The integrative value of conflict and dispute: Implications for defining community in the native title context

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 co...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pilbrow, Tim (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2020
In: The Australian journal of anthropology
Year: 2020, Volume: 31, Issue: 1, Pages: 37-50
Further subjects:B Religious disputation
B Conflict
B Social Process
B native title
B Community
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1757-6547
Contains:Enthalten in: The Australian journal of anthropology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/taja.12344