Convenors
Alessandro Maculan, University of Padova
alessandro.maculan@unipd.it (corresponding scholar)
Francesca Vianello, University of Padova
francesca.vianello@unipd.it
Law does not exist solely in codes and formal decisions: it takes shape in everyday practices, professional languages, and in the ways individuals and groups recognize, negotiate, or contest the authority of norms. Observing these processes allows us to understand not only how law is applied, but also how it produces belonging, inequalities, expectations, and forms of resistance. The concept of legal culture (Nelken, 2014; Ghezzi et al., 2017 De Felice, 2022) enables us to investigate these processes, representing the connective tissue between abstract norms and lived social reality. Far from being limited to written laws, it encompasses the set of values, ideas, beliefs, and expectations that citizens and legal professionals hold toward legal institutions and practices. In an era marked by rapid social transformations, globalization, pluralism, and geopolitical shifts, understanding how law is perceived, interpreted, and applied is a crucial task. This Call for Papers invites scholars and researchers in sociology, anthropology, and political science, as well as legal professionals, to submit contributions grounded in qualitative empirical research capable of shedding new light on the legal culture of legal practitioners and the recipients of legal norms (see Merry, 2010).
Open questions
In this perspective, contributions may address, on a non-exclusive basis, the following open questions:
- Culture of legal professions. How are the identity, values, and everyday practices of practitioners in the legal field (Fabini, 2018; Maculan & Sterchele, 2022) changing, particularly among the new generations?How do police forces, courts, the legal profession, prisons, and criminal enforcement exercise discretion and produce forms of selectivity?
- Legal pluralism and cultural diversity. How do formal legal systems and institutional actors negotiate the presence of competing cultures, traditions, and normative systems (Shah, 2005), for example in family law and among migrant or indigenous communities?
- Intersectionality and law. How do power asymmetries and gender-based and intersectional discrimination (Grabham et al., 2019) permeate the legal system? How do they affect experiences and perceptions of justice?
- Legal culture and digital transition. How are artificial intelligence, predictive algorithms, and digitalization transforming the culture, practices, and responsibilities of legal professionals, as well as citizens’ relationship with justice (Sholehudin, 2025)?
- Legal consciousness. How do citizens, marginalized communities, and social movements interpret, use, or contest law in everyday life (Ewick & Silbey, 2020)? What role do media campaigns, punitiveness, and civil disobedience play in these processes?
- Methodologies of qualitative legal research. What possibilities and limitations do interviews, focus groups, and participant observation present in the study of the legal field (Coutin & Fortin, 2015)? What epistemological, ethical, and field-access issues emerge from their use?
Keywords
Legal culture; Legal pluralism; Street-level bureaucracy; Judicial discretion; Technology and law; Intersectionality; Legal consciousness.
Sub-disciplines / cross-disciplinary areas
Sociology of Law; Anthropology of Law; Sociology of Deviance; Migration Studies; Social Movement Studies; Prison Studies; Political science.
References
Coutin, S. B., & Fortin, V. (2015). Legal ethnographies and ethnographic law. In: The handbook of law and society, 71-84.
De Felice D. (2022), Cultura giuridica. In: Altopiedi R., De Felice D., Ferraris V. (Eds.), Comprendere la sociologia del diritto. Concetti e temi. Carocci.
Ewick, P., & Silbey, S. (2020). Sociology of legal consciousness and hegemony. In: Research Handbook on the Sociology of Law. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Fabini, G. (2018). Giudici di pace, polizia e” cultura giuridica del confine”. In: C. Pennisi et al. (a cura di). Amministrazione, cultura giuridica e ricerca empirica, Maggioli, Santarcangelo di Romagna.
Ghezzi, M. L., Pennisi, C., Raiteri, M., Prina, F., & Mosconi, G. (2017). Processo penale, cultura giuridica e ricerca empirica. Maggioli, Santarcangelo di Romagna.
Grabham, E., Cooper, D., Krishnadas, J., & Herman, D. (Eds.). (2019). Intersectionality and beyond: Law, power and the politics of location. Routledge-Cavendish.
Maculan, A., & Sterchele, L. (2022). The” left” and” right” arm of the prison: Prison work and the local legal culture of the penitentiary. Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 12(6), 1492-1517.
Nelken, D., 2014. Thinking about legal culture. Asian Journal of Law and Society, 1(2), 255–274.
Shah, P. (2005). Legal Pluralism in Conflict: coping with cultural diversity in law. Routledge- Cavendish.
Sholehudin, D. S. (2025). Digital legal culture: Developing the concept of legal culture in the era of social media from a sociological law perspective. Education of Law Journal, 1(1), 43-54.
Convenors’ bio
Alessandro Maculan is Research Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer at the Department FISPPA, University of Padua. His research interests focus on prison staff in correctional facilities, detention conditions, and forms of adaptation and resistance in places of social exclusion. He is a member of the organizing committee of the Joint Master’s Degree in “Critical Criminology and Social Security” (University of Padua and University of Bologna) and coordinates the Observatory on Detention Conditions in Veneto for the Antigone Association.
Francesca Vianello is Full Professor of Sociology of Law and Deviance at the Department FISPPA, University of Padua. Director of the Joint Master’s Degree in “Critical Criminology and Social Security” (University of Padua and University of Bologna). Principal Investigator of European and national research projects on criminal justice enforcement, detention conditions, and alternatives to imprisonment. Author and editor of numerous national and international publications on prison research, sociology of law and sociology of deviance.