Local Social Order Research Articles

Policing the Rural Crisis

Based on empirical research in a number of rural communities in north-western NSW, this article explores the dynamics of rural crisis as it is manifested in and through popular attitudes and campaigns around law and order. There is no denying that crime rates in many rural communities are high, often very high by national standards, or that local crime disproportionately involves Indigenous offenders (and Indigenous victims). However, the views expressed in interviews with established White residents, in local media and in organised campaigns around law and order are suggestive of a much deeper sense of threat and crisis. This, it is argued, can be explained in relation not simply to crime rates but the way in which crime is experienced at the local level and the manner in which it is connected to other unwanted change that is seen to threaten the integrity of these communities. In order to understand these anxieties it is necessary to explore historical patterns of settlement, the economic structure and the culture of rural communities. Indigenous Australians have, at best, occupied an ambiguous and fragile position in relation to membership of these communities, a form of ‘passive’ belonging, ‘conditional’ on deference to dominant White norms governing civic and domestic life. Local Indigenous crime can be a source of deep anxiety not only because it causes harm to person and property but because it is interpreted by many Whites as a repudiation of the local social order, a signifier of larger threats to the community and on occasions as a harbinger of social breakdown. The article explores some of the key themes emerging from interview material that characterise this sense of crisis and relates them to the larger pattern of change affecting many communities: economic decline, changing government policies and priorities, the growing relative economic and political power of Indigenous people, debates about native title and so on.

Policing the Rural Crisis

Based on empirical research in a number of rural communities in north-western NSW, this article explores the dynamics of rural crisis as it is manifested in and through popular attitudes and campaigns around law and order. There is no denying that crime rates in many rural communities are high, often very high by national standards, or that local crime disproportionately involves Indigenous offenders (and Indigenous victims). However, the views expressed in interviews with established White residents, in local media and in organised campaigns around law and order are suggestive of a much deeper sense of threat and crisis. This, it is argued, can be explained in relation not simply to crime rates but the way in which crime is experienced at the local level and the manner in which it is connected to other unwanted change that is seen to threaten the integrity of these communities. In order to understand these anxieties it is necessary to explore historical patterns of settlement, the economic structure and the culture of rural communities. Indigenous Australians have, at best, occupied an ambiguous and fragile position in relation to membership of these communities, a form of ‘passive’ belonging, ‘conditional’ on deference to dominant White norms governing civic and domestic life. Local Indigenous crime can be a source of deep anxiety not only because it causes harm to person and property but because it is interpreted by many Whites as a repudiation of the local social order, a signifier of larger threats to the community and on occasions as a harbinger of social breakdown. The article explores some of the key themes emerging from interview material that characterise this sense of crisis and relates them to the larger pattern of change affecting many communities: economic decline, changing government policies and priorities, the growing relative economic and political power of Indigenous people, debates about native title and so on.

‘Legitimacy’ and social boundaries: free people of colour and the social order in Jamaican slave society1

This article explores relations between free people of colour and white men in early nineteenth-century Jamaica. Using evidence from wills and other contemporary sources, it considers the types of bequests that white slaveholders made to free people of colour and to white people. In a slave society divided by racialized boundaries of rule, slaveholders’ liaisons with non-white concubines and the existence of mixed-race children had the potential to undermine the local social order. However, slaveholders sought to limit the wealth of nonwhites and did not recognize mixed-race children as their legitimate heirs. Therefore, free people of colour gained only limited benefits from their relations with white men. While free non-whites frequently received bequests of land, personal property and slaves from white testators, the main beneficiaries of slaveholders’ wills were almost always white men. These practices kept wealth mainly in the hands of whites and perpetuated racialized boundaries of rule in Jamaica. However, they also led to the emergence of a relatively privileged coloured section of local society that became an important element in social and political life.

