."..essential reading for scholars interested in understanding sociopolitical change under globalization in the early 21st century...I recommend this volume] for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in legal anthropology, political anthropology, the anthropology of the state, and globalization. Several chapters could also be creatively woven into courses on the anthropology of religion." PoLAR

."..there is much common ground between the contributors, and the variety of contexts and situations are valuable for showing how the unifying themes... work out on different grounds." Journal of Legal Pluralism

"This fascinating collection of articles sheds new light on the way law exercises power in a transnational world, from the crises of terrorism to the subtle introduction of new law within development projects. This set of articles provides new evidence of the important insights offered by legal pluralism and anthropological methodologies for understanding the nature of transnational, national, and local systems of law." Sally Engle Merry, New York University

How is law mobilized and who has the power and authority to construct its meaning? This important volume examines this question as well as how law is constituted and reconfigured through social processes that frame both its continuity and transformation over time. The volume highlights how power is deployed under conditions of legal pluralism, exploring its effects on livelihoods and on social institutions, including the state. Such an approach not only demonstrates how the state, through its various development programs and organizational structures, attempts to control territory and people, but also relates the mechanisms of state control to other legal modes of control and regulation at both local and supranational levels.

Keebet von Benda-Beckmann is head of the Project Group Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. She also is an honorary professor in Leipzig and Halle. Her research in Indonesia and the Netherlands focuses on legal pluralism, social security, governance and on the role of religion in disputing processes.

Franz von Benda-Beckmann is head of the Project Group Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He also is an honorary professor in Leipzig and Halle. His research in Malawi and Indonesia focuses on property and inheritance, social security, governance and legal anthropological theory.

Anne Griffiths has a personal chair in Anthropology of Law at the University of Edinburgh in the School of Law. Her major research interests include anthropology of law, comparative and family law, African law, gender, culture and rights. She has been awarded research grants from the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (USA), the Annenberg Foundation (USA), the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Commonwealth Foundation, the Carnegie Trust and the American Bar Foundation.

This book approaches law as a process embedded in transnational personal, religious, communicative and economic relationships that mediate between international, national and local practices, norms and values. It uses the concept "living law" to describe the multiplicity of norms manifest in transnational moral, social or economic practices that transgress the territorial and legal boundaries of the nation-state. Focusing on transnational legal encounters located in family life, diasporic religious institutions and media events in countries like Norway, Sweden, Britain and Scotland, it demonstrates the multiple challenges that accelerated mobility and increased cultural and normative diversity is posing for Northern European law. For in this part of the world, as elsewhere, national law is challenged by a mixture of expanding human rights obligations and unprecedented cultural and normative pluralism enhanced by expanding global communication and market relations. As a consequence, transnationalization of law appears to create homogeneity, fragmentation and ambiguity, expanding space for some actors while silencing others. Through the lens of a variety of important contemporary subjects, the authors thus engage with the nature of power and how it is accommodated, ignored or resisted by various actors when transnational practices encounter national and local law.

How is law mobilized and who has the power and authority to construct its meaning? This important volume examines this question as well as how law is constituted and reconfigured through social processes that frame both its continuity and transformation over time. The volume highlights how power is deployed under conditions of legal pluralism, exploring its effects on livelihoods and on social institutions, including the state. Such an approach not only demonstrates how the state, through its various development programs and organizational structures, attempts to control territory and people, but also relates the mechanisms of state control to other legal modes of control and regulation at both local and supranational levels.

This book approaches law as a process embedded in transnational personal, religious, communicative and economic relationships that mediate between international, national and local practices, norms and values. It uses the concept "living law" to describe the multiplicity of norms manifest in transnational moral, social or economic practices that transgress the territorial and legal boundaries of the nation-state. Focusing on transnational legal encounters located in family life, diasporic religious institutions and media events in countries like Norway, Sweden, Britain and Scotland, it demonstrates the multiple challenges that accelerated mobility and increased cultural and normative diversity is posing for Northern European law. For in this part of the world, as elsewhere, national law is challenged by a mixture of expanding human rights obligations and unprecedented cultural and normative pluralism enhanced by expanding global communication and market relations. As a consequence, transnationalization of law appears to create homogeneity, fragmentation and ambiguity, expanding space for some actors while silencing others. Through the lens of a variety of important contemporary subjects, the authors thus engage with the nature of power and how it is accommodated, ignored or resisted by various actors when transnational practices encounter national and local law.

