Law and Community in Three American Towns / Carol J. Greenhouse, Barbara Yngvesson, David M. Engel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Greenhouse, Carol J., author.

Engel, David M., author.

Yngvesson, Barbara, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociological jurisprudence.

Law and anthropology.

Law--Social aspects--United States.

Law.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 228 p. )

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Many commentators on the contemporary United States believe that current rates of litigation are a sign of decay in the nation's social fabric. Law and Community in Three American Towns explores how ordinary people in three towns-located in New England, the Midwest, and the South-view the law, courts, litigants, and social order.Carol J. Greenhouse, Barbara Yngvesson, and David M. Engel analyze attitudes toward law and law users as a way of commentating on major American myths and ongoing changes in American society. They show that residents of "Riverside," "Sander County," and "Hopewell" interpret litigation as a sign of social decline, but they also value law as a symbol of their local way of life. The book focuses on this ambivalence and relates it to the deeply-felt tensions express between "community" and "rights" as rival bases of society.The authors, two anthropologists and a lawyer, each with an understanding of a particular region, were surprised to discover that such different locales produced parallel findings. They undertook a comparative project to find out why ambivalence toward the law and law use should be such a common refrain. The answer, they believe, turns out to be less a matter of local traditions than of the ways that people perceive the patterns of their lives as being vulnerable to external forces of change.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Ethnographic Issues

PART ONE. Ethnographic Studies

Chapter 1. The Oven Bird's Song: Insiders, Outsiders, and Personal Injuries in an American Community

Chapter 2. Making Law at the Doorway: The Clerk, the Court, and the Construction of Community in a New England Town

Chapter 3. Courting Difference: Issues of Interpretation and Comparison in the Study of Legal Ideologies

PART TWO. Law, Values, and the Discourse of Community

Chapter 4. Avoidance and Involvement

Chapter 5. Connection and Separation

Chapter 6. History and Place

Conclusion: The Paradox of Community

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [209]-218) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 20. Sep 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501725012

1501725017

OCLC:

1080549762