Melalui studi-studi antropologis mengenai sistem pengendalian sosial (social control) di berbagai komunitas masyarakat di dunia, kalangan ahli antropologi memberi kontribusi yang sangat penting dan bermakna dalam pengembangan konsep hukum yang secara nyata berlaku dan dioperasikan dalam kehidupan masyarakat. Anthropologist have focussed upon micro processes of legal action and interaction, they have made the universal fact of legal pluralism a central element in the understanding of the working of law in society, and they have self-consciously adopted a comparative and historical approach and drawn the necessary conceptual and theoritical conclusion from this choice (Griffiths, 1986:2).