Paper short abstract:

This paper analysis the changes in perception and function of on farm pig-slaughter in the light of the application of agricultural and sanitary legal norms in Catalonia, Spain. The study shows how the legal confusion in the interpretation of laws reflects and promotes socio-cultural change.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analysis the changes in perception and function of on farm pig-slaughter in the light of the application of agricultural and sanitary legal norms in Catalonia, Spain, as well as the Common Agricultural Policy. The aim is to demonstrate how this rural practice, which was widely accepted as "normal" forty years ago, is gradually disappearing and is now viewed as cruel anachronism by the majority of society. Additionally the paper explores how the practice has been marginalised, made invisible and criminalised by state institutions. The focus is on the shift from perceiving on-farm pig slaughter as legal to considering it prohibited due to a lack of appropriate regulations, and on how the legal confusion around this practice has been constructed. The study of laws, regulations, their interpretation, enforcement and social reception helps us to understand how public policies reflect and, at the same time, promote (not necessarily intentionally) socio-cultural change.

Inspired by Silbey’s argument that constitutive/cultural analysis of legal consciousness helps to describe processes by which “law contributes to the articulation of meanings and values in daily life” we want to analyse how law, legality and public policies relate to each other in the process of socio-cultural change. If we understand the law and legality as part of public policy conceptualized as dispositive, in the interpretative approach, the analysis of plurality of narratives about legality can shed lite on the social life of public policies, and therefore on socio-cultural tendencies in which the norms are developed.