Normative Order Research Articles

Maximizing participation while preserving the normative order of the service: The autonomy and porosity of service encounters

While Conversation Analysis has mostly focused on single autonomous episodes of social interaction, characterized by their overall structural organization delimited by openings and closings, alternative forms of organization have also, although more rarely, been pinpointed, involving several interactions intersecting together. This paper explores the systematic practical and normative way in which participants orient to the autonomy of encounters while at the same time dealing with their porosity, that is, with emerging intersecting actions impinging on the current course of interaction. The empirical analysis focuses on service encounters at the market, in France, in which several customers assemble at the counter, waiting to be served. The paper analyzes how the salesperson manages the encounter with a current customer, while addressing new customers, by initiating intersecting sequences of actions. it also show what whereas some intersecting actions are treated as unproblematic, others are normatively oriented to as violating the order of the service. These observations enable us to analyze the autonomy versus porosity of the encounter as a members’ concern and study how they deal with these alternative organizations while maintaining a normative sense of the order of service.

When Silence Speaks: Public Service Innovation, Village Authority, and the Negotiation of Traditional Justice in Rural Indonesia’s Youth Protection System

Rural Indonesian villages are defined by unique institutional dynamics in public service innovation, one of which manifests in juvenile justice administration where traditional governance meets modern legal structures. These institutional arrangements position villages as sites of public service innovation at the intersection of competing normative orders, especially regarding youth protection standards and cultural practice maintenance. We address patterns of public service innovation and institutional adaptation in rural juvenile justice systems through the systematic analysis of practices across five villages in East Java. Through consolidating stakeholder interviews and justice proceeding observations, our analysis shows how communities innovate in public service delivery by negotiating between formal requirements and informal mechanisms while integrating distinctive legal traditions and maintaining institutional legitimacy across multiple domains. The examination identifies two central patterns in public service development. First, processes of normative integration emerge through systematic institutional synthesis where communities innovate service delivery approaches while preserving cultural coherence. Second, these innovation processes correspond to variations in resource distribution, traditional authority configurations, and state presence across geographic and social contexts. We document how unspoken institutional practices and innovative service arrangements shape justice negotiations between community and state spheres, particularly in mediating youth protection within traditional normative frameworks of public service delivery.

Postulat wprowadzenia zakazu korzystania z telefonów komórkowych w szkole – analiza na przykładzie regulacji francuskiej

The study presents the postulate to introduce into the Polish normative order a ban on the use of mobile phones by students on school premises, using the example of a French regulation that has been in force for several years and establishes this type of restrictions. For this purpose, first of all, the status quo was presented, which is that individual educational institutions adopt divergent rules in their statutes regarding the conditions for bringing and using mobile phones and other electronic devices by students on their premises. Then, the provision of the French Education Code, in force since 2018, prohibiting the use of mobile phones and other electronic communication devices in schools was discussed. Based on the cited legal norm, the proposed assumptions of a similar legal regulation that could be introduced in the Polish normative order are presented.

Personal theories of police officers about authority

Police authority supposedly guides the actions of police officers. This article reconstructs personal theories on the authority of police by means of qualitative interviews with German police officers and police candidates. These personal theories are divided into four self-schemata composed of: dealing effectively and preferably with possible problems occurring with police work; different normative orders that define the relationship between the police and civil society; a reference to desirable personality traits for police officers; and symbolic representations of police authority. Such self-schemata influence police interactions with citizens and disclose a diversity of police ideas about authority. The different self-schemata of authority seem to originate from different backgrounds such as practical experience of policing, formal education in police colleges, compliance with commonly accepted societal norms like fairness, non-violence, respect and personal convictions. It is discussed how these self-schemata can be constructively reflected in formal police education in Germany. This article contributes to a nuanced understanding of police authority and how this might be integrated into training. Further research should investigate how these schemata can be integrated into a dynamic model and carry out a comparative, intercultural analysis of these personal theories.

"This is Not the 90s": Myanmar and Change in ASEAN's Normative Order

In this article, we examine the contours of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN) response to the latest regional challenge from Myanmar, the 2021 coup. Scholars and practitioners alike often portray ASEAN as a relatively cohesive community of states united in adherence to a long-held and comparatively stable set of norms within the so-called "ASEAN way." Core among these norms has been domestic non-interference. However, we argue that rather than being determined by a coherent set of agreed norms, ASEAN's response to this crisis has been shaped by intra-regional contestation and division around how ASEAN ought to enact its particular "way" of regional governance. More narrowly, we show that the ASEAN response has been shaped by contestation over competing normative impulses in the organization—centrality and non-interference—which have developed in increasing tension since the humanitarian disaster after Cyclone Nargis in 2008 and the Rohingya crisis after 2016. We show that in response to these crises, officials from the organization and its member states advanced divergent accounts of what ASEAN ought to do and why, given competing normative commitments to centrality and non-interference. By showing how ASEAN's response to the 2021 coup is the result of internal contestation within the organization, we support accounts of regional governance in Southeast Asia that stress less the fixity of ASEAN norms than their contestation in practice. To make our argument we analyze more than 250 documents and draw on interviews with regional officials.

