Feud And Internal War--legal Aspects

Feud and Internal War: Legal Aspects Pavlik Z 1991 Les tendances de! mographique longues en Europe de l’Est. [Long-term demographic trends in Eastern Europe]. Population 46(3): 463–78 Philipov D, Kohler H-P 1999 Tempo Effects in the Fertility Timing and Quantum Effects on Fertility in Bulgaria. The Czech Republic and Russia. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Working Paper 1999–008 Sardon J-P 1998 Fe! condite! , bouleversements politiques et transition vers l’e! conomie de marche! en Europe de l’Est. Population, Espace, SocieT teT s 3: 339–60

A. Avdeev

Feud and Internal War: Legal Aspects Feuding and internal war are two types of violent collective conflict. Long of interest to anthropologists, feuding and internal war may be most common in simple, kin-based societies, but, as lethal violence between modern urban gangs attests, are not confined to those settings. A central issue for scholars has been the relationship between feuding and internal war and the state’s system of social control or law: are feud and internal war the antithesis of law or the functional equivalent of law? In fact, they are neither. The emergence over the past quarter-century or so of a new field of sociological inquiry known as conflict management provides a new conception of the relationship, one in which law and violence are similar, though not identical, ways of handling disputes triggered by similar, though not identical, social conditions (Black 1976, 1993).

1. The Terms ‘Feud’ and ‘Internal War’ Scholars use two strategies to define the terms ‘feud’ and ‘internal war,’ strategies that might be labeled qualitative and quantitative, respectively. The qualitative strategy treats feud and war as distinct subtypes of violence; the quantitative strategy locates feud and war at different points on the same continuum of violence. The work of Keith Otterbein exemplifies the qualitative strategy, the more common of the two. In an influential paper, Otterbein and Otterbein (1965) isolate three types of violence: feuding, internal and external war. Feuding the Otterbeins define as violence within a political community; internal war as violence between political communities within a society; and external war as violence between societies. Useful though these distinctions may be for some purposes, they do not appear to be necessary to answer the central theoretical question: what explains violent conflict? Otterbein and Otterbein found that the best predictor of feuding in a society is not the complexity of political organization but the presence of co-resident

related males organized for mutual self-protection or ‘fraternal interest groups.’ In a later paper, Otterbein (1968) reports that fraternal interest groups are also strongly associated with internal war (compare Ericksen and Horton 1992). If the same variable predicts both types of violence, much of the rationale for treating them as qualitatively distinct disappears. The quantitative strategy is used by Donald Black. Black has developed a field of sociological inquiry known as social control or conflict management that addresses the myriad ways in which people and groups handle disputes. Diverse though conflict management behavior is, Black argues that it can be reduced to five ‘elementary forms’: negotiation, avoidance, toleration, and the two most material to the present discussion, self-help (or aggression), and third-party settlement (such as mediation, arbitration, or adjudication). Each elementary form can be found at different structural levels: among individuals, organizations, nations. For Black, there is therefore no sharp discontinuity between interpersonal, group, and international selfhelp. However, self-help does vary in the amount of violence it entails. Measures of the violence of self-help include the presence and lethality of weapons, the number of people attacked, the reciprocity of the violence, and whether the assault is accompanied by torture or mutilation. On this line of thought, feud and war (as well as other forms of self-help, such as assault, homicide, and retaliatory killing) differ not in kind but in degree: war is more violent. (Consistent with it, the remainder of this entry will refer to both feuding and internal war as feuding, except where it is important to distinguish the two.) In practice, there is often an additional contrast: the parties to war are usually large groups, such as societies (external war) or tribes (internal war) while feuds are contested by smaller groups, such as families. In the quintessential war, then, armies trade multiple rounds of lethal violence, seek to slaughter as many of the enemy as possible, and exempt nobody from attack. In the quintessential feud, antagonistic families kill at least once, abide by the principle of ‘a life for a life,’ and avoid targeting women, children, and non-kin.

