NCJ Number
115177
Journal
Law and Society Review Volume: 22 Issue: 4 Dated: (1988) Pages: 687-707
Date Published
1988
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article explores the connections between the interpretive and comparative dimensions of ideology by analyzing ethnographic data from an American town.
Abstract
The town is undergoing a rapid process of urbanization, and townspeople are absorbed in the analysis of the changes around them and their town's prospects as a community. The article compares interview data and courtroom observations in which local understandings are shown to be constituted in pervasive cultural distinctions: past and future, insiders and outsiders, harmony and conflict, gender, and various forms of family life shape local views of change and conflict. The conclusion relates an analysis of the symbolic terms in which these distinctions are expressed to general issues of the nature of ideologies and their truth claims. (Author abstract)