You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Approaches to legal pluralism vary widely across the spectrum of different disciplines. They comprise normative and descriptive perspectives, focus both on legal pluralist realities as well as public debates, and address legal pluralism in a range of different societies with varying political, institutional and historical conditions. Emphasising an empirical research to contemporary legal pluralist settings in Muslim contexts, the present collected volume contributes to a deepened understanding of legal pluralist issues and realities through comparative examination. This approach reveals some common features, such as the relevance of Islamic law in power struggles and in the construction of ...
This book offers a novel approach to the history of high culture and new perspectives on the history of civil society in provincial Germany. It makes the concept of place a central means for understanding how art culture was defined, consumed, and, importantly, distributed over the course of the long nineteenth century. It shows how “temples of culture” come to be built where they were built. It further demonstrates who participated in their planning, funding, construction, and ultimate evolution into public institutions, highlighting underexamined links between the history of art culture and that of urban history and civil society.
Analyses how atmospheres and sentiments shape the workings of international criminal law in (post-)colonial Africa and beyond.
Comparative Dispute Resolution offers an original, wide-ranging, and invaluable corpus of chapters on dispute resolution. Enriched by a broad, comparative vision and a focus on the processes used to handle disputes, this study adds significantly to the discourse around comparative legal studies. Chapters present new understandings of theoretical, comparative and transnational dimensions of the manner in which societies and their legal systems respond to difficulties in social relations.
This cutting-edge book facilitates debate amongst scholars in law, humanities and social sciences, where comparative methodology is far less well anchored in most areas compared to other research methods. It posits that these are disciplines in which comparative research is not simply a bonus, but is of the essence.
Jewish customs and traditions about death, burial and mourning are numerous, diverse and intriguing. They are considered by many to have a respectable pedigree that goes back to the earliest rabbinic period. In order to examine the accurate historical origins of many of them, an international conference was held at Tel Aviv University in 2010 and experts dealt with many aspects of the topic. This volume includes most of the papers given then, as well as a few added later. What emerges are a wealth of fresh material and perspectives, as well as the realization that the high Middle Ages saw a set of exceptional innovations, some of which later became central to traditional Judaism while others were gradually abandoned. Were these innovations influenced by Christian practice? Which prayers and poems reflect these innovations? What do the sources tell us about changing attitudes to death and life-after death? Are tombstones an important guide to historical developments? Answers to these questions are to be found in this unusual, illuminating and readable collection of essays that have been well documented, carefully edited and well indexed.
Purity has long been recognized as one of the essential drives which determines humankind's relationship with the holy. Codes of purity and impurity, dealing with such far-ranging topics as 'external stains' and 'inner remorse', represent the physical and 'bodily' side of religious experience and provide the key to the understanding of human orientation to nature, and the structure of society, including even relationships between the sexes. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, a number of articles study some rather neglected passages from both exegetical and cultural-anthropological standpoints. Next, it is shown that the concept of purity is far more central to the New Testament than previously ...
This publication reflects the results of the Ethiopian education reform as well as the exceptional efforts that multiethnic Ethiopia undertakes in order to cope with the challenges arising from the population explosion. More than 55 per cent of the 77 million Ethiopians are under the age of 18 years. The great social and political changes started in Ethiopia at the beginning of the 1990s have resulted in the substitution of the educational system based on Amharic and English by one which uses a multilingual approach. According to the Ministry of Education 22 out of the 84 languages spoken in Ethiopia are now used as media of instruction in primary schools. The book presents the lectures delivered at the workshop "On the Results of the Reform in Ethiopia's Language and Education Policy" held at Addis Ababa University in April 2006 by Ethiopian education experts and a German research team. Their contribution has facilitated a subsumption into the historical context and has given insight into the analyses of the use of 8 Ethiopian languages in primary schools in different regions of the country.
In Life, Fish and Mangroves, Melissa Marschke explores the potential of resource governance, offering a case study of resource-dependent village life. Following six households and one village-based institution in coastal Cambodia over a twelve-year period, Marschke reveals the opportunities and constraints facing villagers and illustrates why local resource management practices remain delicate, even with a sustained effort. She highlights how government and business interests in community-based management and resource exploitation combine to produce a complex, highly uncertain dynamic. With this instructive study, she demonstrates that in spite of a significant effort, spanning many years and engaging many players, resource governance remains fragile and coastal livelihoods in Cambodia remain precarious.
During the run-up to Kenya's 2013 general elections, crucial political and civic questions were raised. Could past mistakes, especially political and ethnic-related violence, be avoided this time round? Would the spectre of the 2007 post-electoral violence positively or negatively affect debates and voting? How would politicians, electoral bodies such as the IEBC, the Kenyan civil society, and the international community weigh in on the elections? More generally, would the 2013 elections bear witness to the building up of an electoral culture in Kenya, characterized by free and fair elections, or would it show that voting is still weakened by political malpractices, partisan opinions and emo...