本文以鄉鎮「調解委員會」的調解程序為中心，參與觀察案件的調解，還有這些案件所發生的社會脈絡，以探討法律介入地方習慣的程度，以及法律與習價混合的規範系統如何形塑民眾的公平與權利觀念。本文同時分析法律與習俗不斷遭遇所蘊涵的文化意義；以及法律宣稱的客觀理性在當事人策略運作時的工具性。一方面，本文說明在「鄉鎮調解委員會」裡的法律程序其實是在建構地方知識。我們可以從這個「準」法律訴訟的調解場合──法律領域和社會領域間的轉換──分析民眾如何將自己對法律的期待建立在地方裡大家認可的價值系統上。另一方面，本文探討法律觀念例如規則和公平是如何被實踐的。本文認為規則不是一組外在、客觀的法律條文，它們的意義也不完全是清楚明白的；反而是，規則是在一連串的衝突和調解之中被「引發」出來的，甚至是在雙方當事人引用規範來強化自己的立場挑戰對方立場時，規則才不斷被敘述，被重新確認起來。

The author uses settlement sessions at a Taiwan District Mediation Committee to analyze the extent to which law encompasses local customs and the ways that the articulation of law and customs formulate people's conceptions of justice and rights. Putting individual cases in a broader and more complete context allows for an examination of the cultural meanings manifested in continuous interactions between law and customs as well as ways that participants instrumentally utilize objective rules to accomplish their strategic goals. The argument is made that the legal processes as practiced by District Mediation Committees are constitutive of local knowledge, since such Committees are spaces where the social and legal spheres meet and where participants translate their expectations of the legal system into locally shared values. The author also investigates how legal concepts such as rules and justice are put into practice, and argues that rules are not objectively promulgated with obvious and clear connotations, but invoked and counterpoised by the participants' arguments and counterarguments. Rules emerge during the processes of restatement and reiteration.