Order and Dispute: An Introduction to Legal Anthropology

by Simon Roberts

A classic resource in the modern study of the anthropology of law, this acclaimed book is now widely available again in an updated and expanded Second Edition, and in this new trade paperback edition (in addition to hardcover and ebook versions from Quid Pro Books). There are many societies that survive in a remarkably orderly fashion without the help of judges, law courts and policemen. They are small in scale and have relatively simple technologies, lacking those centralized agencies which we associate with legal systems; yet early anthropologists did not hesitate to name "law," along with kinship, politics and religion, as one of the facets of their subject. Simon Roberts contends, however, that legal theory has become too closely identified with our own arrangements in western societies to be of much help in cross-cultural studies of order. But conversely, by looking at the ways in which other societies keep order and solve disputes, he sheds valuable light on the contemporary debates about order in our own society, in a straightforward text which will be accessible to the general reader and anthropologist alike. Now in its Second Edition with a new Foreword and Afterword by the author, this renowned introduction to the anthropology of law is part of the Classics of Law & Society Series from Quid Pro Books. Its modern presentation uses larger font, margins, and dimensions than the original paperback edition, yet adds no more pages.

Genres: Law, Anthropology

202 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2013

Reviews

[Andrew]

"Order is achieved through the use of many different social control mechanisms."

- (For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to non-Western-capitalist societies as 'primitive'.) Order in primitive societies is not something that is automatically present, as was thought in the 19th century, but is secured by a range of ever-present checks upon human conduct. Furthermore, an analysis of 'primitive' societies should not be understood in western terms by superimposing a western framework onto the existing systems present in the primitive societies, but by understanding the systems that exist for what they are.

- Disputes are not to be regarded as a pathological error inherent within society, but a natural course of events that stems from the ever-present friction that exists between people, (because all people hold different beliefs and act differently.)

- The handling of disputes may take different forms. Inter-personal violence can constitute an approved response to dealing with dispute, channelling conflict into ritual, shaming, the use of supernatural agencies, or ostracism. The most important mechanism is talking, as feelings and emotions can be translated into words. Note that this can have the opposite effect of cooling tensions down. Talking can be further broken down into bilateral negotiation (face-to-face talking), mediation (talking through the channel of someone else), or umpire decisions (appealing to a third party to decide the outcome for them.) This latter is differentiated from judges, whose decision can be enforced if not agreed to. Umpire are weaker forms of western judges.

- Different social control mechanisms, in hunting and gathering society, depend as much upon the nature of the environment and the means of exploiting it as upon the political organisation, values, and beliefs of the community. Where the means of making a living are difficult and require cooperation between the individuals, mechanisms which secure this cooperation acquire great importance. Where an individual can subsist quite easily on his own, because food is plentiful, other mechanisms - notably dispersal - may be prominent in dealing with disputes.

- Socio-political considerations are important for how disputes are settled, as are the means of eking out an existence, i.e. the difference between hunter gatherers and farmers.