Explore how societies organise power, negotiate social order, and address conflict via formal legal institutions, and less formal processes in everyday life. Often working with colonial governments, many early anthropologists were concerned with subjects of authority, leadership, property ownership, and landholding that were fundamental to the colonial rule. Today, political anthropology is a cross-cultural study of the institutions and relationships that distribute power in societies. Whereas legal anthropology traditionally focused on law in non-western contexts, it has become a diverse study of law and legal pluralism, the state, transnational institutions, and law-like activities of corporations. The political and legal concerns of anthropologists have both expanded and converged, providing a unique perspective on contemporary sociolegal theory and practice.