Exploring the 'socio' of socio-legal studies

SLSA one-day conference

Date: Wednesday 3 November 2010

Venue: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London

Conference organiser: Dermot Feenan, University of Ulster

• Speakers 
• Aims
• First call for papers
• Conference registration
• Rationale

Speakers

Keynote Speaker

Susan S Silbey, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, MIT, USA; co-author of The Common Place of Law: Stories from everyday life (with Patricia Ewick); former editor of Studies in Law, Politics and Society and the Law and Society Review.

Confirmed invited speakers

Professor Nicola Lacey, LSE, and Professor John Clarke, Open University (UK).

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Aims

The conference will provide an opportunity to explore the meanings and implications of the ‘socio’ aspect of socio-legal studies, and to lay out potential pathways for future study.

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First call for papers

Closing date: 1 June 2010

Up to 10 original papers of outstanding quality will be selected for presentation. Proposals for papers of approximately 300 words should be emailed to the academic coordinator, Dermot Feenan, University of Ulster, School of Law, to whom any inquiries may also be directed. Presenters will be expected to submit their papers to the academic coordinator by 2011 for consideration for publication in an edited collection. Download this flyer for details

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Conference registration

Details (including fees) will be confirmed by June 2010. Registration deadline: 1 October 2010. SLSA members will receive information via the weekly e-bulletin.

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Rationale

While there has been some scholarship addressing the ‘socio’ of socio-legal studies, there remains considerable scope for further analysis. There has been no dedicated symposium previously devoted to this theme.

The conference offers an opportunity to consider a range of questions. Does the ‘socio’ connote the ‘social’ or ‘society’, and what are the implications of those connotations in an era of rapid change? Which social groups or societies have been privileged (and which subordinated), and what are implications for the preoccupation with the human individual or group for contextual legal analysis of inter-species relations or ecology? Does the ‘socio’ abbreviate the word ‘sociological’ or stand in, more broadly, for the phrase ‘social sciences’, and what are the effects of adopting either approach?

How might social theory, sociology or other aspects of social sciences inform, or better inform, analysis of law, legal institutions and other objects of legal studies? What is the relationship between the ‘socio’ and the ‘legal’? Why are these issues important conceptually, theoretically, and empirically to socio-legal scholarship? Do developments in late modernity, such as consumerism, globalisation, or neo-liberalism, pose fresh challenges that the ‘socio’ must address?

How, if at all, do themes abounding the ‘socio’ in early twenty-first-century scholarship, such as terrorism or security, create opportunities for new perspectives on the ‘legal’? What are implications for the outputs and impacts of socio-legal scholarship in addressing these questions? In what ways do socio-legal researchers communicate beyond their readers to a broader audience, and should a commitment to the ‘socio’ entail an obligation to make social impact and if so how?

This pioneering conference invites, in particular, theoretical, historical, comparative, and transdisciplinary perspectives, informed, where appropriate, by empirical research.

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