Intuitions as a causal factor in determining the impacts of contingent events

In this paper, I will consider the complex relationship between contingent events and our ability to foster intuitions about other people’s behavior as well as to judge in what way normative order should resolve the source and impacts of contingency. In that regard, a model will be developed that will show how specific configurations of inferential/holistic intuitions, systemic reactions and the severity of contingent events can determine whether the social system will return to its initial equilibrium or if there will be greater impacts that lead toward rapid social change. Moreover, one of the implications of the proposed approach will be that intuitions about what will transpire in contingent events are not to be displaced as something irrational but rather used as indicators that can inform us about the specificities of dynamics that are present within the given social system.

Regulating Gender Violence in Postcolonial Societies: Is Legal Pluralism a Problem for Human Rights?

Abstract This article is an examination of the pluralistic context in which human rights laws operate. The existence of unequal but mutually constitutive legal and normative orders in diverse societies raises complex issues for human rights practitioners. As the language of rights acquires worldwide currency, questions increasingly arise as to their relationship with other normative orders and systems of justice. While the impetus for legal pluralism may be multifaceted and complicated, this article focuses exclusively on the human rights dimension in Africa. Its main objective is to explore the nature of the relationship between gender equality and legal pluralism. In plural settings, the conflict between the need to preserve minority culture and the protection of rights forms the basis for how legal reforms have failed to address issues affecting women and girls. To ensure a consistent application of human rights norms, States must acknowledge that there are severe limits and resistance to formal laws within society, that there are spaces where its authority is not absolute and that ‘legal pluralism is a fact’. Failing to do this results in the development of new forms of ‘identity politics’ that continue to silence and subordinate women and girls.

Elite Perceptions of a China-Led Regional Order in Southeast Asia

How do Southeast Asian states perceive a China-led regional order? To answer this question, we conducted a survey of elites from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, countries that are “least likely” to acquiesce to a China-led regional order. Our survey indicates that although most elites view China as influential and have a cultural affinity with it, they do not perceive China as having the authority to preside over the regional order. They do not identify with China's political values and the normative order it propounds. Our survey also reveals the salience of ASEAN as the region navigates great power rivalry. We explain these views by drawing from the concept of legitimate authority. Our findings are significant; if China cannot persuade its Southeast Asian neighbours of its right to lead, it will be even harder for China to exercise global leadership.

The ‘bad’ pasts of ‘good’ norms: explaining the opium ban through the postcolonial lens

The global proscription of the opium trade and its non-medical consumption took almost a century to evolve. Within International Relations, opium’s ban is explained as part of the normative order that culminated in the global anti-drugs prohibition regime of the 1900s. The conventional view presents the history of opium’s ban as a ‘bad’ imperial and local practice discontinued through the activism of ‘good’ transnational actors. However, seen through the postcolonial lens, this simplistic narrative is upended. By centering hierarchical power relations, the postcolonial lens demands a reflective interrogation into ‘global’ standards to expose parochial subjectivities that are otherwise couched in the universalistic language of modernity, rationality and progress. Though the ban on opium challenged an imperial practice, this article shows that it did so with the help of discourses that were themselves imperialistic. An analysis of the underlying evangelical, racial and scientific discourses illustrate how it was in the context of a specific worldview that opium came to be vilified. It also explains how the anti-opium views of the newly decolonized countries like India and China were suffused with the ethical visions of the anti-colonial and nation-building movements. A granular interrogation into opium’s history is necessary as we try and work our way toward a more nuanced and textured understanding of the international normative order while eschewing a one-dimensional, unproblematic, and simplified understanding of norms in IR.

