This study of the role of law in society has become a standard work in the ethnology of law. The central theme of the book is that social processes that prevent the total regulation of society also reshape and transform efforts at partial regulation. In particular, the making of rules and social or symbolic order is as often matched by situational pressures to manipulate, circumvent, remake or replace the same rules. Frequently, these pressures are as great as pressures to uphold rules.
