The New Legal Pluralism

Scholars studying interactions among multiple communities have often used the term legal pluralism to describe the inevitable intermingling of normative systems that results from these interactions. In recent years, a new application of pluralist insights has emerged in the international and transnational realm. This review aims to survey and help define this emerging field of global legal pluralism. I begin by briefly describing sites for pluralism research, both old and new. Then I discuss how pluralism has come to be seen as an attractive analytical framework for those interested in studying law on the world stage. Finally, I identify advantages of a pluralist approach and respond to criticisms, and I suggest ways in which pluralism can help both in reframing old conceptual debates and in generating useful normative insights for designing procedural mechanisms, institutions, and discursive practices for managing hybrid legal/cultural spaces

Social cooperation and resource management dynamics among late hunter-fisher-gatherer societies in Tierra del Fuego (South America)

This paper presents the theoretical basis and first results of an agent-based model (ABM) computer simulation that is being developed to explore cooperation in hunter–gatherer societies. Specifically, we focus here on Yamana, a hunter-fisher-gatherer society that inhabited the islands of the southernmost part of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina–Chile). Ethnographical and archaeological evidence suggests the existence of sporadic aggregation events, triggered by a public call through smoke signals of an extraordinary confluence of resources under unforeseeable circumstances in time and space (a beached whale or an exceptional accumulation of fish after a low tide, for example). During these aggregation events, the different social units involved used to develop and improve production, distribution and consumption processes in a collective way. This paper attempts to analyse the social dynamics that explain cooperative behaviour and resource-sharing during aggregation events using an agent-based model of indirect reciprocity. In brief, agents make their decisions based on the success of the public strategies of other agents. Fitness depends on the resource captured and the social capital exchanged in aggregation events, modified by the agent’s reputation. Our computational results identify the relative importance of resources with respect to social benefits and the ease in detecting—and hence punishing—a defector as key factors to promote and sustain cooperative behaviour among populationSpanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (projects CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 SimulPast-CSD2010-00034 and HAR2009-06996) as well as from the Argentine Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (project PIP-0706) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (project GR7846)

Computer-mediated communication and conversation analysis

An increasing number of researchers use conversation analysis (CA) methodology to investigate interactional dimensions of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and their impact on language and learning. While there is a significant body of CA research focusing on naturally occurring telephone and face-to-face conversation, researchers’ attention since the late 1990s has shifted to new contexts where communication between human beings is mediated by computers. This chapter is focused on CA research in the educational sphere, where participants are using an additional or a foreign language. CA research on human interaction developed robust analytical tools to identify and understand the unique interactional resources which are available to users in technologically mediated contexts. In particular, researchers are able to draw on previous CA research on face-to-face and telephone interaction to explore affordances and constraints of new technologies for learning, and how users use language to adapt to new and evolving interactional contexts. This chapter will therefore provide a brief overview of early CMC and CA research on technologically mediated interaction. Following this overview, major contributions where CA is systematically applied to computer-mediated talk will be presented, focusing specifically on findings related to language and interaction in L2 educational settings