Glocalising Normativities
A Global Legal History (15th-21st century)
Gemeinschaftsprojekt
The Glocalising Normativities (GloNo) project aims to construct a global history of knowledge of normativity of sites that were, at some point in their respective histories, under the sphere of influence of one of the two Iberian empires: Portugal and Spain. The project looks at these places from a long-term perspective from the late-15th to the early-21st century. As a result, we do not seek a comprehensive legal history of the entire imperial space; instead, the project proposes an emphasis on localized observations of the histories of knowledge of normativity within a global horizon.
Using such approach, the project aims to develop a global legal history focusing on an interdisciplinary and non-Eurocentric approach to further a critical understanding of the idea of law. We focus on transnational historical formations and scrutinize concepts and methods by integrating various modes of normativity, institutions and practices into our analysis to challenge the idea that the production of law was (and is) limited to the state or produced exclusively by jurists or proto-state institutions. In doing so, we aim to emancipate ourselves from the usual categories taken from the legal historical tradition of the western nation state, its spatial concepts and periodizations.
The project proposes to understand legal history as a historical process of cultural translation of knowledge of normativity. In this process, the information that is assessed and selected as relevant by the multitude of actors is related to a concrete field of action, namely to the production of normativity with regard to a specific area of life. This information thus becomes "knowledge of normativity", which comprises discourses, practices, rules, norms and principles. In this sense, law is the result of a communicative practice and a continuous social and cultural construction, encompassing a pragmatic understanding of norms. Therefore, the project as a whole seeks to envision a more general picture of how different normative orders interacted, how institutions were created and reshaped through everyday practice(s), and how media and communication enabled the production of knowledge of normativity.
To pursue this legal-theoretical pragmatic understanding of knowledge of normativity, the GloNo project combines a global perspective on legal history with local case studies based on detailed analysis of archival sources in a broader context. These case studies provide insights into how the production of norms is always localised, i.e. socially and culturally translated, based on manifold social practices and different epistemic communities. To analyze them, we rely on the concept of "Historical Regimes of Normativity", or stable arrangements in which the translation of knowledge of normativity takes place in relation to a particular field of action. They are forms of observation of more or less stabilized historical arrangements of discourses, practices, rules, norms, and principles and their contingent conditions that are relevant for the production, mediation, and enforcement of generalized expectations with respect to a particular field of action.
Historical Regimes of Normativity
In order to overcome the binary division of the local versus the global, we propose five analytical units as "Historical Regimes of Normativity” in order to pursue decentralized knowledge production and their stabilizing effect on the normative orders being analyzed: governance, dependency, ownership, diversity and tradition.
Governance
Historical Regimes of Normativity with regard to Governance can be defined as a form of observation of stable arrangements of knowledge for the production of normativity with regard to ‘governance’. When we analyze a ‘governance regime’ from this perspective, we ask for particular constellations of discourses, practices, norms, and institutions that shape the knowledge of normativity relevant for governance. In this sense, we ask for how the interplay between religious and secular normative orders affected the relationship between persons and state or non-state actors in the early modern Iberian World. We will pay special attention to confluences of religious—especially Catholic—and non-religious normativities in concrete cases and their influence on the governance of multiple social groups, including cities, ports, parishes, missions, and associations. By reading the way historical agents used authoritative texts of the Church, canon law, moral theology treatises, summas and other sources of religious normativity side-by-side with texts of jurisprudence, legal treatises, historical chronicles, Roman law, and legal commentaries as well as various non-European norms, we seek to shed light on how religion and the secular world were intertwined in the processes of normative creation and normative enforcement in the early modern Portuguese and Spanish empires.
Dependency
Historical Regimes of Normativity with regard to Dependency can be defined as a form of observation of stable arrangements of knowledge for the production of normativity with regard to ‘dependency’. When we analyze a ‘dependency regime’ from this perspective, we ask for particular constellations of discourses, practices, norms, and institutions that shape the knowledge of normativity relevant for dependency. In this sense, a dependency regime consists of a more or less stable set of practices, institutions, and norms that tacitly or coercively determine asymmetrical limitations on the freedom of action of an agent or a group of agents. Within this broad and diverse set of limitations, we put a special focus on mutual dependencies, meaning the idea that dependency relations, although usually strongly asymmetrical, were not only vertical, but also multidirectional, and that this characteristic generated a complex and diverse environment of normative production where local agents maintained an active and direct role in the construction of law.
Ownership
Historical Regimes of Normativity with regard to Ownership can be defined as a form of observation of stable arrangements of knowledge for the production of normativity with regard to ‘ownership’. When we analyze an ‘ownership regime’ from this perspective, we ask for particular constellations of discourses, practices, norms, and institutions that shape the knowledge of normativity relevant for ownership. In this sense, we ask for how the land tenure in the territories of the Iberian empires was represented and divided, how owners were defined, how transfers of land ownership were regulated, and how conflicts over land were adjudicated. We will pay special attention to the normative rationales that were involved in these processes and, thus, provide a broader view of the normative foundations of land tenure in different regions of the Iberian World. While much of the history of land tenure in different regions of the Iberian empires has been reconstructed through royal legislation and sporadic reference to legal doctrine, this section seeks to aggregate research that focuses on the instruments that regulated land relations on the ground: deeds of purchase, wills, donations, and litigation, among others.
Diversity
Historical Regimes of Normativity with regard to Diversity can be defined as a form of observation of stable arrangements of knowledge for the production of normativity with regard to ‘diversity’. When we analyze a ‘diversity regime’ from this perspective, we ask for particular constellations of discourses, practices, norms, and institutions that shape the knowledge of normativity relevant for diversity. In this sense, we ask why certain categories of difference were established and how they were constructed, what markers led to the inclusion and the exclusion of people, and how both difference and identity were constructed. We will pay special attention to sexuality, gender and sexual difference and look at religious discourses.
Tradition
Historical Regimes of Normativity with regard to Tradition can be defined as a form of observation of stable arrangements of knowledge for the production of normativity with regard to ‘tradition’. When we analyze a ‘tradition regime’ from this perspective, we ask for particular constellations of discourses, practices, norms, and institutions that shape or determine the use of the past for the construction of the knowledge of normativity relevant for tradition. In this sense, we ask what role knowledge of normativity from the past played in the construction of a normative order. In which cases did actors draw on experience, and how and why did they do so? Why and how were certain parts of the knowledge of normativity invested with higher authority than others? What are the aims and hopes in drawing on normative knowledge from the past? We will pay special attention to implicit or explicit discourses shaped the use of the past in the Iberian World.
