Order and Disorder

Disorder and instability are matters of continuing public concern. Terrorism, as a threat to global order, has been added to preoccupations with political unrest, deviance and crime. Such considerations have prompted the return to the classic anthropological issues of order and disorder. Examining order within the political and legal spheres and in contrasting local settings, the papers in this volume highlight its complex and contested nature. Elaborate displays of order seem necessary to legitimate the institutionalization of violence by military and legal establishments, yet violent behaviour can be incorporated into the social order by the development of boundaries, rituals and established processes of conflict resolution. Order is said to depend upon justice, yet injustice legitimates disruptive protest. Case studies from Siberia, India, Indonesia, Tibet, West Africa, Morocco and the Ottoman Empire show that local responses are often inconsistent in their valorization, acceptance and condemnation of disorder.

Disorder and instability are matters of continuing public concern. Terrorism, as a threat to global order, has been added to preoccupations with political unrest, deviance and crime. Such considerations have prompted the return to the classic anthropological issues of order and disorder. Examining order within the political and legal spheres and in contrasting local settings, the papers in this volume highlight its complex and contested nature. Elaborate displays of order seem necessary to legitimate the institutionalization of violence by military and legal establishments, yet violent behaviour can be incorporated into the social order by the development of boundaries, rituals and established processes of conflict resolution. Order is said to depend upon justice, yet injustice legitimates disruptive protest. Case studies from Siberia, India, Indonesia, Tibet, West Africa, Morocco and the Ottoman Empire show that local responses are often inconsistent in their valorization, acceptance and condemnation of disorder.

List of Plates
Preface

Chapter 1. Introduction
Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Fernanda Pirie

Chapter 2. Order and the Evocation of Heritage: Representing Quality in the French Biscuit Trade
Simon Roberts

Chapter 3. Pride, Honour, Individual and Collective Violence: Order in a 'Lawless' Village
Aimar Ventsel

Chapter 4. Order, Individualism and Responsibility: Contrasting Dynamics on the Tibetan Plateau
Fernanda Pirie

Chapter 5. Vigilante Groups and the State in West Africa
Tilo Grätz

Chapter 6. Imposing New Concepts of Order in Rural Morocco: Violence and Transnational Challenges to Local Order
Bertam Turner

Chapter 7. Law, Ritual and Order
Peter Just

Chapter 8. The Disorders of an Order: State and Society in Ottoman and Turkish Trabzon
Michael E. Meeker

Chapter 9. Anthropological Order and Political Disorder
Jonathan Spencer

Notes on Contributors
Index