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The integrative value of conflict and dispute: Implications for defining community in the native title context
Author(s) -
Pilbrow Tim
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/taja.12344
Subject(s) - contest , normative , sociology , value (mathematics) , agency (philosophy) , cohesion (chemistry) , ethnography , epistemology , conflict resolution , dispute resolution , context (archaeology) , social psychology , public relations , political science , psychology , law , social science , anthropology , paleontology , philosophy , chemistry , organic chemistry , machine learning , computer science , biology
Claimants and industry professionals frequently view conflict that arises in the course of a native title claim as a detriment to timely claims resolution. I argue instead that disputation itself may constitute an integrative social process through which participants define, delimit and reproduce community. I show also how ethnographic analysis of disputation can provide useful insights into broader social and cultural practices and normative value systems. Drawing on theoretical and methodological concerns with human agency and the integrative and constitutive role of conflict that challenges consensus models of community, I develop a practice‐centred approach that is attentive to the ways that participants in a dispute articulate and contest the definition of community. The possibility of viewing 'culture' and group cohesion as contingent and emergent through disputation should assist anthropologists working in the native title field to incorporate conflict as a productive aspect of social and cultural practice.