Law and Constitutions in the Civilizing Process(es): Reassessing the Multiple Evolutions of Legal Fields in Light of Eliasian Theory
RC56 Historical Sociology
The topics of law, legal orders and rights, on the one hand, and civilization on the other have been variously approached by the sociological and historical literatures. The differences between these approaches partly reflect the various understandings of the term “civilization” itself.
Recently, some authors (Moyn, 2012; Koskenniemi, 2002) made the point that the increasing prominence of “rights” in national and international politics since the 19th century is tightly connected to the promotion of a Western definition of civilization. Accordingly, phenomena such as the emergence of Human Rights, European Law, as well as processes of constitutionalization (both at the national and transnational levels) should be understood as by-products of a Western ideological project.
This latter approach stands at odds with an understanding of “civilization” as the result of an unplanned process, as defined in the works of Elias. Research that relies on this theoretical approach, however, has so far dedicated very little attention to “the law”, especially in its political dimension (Bucholc, Van Krieken 2018).
The session aims at going beyond the mutual ignorance between these two approaches: how can we integrate “law” to the sociological research on the civilizing processes?
The session is open to researchers dealing with law, lawyers and legal discourse generally, in a socio-historical perspective. The organizers expect the communications to address one or more of the following topics:
· Law and normative orders
· Constitutionalization and the national civilization processes: finding the right(s’) path again?
· The transnational constitutional mo(ve)ments
Session Organizers:
Christophe MAJASTRE, Université Paris 8, France, christoph...@usaintlouis.be,
Hugo CANIHAC, Université Saint-Louis, Bruxelles, Belgium, hugo.c...@usaintlouis.be
Marta BUCHOLC, WFIS University of Warsaw, Poland, buch...@is.uw.edu.pl