Law Culture And Ritual

"Oscar G. Chase studies the American legal system in the manner of an anthropologist. By comparing American 'dispute ways' with those of other systems, including some commonly believed to be more 'primitive, ' he finds interesting similarities that challenge the premise that we live in a society regulated by a rational and just 'rule of law.'" --New York Law Journal"A witty and engaging endeavor. . . . A good contribution to our professional knowledge, and it is a must reading." --Law and Politics Book Review"After reading Law, Culture, and Ritual, no one could ever again think that our legal proceedings are nothing more than an efficient method of discovering truth and applying law. Oscar Chase effectively uses a comparative approach to help us to step back from our legal practices and see just how steeped in myths, rituals and traditions they are. Scholars will want to read this book for its contribution to comparative law, but everyone interested in American culture should read this book. Chase shows us that there is no separating law from culture: each informs and maintains the other. Law, Culture, and Ritual is a major step forward in the rapidly expanding field of the cultural study of law." --Paul Kahn, author of The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal Scholarship"Having allowed ourselves to be convinced (wrongly) that we are the most litigious people in the world, Americans have become obsessed with finding (quick) cures. Oscar Chase's book sounds a salutary warning. By presenting striking comparative examples that shatter our parochialism, he forces us to examine the cultural roots of dispute processes." --Richard Abel, Connell Professor of Law, UCLA LawSchoolDisputing systems are products of the societies in which they operate - they originate and mutate in respons

What can we learn from tribal societies about the ways in which, in a variety of social settings, groups of men resolve their conflicts with other men? In order to answer this question, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society compares nearly forty case study societies, most of them in Africa, in their reconstructed pre-colonial tribal condition, comparing their small-scale social relations to their large-scale social context. At the outset Gluckman explains to the reader that custom is the focus of interest of all types of anthropology. Yet his approach manifests a strong interest in economy, politics, and social relationships.In the volume, Max Gluckman offers a succinct version of a lifetime of opinionated analysis. This material is organized by theme and the ethnographic examples appear as brief illustrations of theoretical questions. Discussed here also is the relation between disputes and struggles for power within the context of mechanisms of social control and stability.In addition, Gluckman presents a step-by-step survey of the cumulative development of the anthropological analysis of tribal institutions, from the nineteenth century to the present, and supports the argument that anthropology is a science rather than an art. The new masterful introduction by Sally Falk Moore, along with a new postscript of Gluckman's professional activities and publications, provides newcomers to the work of Gluckman with deep insights into the contents as well as contexts within which the great anthropologist worked.

This book considers the ways in which religious beliefs and practices have contributed to the formation of Chinese legal culture. It does so by describing two forms of overlap between religion and the law: the ideology of justice and the performance of judicial rituals. One of the most important conceptual underpinnings of the Chinese ideology of justice is the belief in the inevitability of retribution. Similar values permeate Chinese religious traditions, all of which contend that justice will prevail despite corruption and incompetence among judicial officials in this world and even the underworld, with all wrongdoers eventually suffering some form of punishment. The second form of overlap between religion and the law may be found in the realm of practice, and involves instances when men and women perform judicial rituals like oaths, chicken-beheadings, and underworld indictments in order to enhance the legitimacy of their positions, deal with cases of perceived injustice, and resolve disputes. These rites coexist with other forms of legal practice, including private mediation and the courts, comprising a wide-ranging spectrum of practices Divine Justice will be of enormous interest to scholars of the Chinese legal system and the development of Chinese culture and society more generally.

