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Prolegomenon To A Fairness-Centered Anthropology Of Law, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Legal anthropology, which began with Malinowski’s holistic reflections on law, has today drifted toward an emphasis on the study of dispute resolution. Part I outlines the three historical phases of this development—Holism, Realism, and Processualism—and identifies two shortcomings of viewing the dispute as the central problem for legal anthropology: (1) the collapse of law into dispute analyses has not been, and perhaps cannot be, fully theorized; and (2) the most pressing of current problems, such as human rights and intellectual property issues, cannot be reduced without distortion to the disputing paradigm. Part II offers fairness as an alternative organizing concept …