Constructing Normality: Social Representations, Symbolic Power and the Vague Legal Concept of Public Order

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the vague legal concept of public order as a site where social meaning, symbolic power and legal authority intersect. Drawing on social representations theory and Pierre Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power, it argues that public order functions not merely as a legal concept but as an institutional mechanism through which hegemonic representations of social reality are stabilised and enforced as law. Whilst social representations theory has extensively examined how unfamiliar phenomena are rendered familiar, comparatively little attention has been paid to how these processes operate within legal institutions or how law itself participates in the reproduction of social representations. The paper addresses this gap by reconceptualising vague legal concepts as institutional anchoring devices through which symbolic power transforms hegemonic social representations into legally enforceable normality. Focusing on public order, it shows how the interpretive openness of vague legal concepts allows hegemonic representations to enter legal reasoning under the appearance of neutrality. This paper argues that legal interpretation operates as a practice of normalisation through which are these representations reproduced and institutionalised.