Abstract

MATTA, Juan Pablo. Neighbors don’t do that to Each Other. The Sense of Justice and Community within the Framework of an Institutional Mechanism for Conflict Management. Antipod. Rev. Antropol. Arqueol. [online]. 2016, n.24, pp.55-71. ISSN 1900-5407.  https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda24.2016.04.

This ethnographic analysis of the ways in which different inhabitants of an intermediate city in the center of Buenos Aires province deal with their neighborhood disputes within the framework of a municipal community mediation center sheds light on the complex symbolic plots that articulate unique local ideas of justice and community. The latter gives rise to a contractual regime, at once diffuse and inescapable, which establishes senses of justice that entail a particular type of legal sensitivity in their concrete realization. On the basis of an ethnographic study underway since 2011, which has taken participant observation as its distinctive feature, this article examines these articulations focusing on the sociocultural senses that make them possible and on the treatment of this type of sociocultural conflict.

Keywords : Legal sensitivities; legality; neighborhood; small disputes; institutional management of conflicts; (author’s keywords).

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