Brauchler examines the Indonesian decentralisation process and the revival of tradition and cultural self-determination in the Moluccas. Tuori studies restatements and codifications of customary laws in Africa. Harboe Knudsen considers European Union regulation of the marketing of dairy products in Lithuania. Douglas and Hersi examine the attitudes of Muslims to the smoking of khat. Simarmata studies the contrast between Indonesian state law and local officials' practice regarding natural resources use in East Kalimantan.

This volume includes the following contributions: All Law Is Plural: Legal Pluralism and the Distinctiveness of Law * Plural Legal Orders of Land Use * Could Singapore's Legal Pluralism Work in Australia? * Substantive Equality and Maternal Mortality in Nigeria * An Institutional Perspective on Courts of Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Settings * Comparative Law at the Intersection of Religious and Secular Orders (Series: The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law - Vol. 65)

"Abstract Global legal pluralism has become one of the leading analytical frameworks for understanding and conceptualizing law in the twenty-first century"--

"This book fills a gap in authoritative analyses of the causes of inter-religious conflict and the practice of religious toleration. The rise of more overt expressions of Islamic piety and greater bureaucratization of Islam in both Indonesia and Malaysia over several decades have tested the "live and let live" philosophy which used to characterize religious expression in these nations. The analyses in each chapter of the book break new ground with contextualized studies of particular and recent incidents of conflict or harassment in a variety of areas – from urban centres to more remote and, even complex, locations. As these studies show, legislation stands or falls on the ability and determination of local authorities to enforce it. This volume is essential reading for understanding the dynamics of state-religious interaction in Muslim majority nations and the crucial role civil society organizations play in negotiating interfaith toleration." - Emeritus Professor Virginia Hooker FAHA, Department of Political & Social Change College of Asia & the Pacific, The Australian National University "A most welcome contribution to the academic discourse of political Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia! For this volume focuses not on Islamic resurgence as many others have done, but on the impact of Islamic resurgence upon its non-Muslim minority counterparts - Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and also the Syiah Muslims - in the two plural societies, and the varying responses of those minorities, themselves often fragmented, to Islamic resurgence. The rich case studies highlight the changing character of politics in the two countries and their capacities to deal with religious diversity, an aspect of politics often ignored because of the usual concern for economic and political institutional capacities. The juxtaposition of Malaysian and Indonesian cases in a single volume and comparisons of contrasting developments in the two countries, challenges readers not to resort to easy conclusions and overgeneralizations about rising inter-religious tensions, but to give more scholarly attention to this politics-religion diversity nexus." - Emeritus Professor Francis Loh Kok Wah, Department of Political Science, Universiti Sains Malaysia

Judith Beyer presents a finely textured ethnographic study that sheds new light on the legal and moral ordering of everyday life in northwestern Kyrgyzstan. Through her extensive fieldwork, Beyer captures the thoughts and voices of local people in two villages, Aral and Engels, and combines these with firsthand observations to create an original ethnography. Beyer shows how local Kyrgyz negotiate proper behavior and regulate disputes by invoking custom, known to the locals as salt. While salt is presented as age-old tradition, its invocation needs to be understood as a highly developed and flexible rhetorical strategy that people adapt to suit the political, legal, economic, and religious environments. Officially, codified state law should take precedence when it comes to dispute resolution, yet the unwritten laws of salt and the increasing importance of Islamic law provide the standards for ordering everyday life. As Beyer further reveals, interpretations of both Islamic and state law are also intrinsically linked to salt. By interweaving case studies on kinship, legal negotiations, festive events, mourning rituals, and political and business dealings, Beyer shows how salt is the binding element in rural Kyrgyz social life, used to explain and negotiate moral behavior and to postulate communal identity. In this way, salt provides a time-tested, sustainable source of authentication that defies changes in government and the tides of religious movements. Beyer's ground-level analysis provides a broad base of knowledge that will be valuable for students and researchers of contemporary Central Asia.

This volume explores agricultural commercialization from a gender equality and right to food perspective. Agricultural commercialization, involving not only the shift to selling crops and buying inputs but also the commodification of land and labour, has always been controversial. Strategies for commercialization have often reinforced and exacerbated inequalities, been blind to gender differences and given rise to violations of the human rights to food, land, work and social security. While there is a body of evidence to trace these developments globally, impacts vary considerably in local contexts. This book systematically considers these dynamics in two countries, Cambodia and Ghana. Profoundly different in terms of their history and location, they provide the basis for fruitful comparisons because they both transitioned to democracy in the early 1990s, made agricultural development a priority, and adopted orthodox policies of commercialization to develop the sector. Chapters illustrate how commercialization processes are gendered, highlighting distinctive gender, ethnic and class dynamics in rural Ghana and Cambodia and the different outcomes these generate. They also show the ways in which food cultures are changing and the often-problematic impact of these changes on the safety and quality of food. Specific policies and legal norms are examined, with chapters addressing the development and implementation of frameworks on the right to food and land administration. Overall, the volume brings into relief multiple dimensions shaping the outcomes of processes of commercialization, including gender orders, food cultures, policy translation, national and sub-national policies, corporate investments and programmes, and formal and informal legal norms. In doing so, it offers insight not only on our case countries, but also provides proposals to advance rights-based research on food security. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of food security, agricultural development and economics, gender, human rights and sustainable development.