Local Order

Local Order

Interaction, language practice, and the construction of the social universe

As a linguistic anthropologist my concern is to describe rigorously, systematically, and empirically the array of resources utilized by participants to build their ongoing social organization as the situated product of interactive practices. In the first part of this report I discus how we can integrate talk, intonation, the body, and the built environment into our analysis of language usage. An approach that combines analysis of talk in interaction with ethnography provides a more informed picture of girls’ lives than exists in either social science or popular literature. With this introduction to basic concepts of embodied action and situated activity system, in the second part of the paper I examine how the lived local social order is brought into being by investigating children interacting with parents in the midst of directive/response sequences (sequences in which parents are attempting to get their children to do something). The repetitive ways in which children and parents collaborate in the building of argumentative sequences I believe has consequences for how children, across a range of situations, develop negotiational skills. By looking closely at the type of order that is achieved, analysts can examine how moment-to-moment interaction is consequential for larger social processes. Key words: interaction, language practice, social processes.

Bugis Migration and Modes of Adaptation to Local Situstions

Bugis migrants from South Sulawesi, Indonesia, have been at the center of several recent regional conflicts. In order to explain their role in these conflicts, historic and ethnographic accounts of Bugis migration and settlement, as well as interviews with recently repatriated migrants, are presented, and current theories of frontier/state relations are brought to bear. This article suggests that Bugis migrants have often acted as agents of assimilation in concert with existing elites, and that this pattern has become anachronistic in post-Suharto Indonesia. (Indonesia, Bugis, migration, ethnic groups, conflict) ********** Observers of Indonesian society have frequently commented on its seemingly extraordinary ability to hold itself together in spite of its geographic fragmentation and sociocultural diversity. The recent eruption of violent ethnic and religious conflicts has shown us how very real the problem of national integration is in Indonesia. With the fall of President Suharto in 1998 and the granting of independence to East Timor in 1999, other long-suppressed separatist movements are reemerging. Within the framework of assimilation, this article addresses questions concerning the role of migration and the settlement of peoples outside their homelands as a factor in the economic and political integration of the region and the Indonesian state. (1) This essay is informed by my research on Bugis migration, by the ethnic conflicts in Indonesia, especially between Bugis migrants and local populations in East Timor, West Timor, Ambon, Central Sulawesi, and West Papua, and by Kopytoff's (1987) and Scott's (1998a, 1998b) models for the historical understanding of frontiers and their relationship to metropoles. It relies upon the historical and ethnographic accounts of the Bugis, both in their homeland of South Sulawesi and in the diaspora, as well as press accounts of recent ethnic conflicts between Bugis and indigenous ethnic groups in East Timor, West Timor, Ambon, and West Papua. As such, it is meant to help clarify the social and cultural forces that give rise to these conflicts and to provide the basis for further research on a problem critical to the future of the Indonesian nation and the safety and security of its ethnically diverse population. One of the region's largest and most widely dispersed ethnic groups, the Bugis, whose homeland is South Sulawesi, has helped shape the processes of regional and national integration and disintegration, past and present. Over several centuries, Bugis migrants and settlers have developed a reputation for their ability to insinuate themselves into and eventually dominate local economies and social orders. In particular, the history of Bugis migration is best understood through a frontier model in which, as Scott (1999) has suggested, Southeast Asian states have encouraged assimilation as a means to control populations. Ironically, as I will show, the sensibility of migrants has not been one of mere assimilation into existing social orders. Rather, Bugis migrants more often reconstruct their own social orders based upon their own shared beliefs and practices in a manner described by Kopytoff (1987). Specifically, from the early colonial period through the end of Suharto's New Order, Bugis migrants have extensively allied with elites and acted as agents of assimilation, imposing upon local peoples ways they promoted as economically and politically progressive and socially and culturally correct. Unfortunately, their alliance with the New Order was a major factor in the current wave of ethnic and religious conflict, causing thousands of migrants and a large number of Bugis settlers to flee the violence. FRONTIERS AND THE NEW SOCIAL ORDERS Kopytoff's (1987) introduction to The African Frontier presents a brilliantly cogent model for the historical understanding of frontiers and their relationship to metropoles in sub-Saharan Africa. …

