oñati Socio-Legal Series (vol 12 no 3, 2022)
Norm, normal and disruption: The role of law, knowledge and technologies in normalising social life
The eleven papers in this special issue analyze how different sources of disruption collide with normality, the consequences on individual, social and institutional life, and efforts to re-establish the old or to create a new normal. They arose from a series of online seminars in September and October 2020 investigating normality, disruption and normalization in the wake of the current environmental, technological, epidemiological and socio-economic shocks. Disruption is a window into the underlying fabric of social arrangements. It allows us to investigate the concept of normality and its implications, the tensions and conflicts between economic, social, legal and technological means used to re-establish normality. Technologies of normalization may paradoxically cause further disruptions. Human dignity is a landmark value in these inquiries. The introduction and the papers suggest possible measures to anticipate disruptions and consequent harms. They alert us to the risks to human dignity arising from disruption and from attempts to reimpose forms of normality.
The full issue can be accessed here
The program of the seminar series, run online in 2020, can be seen in the column on the right. Some of the papers in OSLS have been revised from their original seminar versions.
• Pam Joseph joined Margot Rawsthorne and Amanda Howard in revising their paper, Normalising community-led, empowered, disaster planning: Reshaping norms of power and knowledge.
• João Pedroso joined Patrícia Branco in contributing the paper, The “damned of inclusion”, or the normalization of the discourses and social processes of criminalisation of young adults in Portugal: a complex set of social, legal and criminal disruptions.
Workshop organisers and editors:
Patricia Branco, CES, University of Coimbra: patriciab@ces.uc.pt
Francesco Contini, IGSG, CNR (National Research Council, Bologna, Italy): Francesco.contini@irsig.cnr.it
Richard Mohr, Social Research Policy and Planning: rmohr@srpp.com.au
1 Normalizing Cities and Death (law and design)
Marc Trabsky, Normalizing Death in the Time of a Pandemic
Valerio Nitrato Izzo, Hostile architecture and design: questioning the legal meaning in the urban environment
2 Normalizing Families and Children (experts, courts and rights)
Paula Casaleiro, The medicalization of family and children's judicial conflicts
Patrícia Branco, The best interests of the child, parents’ dietary choices, and percentiles. On normativities and technologies of normalization
Rosanna Amato and Davide Carnevali, The calm after the storm? The tricky path for restoring the normality of individual rights in cases of intimate partner violence
3 Normalizing Disaster (knowledge and power)
Amanda Howard and Margot Rawsthorne, Community-led disaster planning: reshaping norms
Richard Mohr, When Normality Fails: Discursive Reactions to Disaster
4 Normalizing Borders and Civil Disputes (online legal procedure)
Marco Velicogna, Cross-border dispute resolution in Europe: looking for a new ‘normal’
Elena Alina Onţanu, Normalising the use of electronic evidence in civil procedure. Exploring ways to bring new forms of technology into a familiar normative path
5 Normalizing Normativity (AI and justice)
Giampiero Lupo, Regulating (Artificial) Intelligence in Justice: Normative Frameworks and the Risks Related to AI in the Judiciary
Francescoo Contini and Dory Reiling, Double normalisation: when procedural law is made digital
