Indian Law as an Indigenous Conceptual System,' [Social Science Research Council] Items 32 (3/4):42-46 (Dec., 1978)
Abstract
When the Joint Committee on South Asia was reconstituted in 1976, it took as its major mandate the analysis of South Asian conceptual systems with a particular concern for their value in developing culturally sensitive analytical took. The underlying notion was that many of the concepts of Westem social science fit badly in non-Western societies, and efforts should be made to examine them in their own terms. In the September 1977 Items, Stanley J. Heginbotham, Congressional Research Service, who serves as chairman of the Joint Committee on South Asia, noted that the "committee's focus on South Asian perceptions of the world reflects a concem that social scientists, in formulating and utilizing analytic categories, logical linkages, and models, keep in mind that the people of the region often think in very different categories, use very different logical linkages, and assume distributive models of human behavior." The committee is seeking to examine a number of different indigenous systems: notions of political authority, folklore, concepts of the person, the concept of karma, responses to, risk and uncertainty, and the legal system. The following reflections of Mr. Galanter on Indian law give an indication of the kinds of issues being addressed
