Law, Justice and Society: Chapter Thirteeen

I have never really studied other societies such as tribes and preliterate bands and how they are able to control their communities. It is really interesting to compare it to the U.S. today. Our nation has all kinds of written laws and rules to which citizens are to follow, but obviously these restrictions are not always respected. After reading about other cultures and places around the world with their civil and criminal systems, I found it most intriguing to read more on the preliterate bands and tribes. I didn’t realize there are still villages that do no have any kind of written language making them known as the preliterate societies. I loved the fact that if “unlawful” acts were committed a common self-redress was relied on. With this bands would have “song duels”. This is exactly as it is written where bands and tribes would fight by singing and dancing. Each person involved in the incident (victim and offender) would sing insults to each other and a crowd would watch. In the end of it all the winner of the combat would be determined by how much the audience liked each person’s insults. There is no bloodshed or anything really violent only mean statements towards one another. Walsh stated that sometimes people from the different bands would actually hire or get help with what insults they wanted to sing. If you think about it, this is exactly what happens in the U.S. only the composure of the song is actually an attorney or lawyer.
As far as tribes are concerned, there is usually a civil chief which is sort of the mediator between two individuals having a dispute. In this kind of society there is the fear that if for revenge someone kills someone else that a family feud will occur and there will be persons dying left and right from each side of the families. To avoid this the chief will assign a fine of some sort to the offender and then they shall work that out with the victims family and also be ridiculed and insulted to learn their lesson.
As crazy as it may sound a lot of the way these different systems are handled actually makes sense. I am really fond of the way that some preliterate bands control social order. I think that having some kind of sing-off or dance-off to prove yourself makes sense and that it saves anyone from dying for being severely hurt. There is so much detail in all out our laws and so many different ways of handling problems that it is sometimes too much to handle. Hopefully, some day our nation can open its eyes to more civil things and take care of problems with less harm. If you want to learn more about these different kinds of societies look into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit. It has lots of info about Eskimo and Inuit people.