Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T14:32:02.813Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Courting Difference: Issues of Interpretation and Comparison in The Study of Legal Ideologies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This article explores the connections between the interpretive and comparative dimensions of ideology by analyzing ethnographic data from an American town. The town is undergoing a rapid process of urbanization, and townspeople are absorbed in the analysis of the changes around them and their town's prospects as a community. The article compares interview data and courtroom observations in which local understandings are shown to be constituted in pervasive cultural distinctions: past and future, insiders and outsiders, harmony and conflict, gender, and various forms of family life shape local views of change and conflict. The conclusion relates an analysis of the symbolic terms in which these distinctions are expressed to general issues of the nature of ideologies and their truth claims.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

In thinking about this paper, I have benefitted from a number of conversations. First, it is a pleasure to acknowledge Professors David Engel and Barbara Yngvesson, with whom I enjoyed extensive conversations comparing analytical problems and findings in our three independent ethnographic studies of court use in American towns. Their contributions are cited as Engel (1987) and Yngvesson (1986). The earliest version of this paper was the basis for my contribution to a series of presentations that we gave jointly at the Law and Society Association annual meeting, the Cornell Law School, and the American Anthropological Association annual meeting, all in 1986. A second debt is to organizers and participants in the American Bar Association's workshop on “Teaching America: Pluralism and Community in a Republic of Laws” who provided an occasion for developing some of the implications of the ethnographic material presented here. I am grateful to the College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University, for the study leave during which I wrote the first draft. I am also indebted to Professor P. Steven Sangren, Professor Austin Sarat, and anonymous readers for this special issue for their comments.

References

BAUMGARTNER, M. P. (1984) “Social Control in Suburbia,” in Black, Donald (ed.), Toward a General Theory of Social Control, Vol. 2, 79. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
BLACK, Donald (ed.) (1984) Toward a General Theory of Social Control New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
DANIELS, Stephen (1985) “Continuity and Change in Patterns of Case Handling: A Case Study of Two Rural Counties,” 19 Law & Society Review 381.Google Scholar
ENGEL, David M. (1984) “The Oven-bird's Song: Insiders, Outsiders and Personal Injuries in an American Community,” 18 Law & Society Review 551.Google Scholar
ENGEL, David M. (1987) “Law, Time, and Community,” 21 Law & Society Review 605.Google Scholar
GALANTER, Marc (1983) “Reading the Landscape of Disputes: What We Know and Don't Know (and Think We Know) about Our Allegedly Contentious and Litigious Society,” 31 UCLA Law Review 4.Google Scholar
GEERTZ, Clifford (1973) “Ideology as a Cultural System,” The Interpretation of Cultures, 193. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
GEERTZ, Clifford (1983) Local Knowledge. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
GREENHOUSE, Carol J. (1982) “Looking at Culture, Looking for Rules,” 17 Man (n.s.) 58.Google Scholar
GREENHOUSE, Carol J. (1985) “Anthropology at Home: Whose Home?,” 44 Human Organization 261.Google Scholar
GREENHOUSE, Carol J. (1986) Praying for Justice: Faith, Order and Community in an American Town. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
GREENHOUSE, Carol J. (forthcoming) “Interpreting American Litigiousness,” in Starr, June and Collier, Jane (eds.), History and Power in the Study of Law. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
HARRINGTON, Christine B. (1985) “Socio-legal Concepts in Mediation Ideology,” 9 The Legal Studies Forum 33.Google Scholar
HUNT, Alan (1985) “The Ideology of Law: Advances and Problems in Recent Applications of the Concept of Ideology to the Analysis of Law,” 19 Law & Society Review 11.Google Scholar
MERRY, Sally Engle (1986) “Everyday Understandings of the Law in Working-class America,” 13 American Ethnologist 253.Google Scholar
POCOCK, J.G.A. (1975) The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
SCHNEIDER, David M. (1968) American Kinship: A Cultural Account. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
SILBEY, Susan S. (1985) “Ideals and Practices in the Study of Law,” 9 The Legal Studies Forum 7.Google Scholar
SILBEY, Susan, and Austin, SARAT (1987) “Critical Traditions in Law and Society Research,” 21 Law & Society Review 165.Google Scholar
SKINNER, Quentin (ed.) (1985) The Return of Grand Theory in Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
STARR, June, and Jane, COLLIER (forthcoming) History and Power in the Study of Law. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
UNGER, Roberto (1975) Knowledge and Politics. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
UNGER, Roberto (1976) Law in Modern Society. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
VARENNE, Herve (1977) Americans Together. New York: Teacher College Press.Google Scholar
VARENNE, Herve (1986) “Drop in Anytime: Community and Authenticity in American Everyday Life,” in Varenne, Herve (ed.), Symbolizing America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
YNGVESSON, Barbara (1985) “Legal Ideology and Community Justice in the Clerk's Office,” 9 The Legal Studies Forum 71.Google Scholar
YNGVESSON, Barbara (1986) “Public Danger, Private Nuisance: The Clerk, the Court and the Construction of Order in a New England Town,” unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar