ABSTRACT

What the examples of dispute resolution in the last chapter had in common was that they all led to resolution through a translation of social facts into a form which could be resolved. At its most extreme, this meant dealing with the conflict by talking about something completely unrelated to the social dispute. Although all societies have ways of dealing with disputes which are intractable, and threaten or disrupt the life of the community, there are communities which attempt this task without translation. The means by which they do this, the limitations inherent in such an approach, the objectives such attempts seek to achieve, and the reasons for attempting to resolve the social problem in the social world, are all of significance in a consideration of law in our own Rule of Law world. The initial points we wish to make will be derived primarily from three sources. The first will be concerned with the use made by the Kpelle people of the ‘moot’ as discussed by James Gibbs in ‘The Kpelle moot: a therapeutic model for the informal settlement of disputes’ (1967), the second will consider the preservation of order among the Ba Mbuti Pygmies as discussed by Colin Turnbull in The Forest People (1984), and the third will consider Paul Bohannan’s analysis of Tiv justice in Justice and Judgment Among the Tiv (1957).