Moral and Law in Traditional Society
Abstract
Moral and law interpretation of the conflict, described in the D. Daimond’s book «The world until yesterday: What can we learn from traditional societies?», is proposed in this paper. Traffic collision in which a child was killed is a matter of discussion. Comparative analysis between mechanisms of the conflict resolution in traditional society (New Guinea), resulted in restoration of regular mutual relations, and legal procedures in a contemporary state, focused on finding and punishing the guilty primarily, is fulfilled. It is argued, some aspects of the traditional conflict resolution may be useful in modern legal relations.
The goal of resolving conflicts among members of traditional society is not finding out who is right and who is guilty only but restoring regular relationships in society where everyone knows each other and where hostility between any two members of a community undermines its stability. Like many other traditional communities, the New Guinea people live outside the effective control of state law enforcement system. They, nevertheless, can achieve justice by means their own traditional mechanism that combine some moral and legal procedures organically. Although the law, at least written, does not exist here, some moral or proto-legal mechanism works. The peace process involves some «compensation» usually. Although this term is quite ambiguous, it seems impossible to «compensate» death of a child. Therefore there are especial New Guinean practice and relevant term «money of compassion», that is, money paid to prove apologizing for what happened as well as deep regret. It is pointed out, that traditional New Guinean mechanisms of justice have goals that are radically different from those pursued by the state by means of law enforcement system. Of course, it is impossible to exclude or substitute modern system of state justice in many conflict cases at the XXI century, e.g. between local people and strangers. However, some traditional mechanisms for resolving conflict situations seems both adequate and useful until now (we are currently seeing this in the so-called restorative justice too).
