FROM THE PUBLISHER

Conflict is defined here broadly and inclusively as an element of social life and social relations. Its study encompasses the law, not just disputes concerning property, but wider issues of criminality, coercion and violence, status, sex, sexuality and gender, as well as the phases and manifestations of conflict and the behaviors brought to bear on it. It engages, too, with the nature of the transformation spanning the Carolingian period, and its implications for the meanings of power, violence, and peace.

This volume represents the 'American school' of the study of medieval conflict and social order. Framed by two substantial historiographical and conceptual surveys of the field, it brings together two generations of scholars: the pioneers, who continue to expand the research agenda; and younger colleagues, who represent the best emerging work on this subject. The book therefore both marks the trajectory of conflict studies in the United States and presents a set of original, highly individual contributions across a shifting conceptual range, indicative of a major transition in the field.

Contents: Preface
What conflict means: the making of medieval conflict studies in the United States, 1970-2000, Warren Brown and Piotr Górecki
10th-century courts at Macon and the perils of structuralist history: re-reading Burgundian judicial institutions, Stephen D. White
Reform and lordship in Alsace at the turn of the millennium, Hans Hummer
Visualizing a dispute resolution: Peter of Albano's protected zone, Barbara H. Rosenwein
The fragmentation and redemption of a nedieval cathedral: property, conflict, and public piety in 11th-century Arezzo, William North
Punishments in 11th-century Normandy, Emily Zack Tabuteau
Baldwin VII of Flanders and the Toll of Saint-Vaast (1111): judgment as ritual, Geoffrey Koziol
Women and ordeals, Belle Stoddard Tuten
Law and nonmarital sex in the Middle Ages, Henry Ansgar Kelly
Nastiness and wrong, rancor and reconciliation, Paul R. Hyams
The emergence of the crime-tort dinstinction in England, Charles Donahue, Jr.
Feuding in Viking age Iceland's Great Village, Jesse L. Byock
Some reflections on violence, reconciliation, and the "feudal revolution", Fredric L. Cheyette
Where conflict leads: on the present and future of medieval conflict studies in the United States, Warren Brown and Piotr Górecki
Bibliography
Index.

About the Author:: About the Editors: Warren Brown, Assistant Professor, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology and Piotr Górecki, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of California, Riverside

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