2. Feuding and Its Alternati
es Although feuding has been practiced in many societies, there is no such thing as a feuding society. Only some conflicts give rise to feuds, even among those people well known for feuding, such as medieval Icelanders (Miller 1990), highland Albanians (Hasluck 1954), and Australian aborigines (see, e.g., Warner 1958). For instance, while homicides between families may precipitate prolonged and bitter feuds, those within families are likely to attract nothing more than some criticism and avoidance of the killer (see, e.g., Peters 1967). 5605

Feud and Internal War: Legal Aspects Even when homicides, insults to honor, or other offenses occur within relationships that can result in a feud, a feud is rarely inevitable. In many societies, the victims’s kin have the option of accepting compensation from the offender’s kin in lieu of retaliation (see, e.g., Boehm 1984). Whether they agree to compensation or launch an attack (which may then trigger a counterattack) depends on a variety of factors, including their social status relative to that of the other side, and the nature and number of cross links between them (see Black 1993, Chap. 3). If they decide to seek compensation, they can arrange payment either by directly negotiating with the other side or, more frequently, by calling upon the services of a thirdparty skilled in the resolution of conflict, such as a mediator. Among the Nuer (of Sudan), for instance, a third-party known as the Leopard-Skin Chief traditionally intervened in disputes, such as homicides, with a view to having the parties agree to settle the case non-violently through a transfer of cattle from the killer’s kin to the victim’s kin (Evans-Pritchard 1940, pp. 150–76). The Leopard-Skin Chief could not force the parties to resolve the matter peaceably; nor did he referee the merits of the dispute; the only tools available to him were his powers of persuasion and his threat of supernatural sanctions if the parties did not settle. The Leopard-Skin Chief’s mediation was most likely to succeed in disputes between neighbors and acquaintances: if the parties were intimates his intervention was likely to be unnecessary; if they were relative strangers his efforts were likely to be disregarded.

3. The Relationship Between Law and Feud The noted anthropologist, Paul Bohannan (1967, p. xiii) once wrote that ‘there are basically two forms of conflict resolution: administered rules and fighting. Law and war.’ Later developments in the sociology of conflict management reveal that Bohannan’s dichotomy is too simple. Recall Black’s analysis of the five elementary forms, a scheme that goes beyond law and warfare to include negotiation, avoidance, toleration, and non-legal forms of third-party settlement. However, even though Bohannan’s dichotomy neglects these additional forms, it may be correct in pitting law and war as opposites, as radically contrasting ways of handling conflict.

3.1 Law and Feud as Opposites The idea that law and violence are fundamentally opposed is a popular one. Where law represents order and reason and civilization, feud represents disorder, passion, and tribalism. Pospisil (1968, p. 392) articulates a central tenet of this position when he states: 5606

That law stands in opposition to feud and that the latter is the antithesis of the former … is well documented in those societies in which feuds are stopped by legal decisions of the over-all authority who either has enough power to enforce his will or possesses the skill to persuade the quarrelling parties to accept his solutions.

In reality, however, law does not invariably strive to eliminate violence. Early states appear to tolerate feuding (see, e.g., Otterbein and Otterbein 1965). Moreover, even when law does seek to bring fighting to an end it often must do so with tactics and procedures similar to those used by the protagonists. If the parties persist in pursuing their conflict violently, the only way to stop them is to use overwhelming force. However, in employing violence to end violence, the law becomes not so much a party outside the feud as a more powerful party that wins the feud. That law’s authority ultimately rests on physical force blurs the distinction between law and feud.

