TRANSCENDING LAW AND SHORTENING DISTANCES A RE-READING OF MANUEL CALVO GARCÍA FROM SOCIAL SCIENCES

Abstract

The article is a recognition of the work of Manuel Calvo García from the point of view of the Social Sciences. Calvo García introduces us to an alternative way to understand the articulations between law and realise social goals. Together with others, he worked to bring new concepts into the public domain, enabling critical re-readings by professionals and academics from different countries and continents. The program of the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Spain, of which he was a member, fully illustrates a process of innovation based on the meeting of knowledge and disciplinary intersections. While the Oñati program has become a think tank expanding socio-technical networks, publications and postgraduate training, the idea of the social realisation of law that Calvo García put forward in that framework, far from crystallising, is continually renewed.

In the form of an essay, this reflection follows two paths: personal experience and its projection in different institutional spaces. First, we address some basic concepts, the relationship between abstract and empirical subject and between warm and cold values, through an interpretation in a hermeneutic sense. Second, we associate meanings and authors, illustrating their potential in the intersection with the social sciences. In this process, we identify how they influenced the professional and scientific career, both personal and collective, of the authors, promoting the creation of a disciplinary speciality such as Forensic Social Work.