Symbolic Power Without Violence? Critical Comments on Legal Consciousness Studies

García-Villegas, Mauricio

doi:10.1023/b:sela.0000013846.61056.a3

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, Gallagher (2006) offers two dimensions for the development of legal consciousness: (1) feeling of efficacy and competency toward the legal system (for example, “How well can I work the law?”) and (2) perception/evaluation of the legal system (for example, “How well does the law work?”) (783). In general, these schemas have been lauded for their development of the field but also criticized for their rigidity, ambiguity, and lack of explanatory power (McCann 1999; García‐Villegas 2003; Pélisse 2006).…”

Section: Theoretical Foundationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(783). In general, these schemas have been lauded for their development of the field but also criticized for their rigidity, ambiguity, and lack of explanatory power (McCann 1999;García-Villegas 2003;Pélisse 2006). Common to each of these efforts is a general consensus that legal consciousness must be evaluated not only by what people say but also by what they do.…”

Section: Legal Consciousness and Claims Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Labor Rights for All? The Role of Undocumented Immigrant Status for Worker Claims Making

2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Drawing on forty-one interviews with both documented and undocumented Latino restaurant workers in San Jose, California, and Houston, Texas, this article examines how documentation status shapes the legal consciousness of immigrant workers. I identify three common narratives that undocumented workers provide to justify not making claims on workplace protection. First, I highlight that an ever-present fear of deportation inhibits any formal confrontation. Second, I demonstrate how undocumented status leaves undocumented immigrants with a particularly pragmatic and short-term understanding of their working life in the United States, rendering their working conditions temporary and endurable to them. Third, I expand Gordon and Lenhardt's (2008) discussion of the centrality of work to the American conception of citizenship. I reiterate that this particular sense of belonging is situated vis-a-vis other low-wage workers. These findings provide sociolegal scholars important theoretical contributions for crafting a research agenda on the role of undocumented status and legal mobilization.

show abstract

Section: Theoretical Foundationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Legal Consciousness and Claims Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Labor Rights for All? The Role of Undocumented Immigrant Status for Worker Claims Making

2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“… 5. The empirical study of legal consciousness has been questioned, for instance, by Levine and Mellema (2001) and Garcia-Villegas (2003). With reference to Silbey (2005), Hertogh (2009) summarizes their original research agenda along the following three aspects: (a) more emphasis on the role of law in society, (b) more emphasis on the role of ordinary citizens, and (c) a shift in focus from measurable behavior to meanings and interpretations. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media Users’ Legal Consciousness About Privacy

Sarikakis

Winter

2017

Social Media + Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores the ways in which the concept of privacy is understood in the context of social media and with regard to users' awareness of privacy policies and laws in the 'Post-Snowden' era. In the light of presumably increased public exposure to privacy debates, generated partly due to the European "Right to be Forgotten" ruling and the Snowden revelations on mass surveillance, this article explores users' meaning-making of privacy as a matter of legal dimension in terms of its violations and threats online and users' ways of negotiating their Internet use, in particular social networking sites. Drawing on the concept of legal consciousness, this article explores through focus group interviews the ways in which social media users negotiate privacy violations and what role their understanding of privacy laws (or lack thereof) might play in their strategies of negotiation. The findings are threefold: first, privacy is understood almost universally as a matter of controlling one's own data, including information disclosure even to friends, and is strongly connected to issues about personal autonomy; second, a form of resignation with respect to control over personal data appears to coexist with a recognized need to protect one's private data, while respondents describe conscious attempts to circumvent systems of monitoring or violation of privacy, and third, despite widespread coverage of privacy legal issues in the press, respondents' concerns about and engagement in "self-protecting" tactics derive largely from being personally affected by violations of law and privacy.

show abstract

“…In fact, reflecting the work of Bourdieu among others (see García-Villegas 2003), legal consciousness research assumes that the consensus itself that emerges from the consideration of social practices may effectively mask the source and pervasiveness of hegemonic influences that are deeply embedded in the unquestioned, the routine, and the everyday. Accordingly, legal consciousness researchers struggle to reintroduce larger notions of power and inequality to research that focuses on the ways that individuals perpetuate, alter, and occasionally consciously engage the social meaning accorded to law.…”

Section: Decentering From Lawmentioning

confidence: 98%

Mind the Gap: The Place of Gap Studies in Sociolegal Scholarship

Gould

Barclay

2012

Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Arising in the late 1960s and early 1970s—in conjunction with the development of sociology of law and the Law and Society Association—gap studies dominated much of sociolegal scholarship for a time, providing multiple examples of the ways in which law on the books is inconsistent with law in action. These gaps, in turn, spurred calls for legal reform. By the 1980s, however, gap studies came in for criticism, not only for the presumption that law was purposively rational but also for scholars' beliefs that they could identify law's aims. To some, the findings were naïve or undertheorized. Nonetheless, gap studies have illuminated many legal practices and have helped to identify pathways by which law may have an impact. Even as sociolegal scholarship has become increasingly decentered from law, one still sees the tendrils of gap studies in research exploring discrepancies between expectations and actuality in law and legality.

show abstract

Symbolic Power Without Violence? Critical Comments on Legal Consciousness Studies

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

Labor Rights for All? The Role of Undocumented Immigrant Status for Worker Claims Making

Labor Rights for All? The Role of Undocumented Immigrant Status for Worker Claims Making

Social Media Users’ Legal Consciousness About Privacy

Mind the Gap: The Place of Gap Studies in Sociolegal Scholarship

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About