ABSTRACT
It has become increasingly clear, that there has been a significant shift in thinking about law, from macro-analytical theorising, to a micro-empirical approach, which has been especially sensitive to the importance of the informal as a part of law. The source of law lies in a diversity of relationships that individuals have with apparent totalities and that any unity is a product of the process of interpretation and organisation of what is otherwise dissimilar behaviour. Studies of dispute processing grew up in a critical response to the law-centred approach taken by many anthropologists and ethnographers who, consistently assert that legal rules can be distinguished from other kinds of norms. In his extensive writing in sociological theory, Giddens has repeatedly stressed the importance of both social structure and action. Firstly, Gurvitch's analysis suffers from an over-reliance on formalism, imposing categories on reality.
