rry observed both court cases and mediation sessions, 30 of the former and 118 of the latter. Mediation cases are efforts to find solution to complaints without recourse to the formal court process. Merry also studied other cases which she did not personally observe, a total of 868 cases. She also interviewed 124 people involved in mediation, including both plaintiffs and defendants. The ethnographic aspect of her work involved a study of three neighborhoods and a survey of 93 residents of those neighborhoods who took part in the mediation process. Whereas both authors focus on working and middle class people, both also consider more affluent residents, but primarily in order to show the greater power that the more affluent have in shaping the legal and moral discourse. The main focus of both writers, however, was on less affluent citizens who were necessarily more dependent
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