Introduction: A Bifurcated Theory of Law in Hybrid Societies

Abstract

In recent years, development organizations have finally begun paying greater attention to non-state or informal justice systems. This shift should have occurred long ago. Countries with non-state justice systems in their midst have grappled with their implications for many years, and legal anthropologists and sociologists have been studying and writing about these systems for decades. But development organizations have mostly ignored them, focusing their activities instead on state legal systems. Now, non-state justice systems are taking on primary importance for development agencies and policy-makers.