Edwar E. Escalante (Norris-Vincent College of Business at Angelo State University; Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University) & Raymond March (North Dakota State University – Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics; North Dakota State University – NDSU Center for the Study of Public Choice and Private Enterprise) have posted Fighting on Christmas: Brawling as Self-Governance in Rural Peru on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper analyzes the Peruvian-highland tradition of Takanakuy, a public brawling ritual occurring each Christmas to resolve conflicts between local community members. We argue that Takanakuy provides an effective way for locals to resolve disputes that Peru’s formal judicial system is unable or unwilling to settle. Using insights from ethnographic fieldwork, journalistic articles, reports, and academic sources, we find brawling during Takanakuy encourages social cooperation by preventing potential violence and offering community members a credible mechanism of law enforcement in an orderly fashion with social acceptance.