Mapping Conflict Cultures: Interpersonal Disputing in a South African Black Township

Abstract

Even in socially diverse communities, who fights about what, and how different sorts of disputes get handled, are culturally patterned features of social living. Cognitive anthropologists have devised techniques for systematically mapping cultural domains, and this article applies one such technique (ethnosemantic domain definition) to mapping community beliefs about disputes and dispute handling. That application is illustrated through a cultural-informant study, conducted in 1992, of such beliefs within a highly diverse black township adjoining Johannesburg, South Africa.