Holm: Law Primative Man - Hardcover

Hoebel, E Adamson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674517008 ISBN 13: 9780674517004

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1954

Synopsis

A classic work in the anthropology of law, this book offered one of the first ambitiously conceived analyses of the fundamental rights and duties that are treated as law among nonliterate peoples (labeled "primitive" at the time of the original publication). The heart of the book is a description and analysis of the law of five societies: the Eskimo; the Ifugao of northern Luzon in the Philippines; the Comanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne tribes of the western plains of the United States; the Trobriand Islanders of the southwest Pacific; and the Ashanti of western Africa. Hoebel's lucid analysis reveals the variety and complexity of these societies' political and legal institutions. It emphasizes their use of due process in adjudication and enforcement and highlights the importance of general explicit standards of conduct in these societies. In offering these detailed case studies of societies studied by other anthropologists, and in outlining an influential approach to the subject, it remains an illuminating book for both scholars and students.

About this title

Review

Professor Hoebel's volume is the most thorough study of primitive law that we now possess. His attitude is rigorously behavioristic and empirical, and he thus rejects the traditional natural law approach as well as Austinianism and Kelsenism. He accepts the idea of the superorganic, but his main point of departure is in terms of the recognized values of a culture...In the selection of the five cultures he has chosen for analysis Professor Hoebel begins with the rudimentary law of the anarchic Eskimo, passes to the private law of the Ifugao, studies next the law of the plains Indians, rebuts Malinowski's theory of the law of the Trobriand Islanders, and concludes with an account of Ashanti law, a people on the threshold of civilization, i.e., their culture was advanced but they had not yet invented writing...His book is an admirable study of a difficult subject.--Huntington Cairns"Journal of Politics" (08/01/1956)

About the Author

E. Adamson Hoebel (1925 - 1983) was Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1954
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674517008
• ISBN 13: 9780674517004
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368