Hermeneutics and World Construction in Maranao Disputing
Author(s)
Bentley, G. Carter
Abstract
Recent studies have analyzed disputing and dispute resolution as cultural processes, focusing on meaning construction and its relation to constitutive principles of social structure. Ricoeur’s text model provides a methodological basis for such analysis. According to this model, the meaning appropriated from texts (case accounts) depends on culturally specific assumptions about subjectivity (being in the world), referentiality (truth and truthfinding), and interlocution (third-party functions and authority). Description of these assumptions, in their dialectical relation to the substantive content of case accounts, allows partial characterization of the Maranao “horizon” or “habitus,” the preconscious basis for Maranao perception and experience. The described features of Maranao habitus are explained, using the theory of practice, by topographic and ecological constraints on accumulation of economic and political power.
