Program, abstracts and bios
PROGRAM
Time : Europe: 10-11.30 (CET) 9-10.30 (WET) Australia: 18-19.30 (AET)
Paula Casaleiro, The medicalization of family and children's judicial conflicts (15-20 minutes)
Patrícia Branco, The best interests of the child, parents’ dietary choices, and percentiles. On normativities and technologies of normalization (15-20 minutes)
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 (15-20 minutes)
Questions and discussion (30-45 minutes)
The medicalization of family and children's judicial conflicts
Paula Casaleiro
Centre for Social Studies (CES Portugal)
The concepts of medicalization and pathologization have been applied to the investigation of areas as different as education or mental health, neglecting the field of law and specially the family and children law. This communication aims to observe the medicalization of family and child conflicts in the judicial processes of regulation of parental responsibilities.
It adopts a broad definition of the concept of medicalization, i.e, medicalization is understood here not only as the conversion of a social or moral problem into a disease or medical problem, but as a process that includes the definition of a problem in medical terms, using medical language to describe it, adopting a medical approach to understand it, or use a medical intervention to treat it. And it is assumed that this is a comprehensive process that may or may not directly include medical professionals and medical treatments.
Through the content analysis of a set of judicial processes and interviews with judicial and non-judicial actors, it is concluded that not only do medical assumptions echo in the rules of child custody, but there is a tendency in these processes to reduce and treat family conflicts to / as pathological problems and to adopt medical and / or therapeutic solutions and not "exclusively" judicial.
The best interests of the child, parents’ dietary choices, and percentiles. On normativities and technologies of normalization
Patrícia Branco
Centro de Estudos Sociais (CES Portugal)
The links between food, families, and the law seem to be particularly strong in what concerns dietary issues, parental food choices and the best interests of the child. Within such framework, I will examine some recent decisions emanating from Italian courts that have had to decide disputes involving such questions. My claim is that the analysis of these food conflicts, and the normative apparatus behind the courts’ decisions, may reveal the spaces of governmentality that inhabit a disciplinary society, and law, when it comes to familial practices and food practices. The Italian decisions show us that. But they show more: these decisions call attention to ongoing debates about children and parenting, particularly to the links between the cultural normativities behind food practices and dietary regimes, where growth percentiles have turned into technologies of normalization, especially when children are involved. Hence, what begins with children’s best interests leads to the complexities underpinning the ideals of childhood (protecting the child’s health) and parenthood (the parents’ rights and duties involved in parenting).
The calm after the storm? The tricky path for restoring the normality of individual rights in cases of intimate partner violence
Rosanna Amato and Davide Carnevali
Institute on Legal Informatics and Judicial Systems of the National Research Council of Italy (IGSG-CNR, Bologna)
Normality is, by definition, “a situation where everything is normal or as you would expect it to be”; it includes the concept of “norm”, referring to rules or standard of behaviour shared by members of a social group and the relating external rewards or punishments, which follow compliance or non- compliance scenarios respectively. Often, we talk about normality or return to normality in relation to those major events or circumstances that are perceived as distorting the run-of-the-mill functioning of the society; however, this also more frequently applies to small social units, such as the domestic ones.
The so-called intimate partner violence represents the main form of pathology occurring within the individual’s restricted circle of trust, which in the overwhelming majority of cases is a form of abuse committed by the male partner against a woman. It subverts the traditional dynamics underlying domestic and civil cohabitation, with an asymmetric relationship between the members of the couple in relation to the exercise of power. Violence is indeed used to exercise control over the partner without margins for negotiation.
To address this pathology and protect the rights of the person abused, a variety of legal instruments have been put in place at both supranational and national levels. For these legal tools to be applied, the justice systems must put in place complex and multi-layered mechanisms that ensure the respect of fair trial rights for victims, while enabling their participation, protecting them against secondary and repeat victimisation and granting appropriate relief.
The aim of this paper is to analyse these mechanisms and generate reflection on how justice and its institutions deal with the issue of restoring normality in the life of the individuals, whose rights have been violated within the framework of intimate relations. It also will look at those situations in which pathological conditions, such as the one described above, are further exacerbated by factors altering what we define as "external normality", i.e., the regular functioning of the institutions (in this case, the actors operating within the territorial support networks for victims, considered both individually and as a whole). A case in point is the situation caused by the pandemic COVID19, which has required to adopt a variety of “coping mechanisms” necessary to address those problems caused by isolation and social distancing policies and enhance the ability of the system to provide services remotely.
Paula Casaleiro is a researcher at Centre for Social Studies (CES). She has a Ph.D. in Sociology of Law and an M.A. in Sociology at the School of Economics of the University of Coimbra.
Patrícia Branco is a researcher at Centro de Estudos Sociais (CES), from the University of Coimbra in Portugal, under the Stimulus of Scientific Employment Program (CEECIND / 00126/2017). patriciab@ces.uc.pt
Rosanna Amato is an independent researcher. She has worked as a postdoctoral researcher (2016-mid 2020) and as a PhD candidate associate (2010-2013) at the Institute on Legal Informatics and Judicial Systems of the National Research Council of Italy IGSG-CNR. In 2014, she obtained her PhD degree in EU Law (University of Bologna and University of Strasbourg), after having successfully defended a thesis on the network-based mechanisms of cooperation within the EU AFSJ and their impact on the operation of mutual recognition instruments and mutual assistance procedures. Her research interests deal with areas of judicial and police cooperation, judicial corruption, victims’ role in the judicial proceeding, European methodology and indicators for judicial evaluation.
Davide Carnevali is a Researcher at the Institute on Legal Informatics and Judicial Systems of the National Research Council of Italy (IGSG-CNR). His research interest and publications deal with areas of judicial reforms, judicial administration, e-justice management, organizational change in justice systems, assessment of the quality of justice. Consultant in the above-mentioned research fields and lecturer in related training programmes, he also served as Organisational Analyst at the Italian Ministry of Justice, IT General Directorate.
SEMINAR 2, Thursday 1 October
Normalizing Families and Children (experts, courts and rights)
