Title: Little injustices: Laura Nader looks at the law /
Authors: Nader, Laura.; Rockefeller, Terry Kay.; Public Broadcasting Associates.
Publisher: Public Broadcasting Associates,
Year: 1981
Subjects: Consumer protection Case studies.; Consumer complaints United States.; Dispute resolution (Law); Intergroup relations Mexico.; Justice, Administration of Mexico; Zapotec Indians Social life and customs.; Sociological jurisprudence.; Law Philosophy; Mexico in motion pictures.; Mexico Civilization
Abstract: How does justice really work in the United States? Anthropologist Laura Nader's first field trip to a Zapotec village in Oaxaca, Mexico, in the late 1950s, led her to study problem-solving in the local courts. There, "little injustices" were the meat of everyday courtroom life. The film explains how, in a remote Mexican village, face-to-face conflict among a small population demands swift and effective redress for injustices, while in the United States consumers with defective products are lost in a morass of frustrating claims, slow and costly legal action, ineffective public agencies, and unresponsive corporate entities. In the 1960s, Laura Nader returned from Mexico to teach at Berkeley. In a decade of sit-ins, riots, helicopter gassings, and arrests, she asked why conflicts in our own society, in contrast to the Zapotec village, tend to escalate toward violence. Nader became acutely aware of questions of power and powerlessness in industrialized societies dominated by multinational corporations and other large-scale organizations. In order to investigate how the American legal system works for those who seek and cannot find justice, Nader, who notes that "our way of life is in fact a consumer way of life," turned to five thousand letters sent by irate consumers to her brother, consumer advocate Ralph Nader. In this film, we meet some of these letterwriters. "Everybody buys a lemon at some point," one comments: the oven is flaking, the new car drives in reverse, the mobile home is immovable. The powerlessness of individuals against corporate enterprise is such that most people give up in anger, frustration, and ultimately apathy.