A structural-sociological approach to law

Includes bibliographical references (pages 73-75)Traditionally, when scholars have approached the study of "primitive law," they overwhelmingly have relied upon variations of analytic jurisprudence and legal positivism. These theoretical frameworks historically have been used to characterize and legitimize the legal and political ideals and bureaucratic administration of the modern nation-state. The conceptions of law derived from such theories accordingly have been concerned as the law with the command of a determinate superior, the state. It is my contention, however, that comparative analyses derived from such formulations have proven inadequate, ambiguous, and ethnocentric. Hare than anything else, these difficulties have been the result of historical and sociological myopia on the part of most scholars in the field. Quite simply, scholars have mistaken their framework and ideals as the "universal" standards of "law" in all societies. This thesis reviews and criticizes a sample of the conventional literature along these lines. It offers a more viable approach to the neutral comparative study of law and government, one which is explicitly socio-historical in its reference and structural in nature. The structural-sociological approach that I propose is predicated on the assumption that law inheres in all societies, and is ultimately determined, in content, process, and form, by the structural relations of the significant political institutions which comprise the society