This division brings together the unit's researchers who share an interest in the sociological analysis of norms, studying how they are enacted, negotiated, contested or avoided. They develop a sociology of actors - be they professionals (producers of governmental knowledge, administrative managers and staff, politicians, trade unions, consultants, legal experts) or the public (users, complainants, 'ordinary citizens') - and their interactions, which they understand through the mechanisms, knowledge and know-how of population government at different scales.

Current and future research focuses on the social construction of norms and deviance, with particular emphasis on the historical and processual dimensions of the situational logics of their social manufacture. The research is rooted in a critical perspective that seeks, firstly, to bring to light the mechanisms by which public problems and social and legal norms are constructed; secondly, to describe and analyse the processual dimension of the phenomena studied (trajectories, careers, professionalisation, etc.); and, thirdly, to understand how they are embedded.

The focus is on two areas (although not exclusively): criminal studies and urban government.