ABSTRACT
The means by which societies maintain “social cohesion” by managing conflict has been a long-standing concern of anthropologists. Two principal positions emerged in anthropology in the first half of the 20th century regarding conflict management understood as “law”. The first position conceived of “law” in relatively restricted terms as “the legitimate use of physical coercion by a socially authorized agent”. The second position was much broader and defined “law” as any activity that promoted social conformity, thereby “raising uncodified social rules to the status of law”. Falk Moore’s research indicates a state of “legal pluralism” among the Chagga in which more than one legal system was at play: “state law” and “customary law”. A further issue that suggests a degree of caution is required when reading ethnographic accounts of conflict management mechanisms is the longstanding debate within the “anthropology of disputes” regarding comparison and its potentially distorting effects.
