The Culture of Coincidence. Accident and Absolute Liability in Huli. [first edition]

Is the concept of accident purely a creation of Western judicial processes? In this innovative study, Goldman examines the ground between law, linguistics, and anthropology to provide the first full-length ethnography on the grammar and pragmatics of the rarely acknowledged or researched topic of accident. Using transcript case data from the Huli people of Papua New Guinea, Goldman explores the linguistic encoding of intentionality, causality, responsibility, and control to show how actors dispute in volitional (murder) or non-volitional (coincidence) idioms. Dr Goldman concludes that, with regard to the concept of accident, Western and non-Western juristic ideologies exhibit startling similarities; his study has important implications for the way we describe the world views of other cultures.