ABSTRACT
Extended case histories of disputes in African villages, neighborhoods, and chiefdoms reveal that each dispute tends to have a life cycle wi th distinct phases.1 Since relationships in these small face-to-face commu nities tend to be multiplex, wi th total personality involvement i n activi ties of all types, whether these may be defined as primarily domestic, jural, economic, political or religious, the consequences of interaction in one type tend to affect the premises of interaction in the immediately succeeding activities of another.2 This tendency can best be described, and later analyzed, i f we adopt Dorothy Emmet's view, the result of a cogent but complex argument in her book Function, Purpose and Powers (1958), that a society is "a process wi th some systematic characteristics, rather than a closely integrated system, like an organism or a machine" (p. 293).
