Call For Papers: The Digital Turn in Socio-Legal Studies @Prof_Andra @SLSA_UK

 

CfP: The Digital Turn in Socio-Legal Studies (current topic at SLSA 2022)

 

The Digital Turn in Socio-Legal Studies has - since its inception in the late 1950/mid-1960s to date - been a vital source for our contextual understanding of law in/and society. In following the main currents of societal life, socio-legal studies have considered a diverse range of encounters between law, legal institutions, legal actors, and their social contexts. More recently, a digital turn in socio-legal studies can be observed; the progressive integration of advanced digital technologies in all aspects of our daily lives, the digitisation of law and legal practice, and even the adoption of digital research methods in our socio-legal repertoire, have broadened horizons and unlocked new possibilities for the socio-legal endeavour. Individual paper submissions as well as proposals for complete panels consisting of no more than three papers, are invited for this current topic at the upcoming annual conference of the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA), hosted by York Law School (University of York, UK), on 6 to 8 April 2022. PhD students, early career researchers, as well as senior scholars are welcome.  

 

Paper (and panel) submissions should take the conversation beyond the descriptive and the salient, and explore the impact of the digital turn as a conceptual revolution for the sociology of law. The focus is on how the current and ongoing digital turn has fundamentally transformed the study of law and society and law in society. Papers and panels may, for example, consider the extent to which digital architecture informs or “codes” conduct in the legal and societal sphere, how digital platforms create new or alternative realities that increase the plurality and diversity of norms in law and society, or how the pluralisation of communicative possibilities through digitised means facilitates new avenues for dialogue, and also conflict, whether it is at the interpersonal, inter-state, or intra-state level. In decoding the digital turn in socio-legal studies, the papers of this current topic will ultimately reveal and critically consider the new legal conceptions and societal cognitions that have emerged, and that will continue to inform the socio-legal scholarship of the future. 

 

Conference webpage and submission of papers: http://slsa2022.co.uk/site/ 

Current Topic Convenor Contact: Dr Andra le Roux-Kemp (ALeRouxKemp@lincoln.ac.uk)