Harmony Ideology: Justice and Control in a Zapotec Mountain Village

A detailed investigation into the formal and informal systems of law in an indigenous community, this classic ethnography, illustrated by cases of settling disputes in Zapotec villages, examines the way people classify their experiences, form categories and interpret realities. Over the past several decades, few ethnographers have been as attentive to the messy complexity of reality or as insightful about the significance of the individual case in understanding human behavior.