Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-mwx4w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-03T01:35:17.256Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Community Justice, Capitalist Society, and Human Agency: The Dialectics of Collective Law in the Cooperative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Stuart Henry
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between social structures and community justice. It rejects both those arguments that see community justice as independent experiments for the development of an alternative system of justice and those that see such experiments as functioning solely in the interests of dominant legal and social structures. Based on a study of the collective justice systems of a variety of small-scale cooperatives, the paper develops a theory in which community justice is shown to be ambiguously related to the larger system in which it is set and to the groups and individuals who make up that system. This ambiguity, it is argued, is capable of transforming the wider structure, and the theory allows us to glimpse a potential for broad-based socio-legal change.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , 1985 , pp. 303 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by The Law and Society Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This paper is the outcome of my dialectical interchanges with a number of scholars, each of whom has claimed some of my territory as I have claimed some of theirs. Their influence should be apparent throughout but I acknowledge special thanks to Richard Abel, Richard Lempert, Rue Bendall, Peter Fitzpatrick, Nigel South and Brian Hipkin. An earlier version of the paper was presented at a meeting of the Research Committee on the Sociology of Law, International Sociological Association Conference, University of Antwerp, September 9, 1983. The present version, in somewhat shortened form, was presented to the American Society of Criminology Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio, November 7, 1984. I wish to thank the British Economic and Social Research Council for funding the research on which the paper was based with grant no. HR5907/2.

References

ABEL, Richard L. (1981) “Conservative Conflict and the Reproduction of Capitalism: The Role of Informal Justice,” 9 International Journal of the Sociology of Law 245.Google Scholar
ABEL, Richard L. (1982a) The Politics of Informal Justice, 2 vols. London and New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
ABEL, Richard L. (1982b) “A Socialist Approach to Risk,” 41 Maryland Law Review 695.Google Scholar
ARCHER, Margaret S. (1982) “Morphogenesis Versus Structuration: On Combining Structure and Action,” 33 British Journal of Sociology 455.Google Scholar
BRADY, James P. (1981) “Sorting Out the Exile's Confusion: Or a Dialogue on Popular Justice,” 5 Contemporary Crisis 31.Google Scholar
CAPPELETTI, Mauro and Bryant, GARTH (1978) Access to Justice: A World Survey. Milan: Sijthoff Giuffre.Google Scholar
CARR, Jerry (1983) “The Synthesis of Functionalism and Conflict Theory: A Study in the Metaphysics of Sociological Dialectics,” 7 Quarterly Journal of Ideology 14.Google Scholar
CHRISTIE, Nils (1976) Conflicts as Property. Sheffield: The University Centre for Criminology.Google Scholar
COLLINS, Randall (1981) “On the Microfoundations of Macrosociology,” 86 American Journal of Sociology 984.Google Scholar
DANZIG, Richard (1973) “Toward the Creation of a Complementary, Decentralized System of Criminal Justice,” 26 Stanford Law Review 1.Google Scholar
DURKHEIM, Emile (1893) The Division of Labor in Society. Chicago: The Free Press.Google Scholar
ECKHOFF, Torstein (1966) “The Mediator, the Judge and the Administrator in Conflict Resolution,” 10 Acta Sociologica 148.Google Scholar
EHRLICH, Eugen (1936) Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
FISHER, Eric (1975) “Community Courts: An Alternative to Conventional Criminal Adjudication,” 24 American University Law Review 1253.Google Scholar
FITZPATRICK, Peter (1983a) “Law, Plurality and Underdevelopment,” in Sugarman, D. (ed.), Legality, Ideology and the State. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Sugarman, D. (1983b) “Marxism and Legal Pluralism,” 1 Australian Journal of Law and Society 45.Google Scholar
Sugarman, D. (1984) “Law and Societies,” 22 Osgood Hall Law Journal 115.Google Scholar
GALANTER, Marc (1974) “Why the ‘Haves’ Come out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change,” 9 Law & Society Review 95.Google Scholar
GIDDENS, Anthony (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GIDDENS, Anthony (1982) Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GIDDENS, Anthony (1984) The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
GIERKE, Otto von (1913) Political Theories of the Middle Age. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
GURVITCH, Georges (1947) Sociology of Law. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
HENRY, Stuart (1983) Private Justice: Towards Integrated Theorising in the Sociology of Law. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
KAMENKA, Eugene and Alice Erh-Soon, TAY (1975) “Beyond Bourgeois Individualism: The Contemporary Crisis in Law and Legal Ideology,” in Kamenka, E. and Neale, R.S. (eds.), Feudalism, Capitalism and Beyond. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Neale, R.S. (1978) “Socialism, Anarchism and Law,” in Kamenka, E., Brown, R. and Tay, A. (eds.), Law and Society: The Crisis in Legal Ideals. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
KETTLER, David, Volker, MEJA and Nico, STEHR (1984) “Karl Mannheim and Conservatism: The Ancestry of Historical Thinking,” 49 American Sociological Review 71.Google Scholar
KNORR-CETINA, Karen (1981) “Introduction: The Micro Sociological Challenge of Macro Sociology: Toward a Reconstruction of Social Theory and Methodology,” in Knorr-Cetina, K. and Cicourel, A. (eds.), Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
LEWONTIN, R.C., Steven, ROSE and Leon J., KAMIN (1984) Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
LONGMIRE, Dennis R. (1981) “A Popular Justice System: A Radical Alternative to the Traditional Criminal Justice System,” 5 Contemporary Crisis 15.Google Scholar
MOORE, Sally Falk (1978) Law as Process. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
NELKEN, David (1982) “Is There a Crisis in Law and Legal Ideology?” 9 Journal of Law and Society 177.Google Scholar
RENNER, Karl (1949) The Institutions of Private Law and Their Social Functions. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
ROSNER, Menahem (1973) “Direct Democracy in the Kibbutz,” in Kanter, R. (ed.), Communes: Creating and Managing the Collective Life. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
ROSS, Edward A. (1932) Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
SANTOS, SANTOS Boaventura de (1980) “Law and Community: The Changing Nature of State Power in Late Capitalism,” 8 International Journal of the Sociology of Law 379.Google Scholar
SCHNEIDER, Louis (1971) “Dialectic in Sociology,” 36 American Sociological Review 667.Google Scholar
SCHWARTZ, Richard D. (1954) “Social Factors in the Development of Legal Control: A Case Study of Two Israeli Settlements,” 63 Yale Law Journal 471.Google Scholar
SCHWARTZ, Richard D. (1957) “Democracy and Collectivism in the Kibbutz,” 5 Social Problems 137.Google Scholar
SHAPIRO, Allan E. (1976) “Law in the Kibbutz: A Reappraisal,” 10 Law & Society Review 415.Google Scholar
STATSKY, William P. (1974) “Community Courts: Decentralizing Juvenile Jurisprudence,” 3 Capital University Law Review 1.Google Scholar
SWINGEWOOD, Alan (1975) Marx and Modem Social Theory. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
VAN DEN BERGHE, Pierre (1963) “Dialectic and Functionalism: Towards a Theoretical Synthesis,” 28 American Sociological Review 695.Google Scholar
VERSELE, Severin-Carolos (1969) “Public Participation in the Administration of Criminal Justice,” 27 International Review of Criminal Policy 9.Google Scholar
WEISBROD, Carol (1980) The Boundaries of Utopia. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
WHELAN, Christopher J. (1981) “Informalising Judicial Procedures,” in Henry, S. (ed.), Informal Institutions. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar