núm. 16 (2014): revista via iuris 16 (enero - junio)

The concept of “legal consciousness” is theoretically used to refer to the ways people, through their daily practices, make sense of law and legal institutions. Through an ethnographic study, conducted in Ciudad Bolívar in Bogotá, it was identified that members of youth groups perceive and experience the law as a mixed experience: familiar and distant at once. Within youth organizations senses of law are built from the contact and permanent exchange with the community, from the woven relationships with institutions and public officials -which lead them to have specific uses of legal tools-, and from the creation and implementation of alternative social norms governing their collective practices. What this qualitative study showed was a deep split between social organizations and the public sector in Bogotá, where the use of formal law and the creation of new forms of regulation cross their collective action.