LAWCUS
O assédio sexual nas paisagens jurídicas e extra-jurídicas
The topic of sexual harassment has gained increasing ground in the contemporary normative debate by appearing in political-governmental agendas, in the repertoire of social activism, and in academic-scientific literature. The #MeToo movement has prompted virulent attention to what was, since the 1980s, a hot topic within academia and object of progressive interest from global to local legal forums, with special regulatory implications in labour, organisational and criminal spheres. Bringing to the forefront law as a place of truth and justice, and dealing, at the same time, with the slippery universe of sexual harassment, this social and political dynamic has been revealing old and raising new sociological questions about the ways of describing, interpreting and judging subjects and practices through the lens of sexuality. This is a process that also challenges law as a social phenomenon, showing it as an open system that produces and receives categories of different – scientific, artistic, political, and ethical – fields, frequently considered as extra-lawscapes.
Lawcus seeks to fill a double gap in Portuguese socio-legal research that concerns both the object of study (sexual harassment) and the type of approach (cultural studies of law). On the one hand, the popularisation of sexual harassment in public arena and its progressive entry and expansion in criminal, labour and corporate disciplinary fields has not been accompanied by a critical analysis on its uses, presumptions and implications, especially in Portuguese legal order. On the other hand, cultural legal studies have been posing questions to legal practices and developing methods of inquiry that can bring a further perspective on the relation between power and knowledge in the governance of different spheres of social life. Privileging this cultural approach, Lawcus directs its research to the sources of law in its modes of imagining, conceptualising, and judging sexual harassment. The starting point of this analytical path is identifying the materialisation of sexual harassment in the criminal, labour and corporate legal orders (as an abstract legal enunciation) and in the legal cases – labour and criminal – and disciplinary proceedings (as a concrete legal materialisation). The constellation of norms, case law, legal cases, and doctrine will then be put in dialogue with the expression and imagery of sexual harassment in extra-lawscapes that, in specific and heterogeneous ways, provide ideas and beliefs on sexual harassment to legal reasoning. These materials will be brought together in four empirical-conceptual archives centred on the scientific, artistic, political and ethical fields. Through a set of research tasks and methodologies (as document analysis, analysis of discourses, representations and judicial practices, case studies, and empirical-conceptual archives) focused on sexual harassment 'locus' both from legal sources of law and extra-legal universes, this project seeks to access to multiple layers of interpretation and epistemological dialogues underdeveloped in the Portuguese academia. This work aims to contribute to deepen and innovate on the modes of capturing the place of sexuality in law and the place of law in contemporary societies.
António Guerreiro
Cátia Guerra
Elena Loizidou
Ian Ward
Mário Montenegro
Vânia Alvares
