Communitarianism and harmony ideology have their proponents and critics, particularly as viewed through the lens of conciliation-based dispute resolution. Both features being prominent in the Tibetan Diaspora in India, I hypothesized that the strengths and weaknesses of these orientations could be assessed through the rationale behind the norms of social control operative in the community, and the efficiency and effectiveness of those norms in terms of voluntary compliance. I found that the informal Tibetan mechanisms for dispute resolution were effective and efficient in supporting Indian systems of law enforcement, while allowing a ritualistic affirmation of community. Contrary to proponents of legal centralism and court justice, I found that liberalist values underpinning litigative process were disruptive of social expectations, and had the potential to exacerbate rather than relieve social tensions. The harmony norms that predispose pro-social behavior within Tibetan settlements failed to protect the interests of community members, however, when the challenge came from local Indian groups operating on the basis of their own standards of particularistic allegiance. Legal ethnography best describes the methodology used for this research. Fieldwork drew on: 1) Interviews with twelve settlement officers whose mandate specifically includes mediation of disputes; 2) In-depth interviews with two disputants fighting cases before the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission; and 3) Interviews with over 70 informants (including senior and mid-level exile government officials and settlement residents), together with archival material, to situate findings and verify interpretations. This research contributes a unique non-Western body of data in support of Law and Society scholars, such as Amitai Etzioni and Phillip Selznick, who have argued for devolution of law-like responsibilities to local levels where internalized norms are an everyday means of social control. It also argues against the pejorative interpretation of harmony ideology as depicted by legal centralists such as Laura Nader. By reframing harmony as a function of norm rationale, efficiency and effectiveness, the research offers new variables for assessing the costs and benefits of community. Finally, the Tibetan case studies provide an important comparative for cosmopolitan states that are debating how to accommodate diversity and legal pluralism.

Communitarianism and harmony ideology have their proponents and critics, particularly as viewed through the lens of conciliation-based dispute resolution. Both features being prominent in the Tibetan Diaspora in India, I hypothesized that the strengths and weaknesses of these orientations could be assessed through the rationale behind the norms of social control operative in the community, and the efficiency and effectiveness of those norms in terms of voluntary compliance. I found that the informal Tibetan mechanisms for dispute resolution were effective and efficient in supporting Indian systems of law enforcement, while allowing a ritualistic affirmation of community. Contrary to proponents of legal centralism and court justice, I found that liberalist values underpinning litigative process were disruptive of social expectations, and had the potential to exacerbate rather than relieve social tensions. The harmony norms that predispose pro-social behavior within Tibetan settlements failed to protect the interests of community members, however, when the challenge came from local Indian groups operating on the basis of their own standards of particularistic allegiance. Legal ethnography best describes the methodology used for this research. Fieldwork drew on: 1) Interviews with twelve settlement officers whose mandate specifically includes mediation of disputes; 2) In-depth interviews with two disputants fighting cases before the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission; and 3) Interviews with over 70 informants (including senior and mid-level exile government officials and settlement residents), together with archival material, to situate findings and verify interpretations. This research contributes a unique non-Western body of data in support of Law and Society scholars, such as Amitai Etzioni and Phillip Selznick, who have argued for devolution of law-like responsibilities to local levels where internalized norms are an everyday means of social control. It also argues against the pejorative interpretation of harmony ideology as depicted by legal centralists such as Laura Nader. By reframing harmony as a function of norm rationale, efficiency and effectiveness, the research offers new variables for assessing the costs and benefits of community. Finally, the Tibetan case studies provide an important comparative for cosmopolitan states that are debating how to accommodate diversity and legal pluralism.

Communitarianism and harmony ideology have their proponents and critics, particularly as viewed through the lens of conciliation-based dispute resolution. Both features being prominent in the Tibetan Diaspora in India, I hypothesized that the strengths and weaknesses of these orientations could be assessed through the rationale behind the norms of social control operative in the community, and the efficiency and effectiveness of those norms in terms of voluntary compliance. I found that the informal Tibetan mechanisms for dispute resolution were effective and efficient in supporting Indian systems of law enforcement, while allowing a ritualistic affirmation of community. Contrary to proponents of legal centralism and court justice, I found that liberalist values underpinning litigative process were disruptive of social expectations, and had the potential to exacerbate rather than relieve social tensions. The harmony norms that predispose pro-social behavior within Tibetan settlements failed to protect the interests of community members, however, when the challenge came from local Indian groups operating on the basis of their own standards of particularistic allegiance. Legal ethnography best describes the methodology used for this research. Fieldwork drew on: 1) Interviews with twelve settlement officers whose mandate specifically includes mediation of disputes; 2) In-depth interviews with two disputants fighting cases before the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission; and 3) Interviews with over 70 informants (including senior and mid-level exile government officials and settlement residents), together with archival material, to situate findings and verify interpretations. This research contributes a unique non-Western body of data in support of Law and Society scholars, such as Amitai Etzioni and Phillip Selznick, who have argued for devolution of law-like responsibilities to local levels where internalized norms are an everyday means of social control. It also argues against the pejorative interpretation of harmony ideology as depicted by legal centralists such as Laura Nader. By reframing harmony as a function of norm rationale, efficiency and effectiveness, the research offers new variables for assessing the costs and benefits of community. Finally, the Tibetan case studies provide an important comparative for cosmopolitan states that are debating how to accommodate diversity and legal pluralism. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This study examines the history of Indian-settler legal relations in Indiana, from the state’s pre-territorial period to the late-nineteenth century. Through a variety of interdisciplinary sources and methods, the author constructs a broad narrative on the evolution and co-existence of Native and non-Native customary legal systems in the region, focusing on matters related to marriage, property rights, and testimony. The primary thesis—which emphasizes reciprocally formative relations, rather than persistent conflict—suggests that Indiana’s pre-modern legal past involved an ad hoc yet highly effective process of cultural brokerage, reciprocity and inter-personal accommodation. That the American Indians lost much of their self-governing status following the period of contact is clear; however, a closer look at the ways in which nations historically defined, exercised, asserted, and shared jurisdiction, reveals a more intricate story of influence, authority, and concession. During the French and British colonial and American territorial periods, settler society adjusted to and often accommodated Native concepts of law and justice. Through a complex order of social obligations and community-based enforcement mechanisms, a shared set of rules and jurisdictional practices merged, forming a hybrid system of Indian-settler norms that bound these individuals across the cultural divide. When Indiana entered the Union in 1816, legal pluralism defined jurisdictional practice. However, with the nineteenth-century rise of legal positivism—the idea of law as the sole command of the nation-state, a sovereign entity vested with exclusive authority—territorial jurisdiction and legal uniformity became guiding principles. Many jurists viewed the informal, pre-existing custom-based regulatory structures with contempt. With the shift to a state-centered legal order, lawmakers established strict standards for recognizing the law of the “other,” ultimately rejecting the status of the tribes as equal sovereigns and forcing them to concede jurisdiction to the settler polity.