Ritual is part of what it means to be human. Like sports, music, and drama, ritual defines and enriches culture, putting those who practice it in touch with sources of value and meaning larger than themselves. Ritual is unavoidable, yet it holds a place in modern life that is decidedly ambiguous. What is ritual? What does it do? Is it useful? What are the various kinds of ritual? Is ritual tradition bound and conservative or innovative and transformational? Alongside description of a number of specific rites, this Very Short Introduction explores ritual from both theoretical and historical perspectives. Barry Stephenson focuses on the places where ritual touches everyday life: in politics and power; moments of transformation in the life cycle; as performance and embodiment. He also discusses the boundaries of ritual, and how and why certain behaviors have been studied as ritual while others have not. Stephenson shows how ritual is an important vehicle for group and identity formation; how it generates and transmits beliefs and values; how it can be used to exploit and oppress; and how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. Encompassing the breadth and depth of modern ritual studies, Barry Stephenson's Very Short Introduction also develops a narrative of ritual's place in social and cultural life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The proposed volumes are aimed at a multidisciplinary audience and seek to fill the gap between law, semiotics and visuality providing a comprehensive theoretical and analytical overview of legal visual semiotics. They seek to promote an interdisciplinary debate from law, semiotics and visuality bringing together the cumulative research traditions of these related areas as a prelude to identifying fertile avenues for research going forward. Advance Praise for Law, Culture and Visual Studies This diverse and exhilarating collection of essays explores the many facets both historical and contemporary of visual culture in the law. It opens a window onto the substantive, jurisdictional, disciplinary and methodological diversity of current research. It is a cornucopia of materials that will enliven legal studies for those new to the field as well as for established scholars. It is a ‘must read’ that will leave you wondering about the validity of the long held obsession that reduces the law and legal studies to little more than a preoccupation with the word. Leslie J Moran Professor of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London Law, Culture & Visual Studies is a treasure trove of insights on the entwined roles of legality and visuality. From multiple interdisciplinary perspectives by scholars from around the world, these pieces reflect the fullness and complexities of our visual encounters with law and culture. From pictures to places to postage stamps, from forensics to film to folklore, this anthology is an exciting journey through the fertile field of law and visual culture as well as a testament that the field has come of age. Naomi Mezey, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., USA This highly interdisciplinary reference work brings together diverse fields including cultural studies, communication theory, rhetoric, law and film studies, legal and social history, visual and legal theory, in order to document the various historical, cultural, representational and theoretical links that bind together law and the visual. This book offers a breath-taking range of resources from both well-established and newer scholars who together cover the field of law’s representation in, interrogation of, and dialogue with forms of visual rhetoric, practice, and discourse. Taken together this scholarship presents state of the art research into an important and developing dimension of contemporary legal and cultural inquiry. Above all, Law Culture and Visual Studies lays the groundwork for rethinking the nature of law in our densely visual culture: How are legal meanings produced, encoded, distributed, and decoded? What critical and hermeneutic skills, new or old, familiar or unfamiliar, will be needed? Topical, diverse, and enlivening, Law Culture and Visual Studies is a vital research tool and an urgent invitation to further critical thinking in the areas so well laid out in this collection. Desmond Manderson, Future Fellow, ANU College of Law / Research School of Humanities & the Arts, Australian National University, Australia

Examines how rights-based conflict is important in Japanese law, politics and society.

Publisher's description: In a trial in California, Navajo defendants argue that using the hallucinogen peyote to achieve spiritual exaltation is protected by the Constitution's free exercise of religion clause, trumping the states' right to regulate them. An Ibo man from Nigeria sues Pan American World Airways for transporting his mother's corpse in a cloth sack. Her arrival for the funeral face down in a burlap bag signifies death by suicide according to the customs of her Ibo kin, and brings great shame to the son. In Los Angeles, two Cambodian men are prosecuted for attempting to eat a four month-old puppy. The immigrants' lawyers argue that the men were following their own "national customs" and do not realize their conduct is offensive to "American sensibilities." What is the just decision in each case? When cultural practices come into conflict with the law is it legitimate to take culture into account? Is there room in modern legal systems for a cultural defense? In this remarkable book, Alison Dundes Renteln amasses hundreds of cases from the U.S. and around the world in which cultural issues take center stage-from the mundane to the bizarre, from drugs to death. Though cultural practices vary dramatically, Renteln demonstrates that there are discernible patterns to the cultural arguments used in the courtroom. The regularities she uncovers offer judges a starting point for creating a body of law that takes culture into account. Renteln contends that a systematic treatment of culture in law is not only possible, but ultimately more equitable. A just pluralistic society requires a legal system that can assess diverse motivations and can recognize the key role that culture plays in influencing human behavior. The inclusion of evidence of cultural background is necessary for the fair hearing of a case.

Reflecting the range of their honorand's interests, the essays in Ritual, Text and Law provide a stimulating and panoramic exploration of the interrelated fields of liturgy and canon law in the Middle Ages, chiefly through the scrutiny of texts and their transmission. Roger Reynolds' scholarly work has not only considered the relations between law and liturgy, but has also focused on liturgical practice and the evolution of rituals, paleography and the often complicated relationships between canonical collections, in particular the southern Italian Collection in Five Books. Due in large part to Reynolds' research, the fields of medieval canon law and liturgy are now recognized as fundamental elements of medieval religious and intellectual history that shed light on medieval Christian belief and practice.The studies are grouped thematically under the headings of 'Ritual' and 'Text and Law'. Each section has an introduction by the editors, in which they survey recent developments in the study of medieval canon law and liturgy with reference to Reynolds's own research, provide historical context for the individual studies, and draw attention to the ways in which the studies reflect current concerns. Individually, the contributors offer new viewpoints on key issues and questions relating to medieval religious, cultural and intellectual history, particularly of the period c.900-1200, and especially the Italian peninsula. Collectively they illuminate the interaction of medieval Christianity and its rituals, as well as the relationship of the secular and the sacred as transmitted in liturgico-canonical texts from the time of the early church to the 14th century.