3.2 Law and Feud as Complementary A second view is that law and feud are complementary institutions, at least where law is unavailable. Several eminent anthropologists, including Evans-Pritchard (1940) and Max Gluckman (1956) view feuding and the threat of feuding as a mechanism by which social order is attained and maintained in stateless societies. EvansPritchard, for instance, studied the Nuer who have a segmentary lineage system under which opposing kinship subunits unite to support their kinship unit in a conflict with another unit, and those opposing kinship units themselves unite when conflict occurs between larger kinship units. Feuds are least likely to occur within subunits where the parties are bound by ties of kinship and the necessity of daily cooperation; feuds are more common, and more difficult to settle, as the parties become more structurally distant and cooperate less in matters of economics or conflict. Evans-Pritchard (1940, p. 159) proposes that the ‘function of the feud … is, therefore, to maintain the structural equilibrium between opposed tribal segments which are, nevertheless, politically fused in relation to larger units.’ The idea that the feud is the functional equivalent of law in stateless societies qualifies but does not negate the idea that law and feud are opposed. Functional equivalence only applies to stateless societies but feuds and internal wars involving gangs, guerrillas, and other groups may be found in societies with wellestablished legal systems. Moreover, only in some stateless societies can feud be the functional equivalent of law. There are stateless societies that have neither law nor feuding, societies in which people employ entirely peaceful methods of settling disputes (see, e.g., Howell and Willis 1989).

Feud and Internal War: Legal Aspects Finally, the idea that violence is functional sits better with feuding than with internal war: the indiscriminate nature of war can result in the political and even physical destruction of a society, rather than its continued existence.

3.3 Law and Feud as Conflict Management What, then, is the relationship between law and feuding? The young discipline of conflict management sheds new light on this issue, revealing both the contrasts and continuities between law and violence. As modes of handling conflict, law and feuding, it is true, are opposed in certain ways. In law, the parties use words; in feuding, they use weapons. Law tends to be hostile to feuding such that in developed or strong states, feuding is met with forceful criminal punishment. Moreover, in law, it is not the adversaries who typically determine the outcome, but neutral third parties, often applying general rules. However, consider some of the ways in which law and feuding are similar: (a) In both law and feuding the parties confront one another. They dispute through hostile encounters. In so doing, they behave quite differently from disputants who simply avoid their adversary or tolerate the grievance (see Baumgartner 1988). (b) In both law and feuding the parties seek victory. They do not want or expect to compromise. By contrast, when people negotiate their conflicts or invoke a mediator they normally anticipate that any settlement will require them to make concessions to the other side. (c) In both law and feuding third-party supporters typically get involved. Legal conflicts draw in lawyers and witnesses; feuds draw in warriors. In either case, supporters are often crucial to the outcome of the case (Black 1993, Chap. 7). Black’s work not only allows the close similarities and the distinct dissimilarities to be described but to be explained as well. Black argues that the explanation of why violence or law or any other type of conflict management is found lies not in the substance of the conflict but in its social structure. The social structure of the conflict consists of the social characteristics of the participants, including their wealth, social integration, reputations for deviance, and relational distance. Black (1995, p. 855, note 130) summarizes the social structure of the classic feud: (1) intermediate relational distance between the parties (neither strangers nor close associates), (2) relational segmentation between the parties (divided by a social chasm, without cross links), (3) functional independence of the parties (lack of division of labor), (4) solidarity of each party (intimate and homogeneous), (5) homogeneity between the parties (same ethnicity), and (6) equality between the parties (similar size and resources).

Black adds: Narrow the distances in the model by reducing the relational separation and independence of the parties, and the reciprocity and continuity of the violence declines. Increase the distances …, and the violence becomes more indiscriminate and warlike.

Now consider litigation. According to Black’s (1976) theory of law (a theory supported by a substantial amount of evidence), the first three characteristics of the social structure of the feud above would also be conducive to extensive litigation. However, the fourth, fifth, and sixth would not: litigation is attracted more to conflicts between unequals than equals, and to people of different ethnicities than the same ethnicity. In other words, conflicts in which the parties fight and those in which they invoke law have social structures that, while not identical, are similar.

