Conceptions of Justice and social adjustments

Abstract

Several narratives concerning private vengeance in the region known as Sertão do Pajeú das Flores, in the interior of the state of Pernambuco, Northeastern Brazil, bring forth the general problem of the conception of justice on which the narratives are built and that organizes the sequences of narrated acts. From this, follows the specific question of the conflict between the precepts of official justice and the native conceptions of justice, which usually permeates these cases. It seems that the established manner of equating these two forms entails translating this relation as one of strict incompatibility. Law punishes private attempts to compensate for previous injury, reinforcing the principle of state monopoly of the use of violence. Private attempts of compensation, by their turn, are based on the presupposition or on the experience of the inefficacy of the Law when dealing with some kinds of wrongs. The working and the specific values of local and official forms of justice intersect over a very specific question: the condition of the members of the jury (juri popular) - who build a link between both justices, and feel this in an especially acute form; and the social adjustments this presupposes. My intention is to emphasize, presenting ethnographic material, the intertwining of distinct conceptions of justice. Although opposed, these conceptions are integrated in a peculiar way, as can be seen in the manner a society deals with certain acts. These acts are seen as violent, for the Tribunal do Júri, in Brazilian Law, is specifically concerned with crimes against life, even if it does not lead to the victim’s death. The ethnography of these acts, in a specific place and time, should furnish indications about the place of violence in a specific society. Key words: Vengeance system; justice; violence; Pernambuco; Brazil.