Some Modern and Contemporary Approaches From Socio-legal Doctrine Regarding Legal Consciousness

Legal consciousness as a form of social consciousness formulates the concepts, theories and doctrines historically derived and transformed with the inflection of the economic, political and social regime. It expresses the assessment of the law in force in society. Legal consciousness interacts with other diverse forms of social consciousness: moral, religious, political, etc. The legal sense of the legal conscience is that part of the „inner good“, which directs as an accelerator of behavior, and which guides us in the approval or disapproval of some actions or some social situations, having a legal norm as a report. Legal consciousness is conceived from a pre-established legal order, especially based on valid and current norms in a given society; a distinct normative order that can be coercive and educative and that incorporates obligations and sanctions manifested in the form of primary and secondary norms.

Art Narrative as Normative Order

Herbert Hart famously questioned what law is, remarking, “Few questions concerning human society have been asked with such persistence and answered by serious thinkers in so many diverse, strange, and even paradoxical ways.” More than half a century after his The Concept of Law, we are no closer to the answer, but much further along in discovering the spaces that can be normative. In this paper, the author shows just how normative an art narrative can be, drawing on Karl Popper’s idea of World Three and Rainer Forst’s concept of noumenal power.

“Two normative orders”: Time, the body, and memory in Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc.

ABSTRACT Foreign Gods, Inc. by Nigerian American writer Okey Ndibe (2014) features the protagonist’s return to his native Nigeria to steal the statue of the local deity for monetary gain. The novel establishes the connection between the loss of respect for the Indigenous belief system and the forces of colonialism and their aftermath in a globalized context. This article argues that the novel’s theme occurs through unifying into realistic representation the three principles of Igbo epistemology – interconnectedness, cause and effect, and reincarnation – as encoded in time, the body, and memory. These dual orders endorse a powerful vision of nature and question the anthropocentric vision embedded in colonialism and capitalism. By incorporating the principles of these dual orders, the novel displays the rich cosmos of the Igbo community that disrupts the discourse of othering and discourages its continuation in the contemporary world.

The two faces of Franco-Sudanian Treaties: The peripheral practice of ratification as evidence of transregional international law in the nineteenth century

AbstractLegal scholars continue to revisit historical treaties between Western and non-Western nations to challenge long-standing accounts of non-Western peoples’ engagement with international law. Following this trend, new scholarship has stressed African agency in Euro-African treaty-making. However, legal scholars have generally overlooked African perspectives, pointing to a lack of sources. Focusing on nineteenth-century treaty-making between France and the polities of the Western Sudan in West Africa, this article excavates African perspectives through a novel reading of Euro-African treaties in an African context. This reading analyses treaties within the Western Sudan’s broader diplomatic corpus in both French and Arabic. By focusing on markers of translation, transcription, and negotiation left on different copies of treaties, this method brings to light arguments and practices that have been obscured in published European-language versions. Reading Franco-Sudanian treaties in a Sudanian context reveals that different norms governed the ratification of treaties in the Western Sudan and Europe. Treaties that scholars have long considered unratified were in fact ratified according to Western Sudanian norms, which designated the governor of French Senegal rather than the French president as the official competent to ratify treaties for France. However, when French officials sought to use treaties to claim sovereign rights in West Africa against Great Britain, they pressed the president to ratify them again. Presidential ratification thus served to transpose Franco-Sudanian treaties from an African to a Western normative order. Uncovering the African origins of Euro-African treaties thus reveals their differential operation across autonomous inter-polity orders.

Transformation of the functions of the institution of the welfare State: the evolution of views and modern challenges

The relevance of the chosen issues is determined by the subject of research - the institution of the welfare state, which plays a crucial role in ensuring the normative order in society and the balance of interests between different social groups. It also guarantees the realization of citizens' political and social rights.The study focuses on the transformation of the welfare state's functions and priorities in social policy, influenced by a rapidly changing internal and external environment. The main methodological foundation of the study is theoretical scientific methods and a systematic approach. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the research, the authors have drawn on both the results of sociological studies and a significant amount of data from international and domestic socio-economic statistics to address the identified issues. The authors have conducted a comprehensive analysis of the factors that contribute to socio-economic change and how these changes directly affect the functioning of the welfare state. They conclude that, despite differences in each country's stable preferences, external and internal socio-economic conditions influence the social functions of states, institutions, and the mechanisms for implementing these functions. Despite the fact that the principles and functions of the welfare state are implemented through specific measures that take into account the economic capabilities of the state, the peculiarities of state-building, national mentality, and the system of basic values, the idea of state paternalism remains at the heart of each model of the welfare state. This idea reflects the concept of state guardianship over the social sphere. In addition, there is a trend towards convergence among models of the welfare state in the modern world, which manifests itself in a steady trend towards unification of mechanisms for implementing social functions of the state and convergence in the scale of redistribution processes.