3.4 The Fate of Feud-conflicts under Law The affinity between the social structures of law and of violence provides an answer to another puzzle: how do disputants handle the underlying conflicts when feuding becomes increasingly difficult? What happens to the feud-conflicts that legal authorities successfully prohibit being fought? Cross-cultural evidence suggests that, in the absence of violence, the contending parties generally turn to forms of conflict management similar to violence. Rarely, for example, do the parties simply tolerate the grievance. Nor do they avoid one another or even engage in extensive negotiations. Most commonly, they resort to one of two courses of action. The first is to replace fighting with litigation. Parties who once traded blows now trade legal claims in a kind of sublimated violence. For instance, before the arrival of state authority, the Mae Enga of New Guinea had a substantial amount of interclan fighting, resulting in a comparatively high rate of lethal violence. The colonial administration’s efforts to end the fighting were initially unsuccessful, but eventually the Enga began to turn to litigation: This litigation the Central Enga quickly defined as ‘fighting in the courts,’ and they regarded the outcomes as equivalent to military victories or losses affecting whole phratries. Thus the men of a growing clan who believed their group required more land would carefully concoct a case, often spurious, against a weaker non-fraternal neighbor. After patiently rehearsing his followers in the statements they were to make, the Big Man [i.e., Enga leader] … took the matter to the kiap with the realistic expectation that the sheer weight of testimony would persuade the overworked officer, who had neither the time nor the facilities to sift all the evidence. The indignant defendants of course argued strenuously in rebuttal, but, given the absence of written land records and the intrinsic difficulty of determining ‘historical facts’ … it is

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Feud and Internal War: Legal Aspects understandable that resolute lying often carried the day. However the case was decided, the disgruntled losers would soon fabricate a counterclaim (or polish up a valid complaint) against an apparently vulnerable fraternal clan of the victors (Meggitt 1977, p. 155).

The second course of action is to make increased use of indigenous forms of third-party settlement. If, previously, feuding and mediated compensation payments were alternative ways of handling, say, homicides, mediation payments now come to be the dominant method. For instance, after coming under colonial rule, the Nuer began, with the encouragement of the authorities, to bring all homicides to the Leopard-Skin Chief to be resolved through compensation (though the killer was also prosecuted and punished separately). Thus, by settling homicide cases between lineages that once might have resulted in reprisals, the role of feud contracted while that of mediation expanded (Howell 1954, p. 61). Whichever option—using judges or mediators—is pursued, both are possible because of the similarity in the underlying social structure of violence and litigation and, more generally, third-party settlement. The arrival of law into a setting previously stateless provides a new outlet for disputes but it does not, at least in the short term, fundamentally alter the underlying relationship between the parties. Hence, when law forbids feuding, former feudists are usually attracted more to litigation, mediation, or arbitration than to forms of conflict management bearing fewer resemblances to violence. Law and feuding, then, are neither opposites nor complements, neither strangers nor siblings. Perhaps they are best thought of as cousins. See also: Conflict and Conflict Resolution, Social Psychology of; Domestic Violence: Sociological Perspectives; Internal Warfare: Civil War, Insurgency, and Regional Conflict; Violence, History of; Violence in Anthropology; War, Sociology of; Youth Gangs

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enge: The Enactment and Management of Conflict in Montenegro and Other Tribal Societies. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA Bohannan P 1967 Introduction. In: Bohannan P (ed.) Law and Warfare: Studies in the Anthropology of Conflict, 1st edn. Natural History Press, Garden City, NY Ericksen K P, Horton H 1992 Blood feuds: cross-cultural variations in kin group vengeance. Beha
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Evans-Pritchard E E 1940 The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Li
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M. Cooney Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Feudalism Definitions of feudalism ‘vary widely in their degree of comprehensiveness’ (Max Weber). Historians and social scientists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries thus do not agree on a standard definition of the term. There is a great deal of controversy about the scope and the explanatory value of the term feudalism. Characteristic of this debate is a plurality of concepts of feudalism. The diversity of definitions and concepts is attributable to differences in both the epistemological interests and in the historical and social theories that inform the approaches of each particular scholar, school of thought, and orientation.

1. Etymology Etymologically, the adjective ‘feudal’ and the noun ‘feudalism’ are derived from the Germanic feod and the Latin feudum, which originally meant ‘cattle, money, property.’ During the course of the eleventh century, feudum became a technical legal term for the fief with which the lord invests a vassal under specific conditions. Being provided with this fief obliged the vassal to serve his lord militarily. Feudal law, the sum of all recorded feudal legal norms, was known as ius

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International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences

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