Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the ways people cope with rule breaking situations in an area where rules and norms arise from different semi-autonomous social fields. I argue how people use theatrical acts, (technical) language and non-language to justify their actions and convince people of their right.

Paper long abstract:

Legal rules, normative rules, sport rules, eating rules, social labels, work ethics, dress codes, taboo’s and more. In our everyday life we seem to be drowning in the various types of rules that surrounds us. Rules have an important order-making function in social life, each in itself is a way of organizing and maintaining order within its own social field. Following Veena Das and Deborah Poole (2004) I understand rules as important boundary making (and boundary breaking) practices through which claims of legitimacy and authority are made. They understand the margins of the state as sites were law and order are constantly being negotiated and established. Similar to them, I am interested in those areas where rules are challenged and tensions arise between 'different competing regimes of authority' within the same social space.

In this paper, I ethnographically explore the ways that rural Ugandans navigate and negotiate different (in)formal systems for dispute settlement at the village level, ranging from clan councils, local government councils in villages to police mediation and magistrate courts in the district. I understand how the working of such semi-autonomous social fields (Moore 1973) set overlapping as well as conflicting rules for their members. Therefore, in navigating these different fields, breaking a rule is inevitable. In this paper I specifically examine the ways people cope with rule breaking situations. More so, I argue how people use theatrical acts, (technical) language and non-language (de Sousa Santos 1977) to justify their actions and convince others of their right.