Jack Goody

This article argues from a perspective that tries to transcend the historical, social, economical specificity of the notion of ‚law’. As a more general term the term “jural behaviour” is suggested, especially for oral societies. On this basis, the author asks for the relation of literacy and law or jural behaviour respectively. As the comparative overview of historical and anthropological cases proves, literacy leads to extension of forms of behaviour geographically, it enables social mobility, it causes formalisation, and it leads to universalisation.

Karin Harrasser / Elisabeth Timm

The juridification of social life in the modern bourgeois world was long understood as a triumph of rationality over particular interests, as the “civilisation” of physical violence. For some time now, this grand narrative of the modern world has been criticized as a specific historical case, as Eurocentric and bourgeois. Additionally, the concept and practice of modern, national sovereign statehood is being challenged in many ways. Individuals are also experiencing an unbounding of their “sovereignty”. The article sums up different disciplines’ research into the fields of behaviour guides and law. In doing so, it sketches out research perspectives intended to transcend the either-or dichotomy of the previous debates (ethics / particular / informal / personal / emotional-cultural vs. law / universal / formal / institutional) and envisions new analytical assessments of these two poles.

Sven Reichardt

The article deals with the comprehensive counter-cultural milieu from the late 1960s until the early 1980s. Life style and habitus within this undogmatic and widely peaceful radical leftist milieu were practised according to a conduct of warmth. This alternative conduct of warmth corresponded with developments in the increasing individualized consumer society of the Federal Republic of Germany. The counter-cultural social behaviour was neither a departure into the land of freedom nor into a reign of normlessness. It was a form of self-guidance and governmentality with its own contradictions and coercions.

Burkhard Liebsch

This article discusses Chantal Mouffe’s concept of the political that allegedly departs fun-damentally from the so called “cosmopolitical illusion”, i. e. the illusion that liberal-democratic forms of life could overcome antagonistic conflicts once and for all. Mouffe’s diametrically opposed idea of a “conflictual consensus” is critically examined particularly for the claim that it promises to sublate contradictory claims in agonistic forms of conflict. A critical evaluation of this thesis refers to the question whether such a consensus unconditionally requires the renunciation of any unalienable claim.

Anton Blok

Focused on oral culture in western Sicily, this paper explores informal behaviour codes in their interaction with formal law. State-formation in Italy left people in peripheral areas to forge strategies of self-help and negotiate support from patrons (called “friends”). Ironically, the very networks of clientelism and their attendant behaviour codes further weakened the state’s control over its southern periphery and hindered its economic integration into the national and international economy – which in turn reinforced the impact of informal codes and practices on the working of formal law. The Sicilian case provides an example of the periphery as a locus of innovation.

Tobias Nanz

In situations of crisis politicians are expected to keep calm and to de-escalate the state of affairs. In this paper I will discuss two devices for crisis communication with regard to form and behaviour: First, the legendary “Red Phone” as a direct communication link between Washington and Moscow, which allows the president to present himself as a capable leader with a cool mind, who can pick up the “Red Phone” and convince a political opponent in a crisis. Second, the “Hotline” as a highly formalised telex connection between both capitals, which enables the political leaders of the US and the USSR to communicate quickly and reliably but without capitalising on the abilities of the president as a cool-headed negotiator. The aim of this analysis is to discuss how both devices were presented to the public and used by the politicians and how this may impact on national and international politics.