State Violence, Divine Abuse

Abstract It is tempting to attribute state violence to the imposition of a normative order, and it is tempting to construct an opposition between sanctifying that order and messianic interruptions of that order. This framework supposes that God, and the surrounding language of the sacred, follows the logic of rule, imposing a set of expectations on what is to be done enforced by threat of punishment. But what if we centre the story of Job in our account of the divine and with it an image of God as abuser rather than ruler, that is, God as only imposing the phantom of norms, norms that shift or evaporate as soon as they are imposed, never fulfilling a promise of reward or threat of punishment as expected? I explore this possibility through brief encounters with two texts on the racial violence of the state, one by Aimé Césaire and the other by the contemporary Black American writer Kiese Laymon.

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEMORY IN THE SOCIETAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF MODERN BELARUSIAN SOCIETY: THE THEORETICAL ASPECT

This study employs a socio-philosophical analysis to reveal the role of social memory in the societal transformations of contemporary Belarusian society and highlights the importance of this phenomenon in shaping its socio-cultural development. The theoretical and methodological framework for this research includes societal functionalism, an anthroposocietal approach, the concept of social transformations in post-Soviet societies, and an informational approach to the study of social memory. These approaches enable a detailed exploration of how social memory influences societal transformations in modern Belarus, allowing for an assessment of its normative, value-based, and functional potential in establishing and maintaining a normative order, fostering social stability, and generating tension within the socio-cultural space.

Revisiting forum shopping: navigating normative pluralism, navigating sentiments

People live their lives and experience the conflicts in which they are involved in the context of competing normative orders. But how do people navigate this normative pluralism? To understand this, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann’s model of ‘forum shopping’ and ‘shopping forums’, derived from an ethnographic analysis of conflict resolution, remains an indispensable starting point. Building on this approach, I argue that in order to understand the navigation of normative orders more broadly, it is important to bring the analysis of sentiments to the study of normative pluralism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the International Criminal Court’s transitional justice interventions in northern Uganda, I argue that when confronted with different international, national, religious, and indigenous normative options for dealing with mass violence, people navigate normative pluralism by creating, mobilising, maintaining, and transforming sentiments.

‘24/7 horny&training’: porn bots, authenticity, and social automation on Instagram

ABSTRACT This article presents a conceptual and methodological account of a small porn bot network, focusing on its embeddedness within Instagram use. The analysis explores the gendered design of bots as platform-native personas, particularly their capacity to perform within the confines of Instagram’s increasingly strict sexual content controls. We address three performative trajectories in the bot-exploited ‘Instagrammatics’ of identity play, social influence, and attention capture. We argue that a bot programmed to operate with sexual content to generate attention relies on the paradoxical blend of pornographic ‘imagination’ and social media ‘authenticity’. For our analysis, we manually identified 30 porn bot accounts spamming in the comment sections of highly visible Instagram posts (those published by @justinbieber). We then collected associated metadata – bot profile names and images, comments and comment likers, followers and followings, bot content, and links in the bot profile bios. By variously situating and combining these data, we discuss how networked automation taps into the sexualized social scripts imitated by ‘artificial’ and ‘authentic’ users alike. Our findings point to how porn bots re-enact gender as a programmed set of instructions, adapting to Instagram’s vision of acceptable sexuality and revealing its normative order.

Strange Case of Dr. Bidder and Mr. Entrant: Consumer Preference Inconsistencies in Costly Price Offers

Strange Case of Dr. Bidder and Mr. Entrant: Consumer Preference Inconsistencies in Costly Price Offers

Legal Pluralism in South Africa: The Implications of Co-Existing Customary and Civil Marriages

In South Africa marriage was a key site of colonial legal pluralism. Family formation and marriage were central to upholding boundaries between colonial and local normative orders. Under the umbrella of a single set of fundamental constitutional rights, post-apartheid law nevertheless retains separate statutes, precedents and legal rules for different cultural and religious marriages. This can lead to legal gaps and uncertainty when people enter into simultaneous or coexisting marriages, especially when the same couple concludes a customary marriage together with a civil marriage. This article examines the current configuration and implications of legal pluralism in South Africa by analsysing the interaction between coexisting customary and civil marriages between the same spouses. It identifies three themes in the relationship between these marriages: a hierarchy which continues to privilege civil law over other legal and normative systems; second, failure on the part of the legislature to clarify confusing aspects of the interaction between these forms of marriage and, finally, gaps which neither applicable legal system addresses satisfactorily. It also illustrates the political failure of the legislature, almost thirty years after the advent of democracy, decisively to address the socio-economic problems created by pluralism and the inadequate regulation of customary marriages.