War as Exit from Exclusion? The Formation of Mayi-Mayi Militias in Eastern Congo

In eastern Congo scores of young and marginalized people have been increasingly attracted to the mobilising efforts of new local actors. The inquiry into this phenomenon traces the emergence of the first militias to the end of the eighties. These first generation militias were a result of the growing willingness of marginalized youngsters and school drop-outs to form groups of under-aged combatants acting against eveiy representative of modern political authority and against their desperate feelings of exclusion, for which both their political and social environment were held responsible. As they had nothing more to lose than their marginalisation, rebellion became an option, both as a survival strategy and as a strategy of self-defence against a predatory political and social order. The shiftiness of their ideological basis and allies only further proved what these first militias were about: a search for alternatives to a situation of acute deprivation.This article reveals that the present RCD rebellion that rages through the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo has had an escalating effect on the proliferation of new militias. Before, the Kabila-led AFDL rebellion had already offered the already existing militias a new cause: that of an anti-Tutsi force fighting against foreign occupation. In resistance to the effects of state collapse and armed foreign interventions, rural and urban youth today have combined former traditions and newly developed patterns of mobility in an interpretation of customary and national defence. This has not meant that they link up with the traditional emanations of authority. Rather, a crisis in the social fabric has meant a shift in authority towards these combatants and the use of violence. In addition, shared feelings of antipathy towards the 'Tutsi-aggressors ' have facilitated the creation of links between these diverse local groupings and other, foreign, factions of armed militia roaming the local countryside. Consolidation, however, remains unlikely as this shared ideology does not run very deep and alliances continuously change. The question remains what the future impact of these militias might be on the local social order. On the one hand, for several years now in some remote areas these armed groupings have become the only representatives of any authority structure, even if this structure is based on violence. Contrary to other cases, these militias in South Kivu are still closely linked to the rural population and have not turned against them. On the other hand, the dynamic of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue has forced their leaders to present their grievances to the outside world. Key Words: Mayi Mayi, militias, politics, rebellion, R.D. Congo

Escalating Terror: Communicative Strategies in a Preschool Classroom Dispute

This paper describes the pragmatic and strategic communicative work of some young boys in a preschool classroom as they made themselves observable and hearable as owners of block area and members of specific activities. Using a transcript of a video-recorded episode of the boys engaged in a dispute about who could play in block area, analysis shows how the boys generated and escalated images of terror until the targeted child left the area or was evicted from the group by the other boys. In the course of escalating the terror, the boys used a range of communicative resources to construct group membership affiliation and, at the same time, to assert their individual identities. The work of the boys established and displayed credentials as to who was able to play in the block area, and who was able to determine and justify why others could or could not play. This detailed analysis of how the boys formed collaborations and strategic partnerships in the course of their dispute gives us a way of appreciating the communicative competencies that underpin membership in a local social order that is in a state of flux.

