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Managing Ideologies: Harmony as Ideology in Amish and Japanese Societies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Robert L. Kidder  and
John A. Hostetler
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Abstract

Informal methods for dealing with conflict within both Japanese and Amish society have been interpreted as being the natural result of, and an important source of support for, traditional cultures. On closer examination we find similar patterns of intentional manipulation of informalist ideology as elements of strategy in the midst of conflict. In both cases, we find informalist ideology being selectively invoked to provide legitimacy to one or more partisan sides in ways which disguise such maneuvers from the majority of their constituent populations. Successful promotion of this ideology sustains the notion, both at the popular level and heretofore among scholars of dispute processing, that nonlaw methods for dealing with conflict have some special ingredient which makes them functionally superior to legalistic methods. If the Japanese and the Amish are in any way representative of a more general case, it apparently takes hard work to preserve anti-legal methods of dispute management.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , 1990 , pp. 895 - 922
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 The Law and Society Association.

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