Synopses & Reviews
Religion manifests in an array of disputes in different geographical contexts. Here, the contributors examine such questions through case studies from Europe, the United States, Israel, Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. The conflicts range from those involving religious authorities to disputes in non-religious contexts in which actors nevertheless invoke religious rhetoric and repertoires and disputes in settings that at first sight have nothing to do with classical disputing processes, such as rituals and crisis pregnancy centers. The analyses are grounded in extensive ethnographical and historiographical research and show how different dimensions of the religious may enter into, transform, affect, and be affected by the course and outcome of dispute processes at different moments of their unfolding.
Review
To come.
Synopsis
How are time-honored tenets of faith, different ritual sensibilities, and newly emerging eschatological imaginaries articulated with other normative registers and moral susceptibilities in disputes? This book examines such questions through cases in Europe, the United States, Israel, Africa, and South and Southeast Asia.
About the Author
Franz von Benda-Beckmann is Research Affiliate of the Department Law and Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Until the end of 2012, he headed the Project Group Legal Pluralism together with Keebet von Benda-Beckmann. He is Professor Emeritus of Wageningen University, the Netherlands and an Honorary Professor of the Universities of Leipzig and Halle, Germany.
Keebet von Benda-Beckmann is Research Affiliate of the Department Law and Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Until the end of 2012, she headed the Project Group Legal Pluralism together with Franz von Benda-Beckmann. She is Honorary Professor of the Universities of Leipzig and Halle, Germany.
Martin Ramstedt is Senior Researcher in the Department of Law and Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. His previous publications include the edited volumes Hinduism in Modern Indonesia (2004) and Decentralization and Regional Autonomy in Indonesia (co-edited with Coen J.G. Holtzappel, 2009)
Bertram Turner is Senior Researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. He was Academic Assistant at the Institute of Social Anthropology and African Studies in Munich between 1993 and 2001 and has held university teaching positions at various universities.
Table of Contents
Introduction: On the Pervasiveness of Religious Normativity in Disputing Processes; Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, Martin Ramstedt and Bertram Turner
1. Interminable Disputes in Northwest Madagascar; Michael Lambek
2. Dispelling the Shadows of Dispute in Native American Church Healing; Thomas J. Csordas
3. Religion, Crisis Pregnancies, and the Battle over Abortion: Redefining Conflict and Consensus in the American Pro-Life Movement; Ziad Munson
4. Religious Subtleties in Disputing: Spatiotemporal Inscriptions of Faith in the Nomosphere in Rural Morocco; Bertram Turner
5. "God Moves Big Time in Sophiatown": Community Policing and "the Fight against Evil" in a Poor Johannesburg Neighborhood; Julia Hornberger
6. Toward Reconciliation: Religiously Oriented Disputing Processes in Mozambique; Carolien Jacobs
7. Religion and Disputes in Bali's New Village Jurisdictions; Martin Ramstedt
8. Sanctity and Shariah: Two Islamic Modes of Resolving Disputes in Today's England; John R. Bowen
9. Forum Shopping between Civil and Shari'a Courts: Maintenance Suits in Contemporary Jerusalem; Ido Shahar
10. Legal Pluralism in the Supreme Court: Law, Religion, and Culture Pertaining to Women's Rights in Nepal; Rajendra Pradhan
11. Natural Law, Religion, and the Jurisprudence of the US Supreme Court; Lawrence Rosen
12: Divine Law and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; Matthias Kaufmann
13. "Law Has Gone Away": Religion, Modernity, and Injury in Thailand; David M. Engel
14. Law and Religion in Historic Tibet; Fernanda Pirie