Law and Community in Three American Towns Contributor(s): Greenhouse, Carol J. (Author), Yngvesson, Barbara (Author), Engel, David M. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0801481694 ISBN-13: 9780801481697 Publisher: Cornell University Press OUR PRICE: $39.55 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: June 1994 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Law | Government - State, Provincial & Municipal - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social - History | United States - State & Local - General |
Dewey: 340.115 |
LCCN: 93-44353 |
Physical Information: 0.55" H x 6" W x 9" (0.80 lbs) 240 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Many commentators on the contemporary United States believe that current rates of litigation are a sign of decay in the nation's social fabric. Law and Community in Three American Towns explores how ordinary people in three towns--located in New England, the Midwest, and the South--view the law, courts, litigants, and social order. Carol J. Greenhouse, Barbara Yngvesson, and David M. Engel analyze attitudes toward law and law users as a way of commentating on major American myths and ongoing changes in American society. They show that residents of Riverside, Sander County, and Hopewell interpret litigation as a sign of social decline, but they also value law as a symbol of their local way of life. The book focuses on this ambivalence and relates it to the deeply-felt tensions express between community and rights as rival bases of society. The authors, two anthropologists and a lawyer, each with an understanding of a particular region, were surprised to discover that such different locales produced parallel findings. They undertook a comparative project to find out why ambivalence toward the law and law use should be such a common refrain. The answer, they believe, turns out to be less a matter of local traditions than of the ways that people perceive the patterns of their lives as being vulnerable to external forces of change. |
Contributor Bio(s): Greenhouse, Carol J.: - Carol J. Greenhouse is Professor and Chair in the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University. She is the author of Praying for Justice: Faith, Order, and Community in an American Town and A Moment's Notice: Time Politics across Cultures, both available from Cornell.Yngvesson, Barbara: - Barbara Yngvesson is Professor of Anthropology at Hampshire College.Engel, David M.: - David M. Engel is the SUNY Distinguished Service Professor at the University at Buffalo Law School. |