War as Exit from Exclusion? The Formation of Mayi-Mayi Militias in Eastern Congo

War as Exit from Exclusion? The Formation of Mayi-Mayi Militias in Eastern Congo In eastern Congo scores of young and marginalized people have been increasingly attracted to the mobilising efforts of new local actors. The inquiry into this phenomenon traces the emergence of the first militias to the end of the eighties. These first generation militias were a result of the growing willingness of marginalized youngsters and school drop-outs to form groups of under-aged combatants acting against every representative of modern political authority and against their desperate feelings of exclusion, for which both their political and social environment were held responsible. As they had nothing more to lose than their marginalization, rebellion became an option, both as a survival strategy and as a strategy of self-defence against a predatory political and social order. The shiftiness of their ideological basis and allies only further proved what these first militias were about: a search for alternatives to a situation of acute deprivation. This article reveals that the present RCD rebellion that rages through the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo has had an escalating effect on the proliferation of new militias. Before, the Kabila-led AFDL rebellion had already offered the already existing militias a new cause: that of an anti-Tutsi force fighting against foreign occupation. In resistance to the effects of state collapse and armed foreign interventions, rural and urban youth today have combined former traditions and newly developed patterns of mobility in an interpretation of customary and national defence. This has not meant that they link up with the traditional emanations of authority. Rather, a crisis in the social fabric has meant a shift in authority towards these combatants and the use of violence. In addition, shared feelings of antipathy towards the ‘Tutsi-aggressors’ have facilitated the creation of links between these diverse local groupings and other, foreign, factions of armed militia roaming the local countryside. Consolidation, however, remains unlikely as this shared ideology does not run very deep and alliances continuously change. The question remains what the future impact of these militias might be on the local social order. On the one hand, for several years now in some remote areas these armed groupings have become the only representatives of any authority structure, even if this structure is based on violence. Contrary to other cases, these militias in South Kivu are still closely linked to the rural population and have not turned against them. On the other hand, the dynamic of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue has forced their leaders to present their grievances to the outside world.

Поля, власть и социальные навыки: критический анализ новых институциональных течений

New Institutional theories have proliferated across the social sciences. While they have substantial disagreements, they agree that institutions are created to produce local social orders, are social constructions, fundamentally about how powerful groups create rules of interaction and maintain unequal resource distributions, and yet, once in existence, both constrain and enable actors in subsequent institution building. I present a critique of these theories that focuses on their inadequate attention to the role of social power and actors in the creation of institutions. An alternative view of the dynamics of institutions is sketched out based on a more sociological conception of rules, resources, and social skill.

Fields, Power, and Social Skill: A Critical Analysis of the New Institutionalisms

“The new institutional” theories are widely spread in social sciences. Despite the considerable contradictions in these theories, they all claim that social institutions give rise to local social orders and that they are social constructions. They tell us how the power groups set up the interaction rules and provide the situation of unequal resource distribution. While appearing the institutions limit the actors’ actions and at the same time encourage the further institutional construction. This paper criticizes these theories focusing on the lack of attention to the role of social authorities and actors in the process of the institutions’ creation. The author gives an alternative approach to the institutional dynamics, based on sociological understanding of the rules, resources and social skill.

Provisioning transactions and the reproduction of agrarian social orders

The jajmani system has often been seen as the model representation of rural provisioning transactions which link landed members of agrarian societies to the labour and service caste groups. However, attention to a variant of provisioning transactions enacted in rural north Karnataka indicates the extent to which these transactions differ from the jajmani system and exemplify what might be called 'embedded' transactions. It is their embedded dimension, in which political and economic motivations are intertwined with the social and cultural, that enables these transactions to function, simultaneously, as a form of social reproduction. However, recent shifts in the organisation of agriculture and in the changing identities of low- ranked caste members have led to a decline in these transactions, producing ruptures in the reproduction of the local social order. While the articulation of these transactions in their 'embedded' state camouflages their economic and social orientation, it is in their state of decline that the 'special logics' of these transactions can be discerned.

Leisure, the local state and social order

This paper investigates ways in which social theory has conceptualized the nature and function of state intervention in the field of leisure. The particular focus of the paper is on the nature of state mediation of leisure in Britain's inner cities which have been prone to periodic bouts of disorder and riot, particularly in the last five years. However, the paper does not constitute a pragmatic search for policies to solve urban disorders by managing either leisure or other service provision more effectively in the inner city (though such a task properly confronts professionals employed by the state); rather our concern here is to explain how particular state responses are mediated by professionals in the initiation and implementation of policy. The paper rejects the notion of a monolithic state responding in a uniform way to emerging social problems, and aims to illustrate the contribution of a theoretically informed analysis to an understanding of the state's role in promoting and controlling certain f...