ABSTRACT
Law in modern Anthropology is exclusively studied in its singular and sensational manipulations, in cases of bloodcurdling crime, followed by tribal vendetta, in accounts of criminal sorcery with retaliation, of incest, adultery, breach of taboo or murder. In a community where laws are not only occasionally broken, but systematically circumvented by well established methods, there can be no question of a 'spontaneous' obedience to law, of slavish adherence to tradition. In the Trobriands, the breach of exogamy is regarded quite differently according to whether the guilty pair is closely related or whether they are only united by bonds of common clanship. The law of exogamy, the prohibition of marriage and intercourse within the clan is often quoted as one of the most rigid and wholesale commandments of primitive law, regardless of the degree of kinship between the two people concerned.
