ABSTRACT
This chapter shows analyses of normative conflicts in eleven national societies, with a rich supply of what anthropologists call "thick description". It explores possibilities of mediation that could be embodied in policies. In the case of Western civilization, one need only recall the wars of religion that followed the Protestant Reformation, which submerged Europe in an ocean of bloodshed and which took several centuries to mediate. Normative conflicts in modern or modernizing societies commonly revolve around the question of the outer limits of pluralism. One of the major objectives has been to identify two sets of institutions—those that polarize normative conflicts and those that seek to mediate them. In both West Germany and Japan, a formal corporatist system has muted all sorts of conflicts and thus served to stabilize the social order. The system has, precisely been based on the macro-institutions of government, organized business, and organized labor.
