Dou Donggo justice

This study of justice and morality among the Dou Donggo, a highland people in Indonesia, offers an innovative approach to understtanding the workings of law and dispute settlement in small communities. Peter Just argues that the operation of any legal system is best undestood in the context of its moral onmtology: the fundamental cultural assumptions that the people have about the nature of the world, the beings that inhabit it, and their relationships to one another, as well as ideas about causation, liability, etc. The author takes Dou Donggo beliefs in evil spirits and tutelary gods, theories of conception and bodily humors, and the magical prowess of judges who are also healers and links them to the guiding principles and day-to-day operation of a consensual system of justice.