{"product_id":"law-and-community-in-three-american-towns","title":"Law and Community in Three American Towns","description":"\u003cp\u003eMany commentators on the contemporary United States believe that current rates of litigation are a sign of decay in the nation’s social fabric. \u003ci\u003eLaw and Community in Three American Towns \u003c\/i\u003eexplores how ordinary people in three towns—located in New England, the Midwest, and the South—view the law, courts, litigants, and social order.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCarol J. Greenhouse, Barbara Yngvesson, and David M. Engel analyze attitudes toward law and law users as a way of commentating on major American myths and ongoing changes in American society. They show that residents of \"Riverside,\" \"Sander County,\" and \"Hopewell\" interpret litigation as a sign of social decline, but they also value law as a symbol of their local way of life. The book focuses on this ambivalence and relates it to the deeply-felt tensions express between \"community\" and \"rights\" as rival bases of society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe authors, two anthropologists and a lawyer, each with an understanding of a particular region, were surprised to discover that such different locales produced parallel findings. They undertook a comparative project to find out why ambivalence toward the law and law use should be such a common refrain. The answer, they believe, turns out to be less a matter of local traditions than of the ways that people perceive the patterns of their lives as being vulnerable to external forces of change.\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Carol J. Greenhouse, Barbara Yngvesson, and David M. Engel","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53615446163836,"sku":"9780801429590","price":108.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0251\/4980\/0541\/files\/9780801429590_6163cc7b-061c-465d-bcb5-ae17053b870d.jpg?v=1725623388","url":"https:\/\/combined-academic.myshopify.com\/products\/law-and-community-in-three-american-towns","provider":"Combined Academic Publishers - Mare Nostrum Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}