Federal models of government have shaped history and demonstrated how diverse people can live together and govern together in relative harmony. The Forum of Federations Handbook of Federal Countries 2020 builds on the previous 2005 edition and offers a much-needed update to this signature resource in comparative federalism. Outlining every federal country in the world, each chapter provides a brief yet comprehensive overview of the history of federalism in its specific country, the constitutional nature of federalism, and recent historical dynamics. As new countries have joined the Federal ranks, this handbook brings readers up to speed offering an authoritative look at both the older federal countries as well as new federal countries like Nepal. The Forum of Federations Handbook of Federal Countries 2020 is an essential resource for academics, researchers, university students, libraries, history and governance teachers, politicians and civil servants, and casual observers of federalism.

Transformations on the Ground considers the ways in which power in all its forms-local, international, legal, familial-affects the collision of global with local concerns over access to land and control over its use. In Botswana's struggle to access international economies, few resources are as fundamental and fraught as control over land. On a local level, land and control over its use provides homes, livelihoods, and the economic security to help lift populations out of impoverishment. Yet on the international level, global capital concerns compete with strategies for sustainable development and economic empowerment. Drawing on extensive archival research, legal records, fieldwork, and interviews with five generations of family members in the village of Molepolole, Anne M. O. Griffiths provides a sweeping consideration of the scale of power from global economy to household experience in Botswana. In doing so, Griffiths provides a frame through which the connections between legal power and local engagement can provide fresh insight into our understanding of the global.

Federal models of government have shaped history and demonstrated how diverse people can live together and govern together in relative harmony. The Forum of Federations Handbook of Federal Countries 2020 builds on the previous 2005 edition and offers a much-needed update to this signature resource in comparative federalism. Outlining every federal country in the world, each chapter provides a brief yet comprehensive overview of the history of federalism in its specific country, the constitutional nature of federalism, and recent historical dynamics. As new countries have joined the Federal ranks, this handbook brings readers up to speed offering an authoritative look at both the older federal countries as well as new federal countries like Nepal. The Forum of Federations Handbook of Federal Countries 2020 is an essential resource for academics, researchers, university students, libraries, history and governance teachers, politicians and civil servants, and casual observers of federalism.

Margaret Ann Griffiths (1947-2009) was born and raised in London and lived for some time in Bracknell then later moved to Poole. Rather than seek publication through traditional channels, she was content to share her work with fellow poets on various Internet forums. On the rare occasions she submitted work for publication, it was typically to online venues. Also known by the Internet pseudonyms 'Grasshopper' and 'Maz', she began posting her poetry online in 2001. During the mid-2000s she worked from home, running a small Internet-based business, and edited the Poetry Worm, a monthly periodical distributed by email. In 2008, her "Opening a Jar of Dead Sea Mud" won Eratosphere's annual Sonnet Bake-off, and was praised by Richard Wilbur. Later that year she was a Guest Poet on the Academy of American Poets website, where she was hailed as 'one of the up-and-coming poets of our time'. She suffered for years from a stomach ailment which eventually proved fatal in July 2009. Almost immediately after her death was announced on Eratosphere, poets from all over the English-speaking world, from London, Derby, Scotland, Wales, Queensland, New South Wales, Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Missouri, Maryland, California and Texas collected her work for this publication. This publication is intended as an archive of Margaret's work and has been produced in alpha-numeric order as an easy reference to individual poems. The book contains 316 poems, some scraps, some work in progress, but mainly finished poems if poems are ever completely finished. The book now resides in the National Archive at the British Library and in the main Copyright Libraries. The intention was to preserve her work, which previously was scattered around the Internet in dozens of different locations. The book is also available for public access at the Saison Poetry Library in the South Bank Centre, London.

Pregnant women in Albuquerque, New Mexico are being tortured and mutilated in secluded areas of the city. Cut out of their mother's bellies, the babies that once squirmed happily inside them are nowhere to be found. Albuquerque Homicide Detective, Peter Kostas, is in a stale mate. He has been chasing the monster responsible for these heinous crimes for almost a year now. No one can tell him who the victims are or where they come from. But thanks to local paramedic, Lillian Martin, his latest victim is alive but in critical condition at the University Hospital. The only clue the last victim has to offer Peter is a small, unknown medical device that protrudes from her once pregnant abdomen. Lillian recognizes its structure as a self-administering medication port, but she has never heard of any condition requiring its use. Discovering the purpose of the port will change their lives...forever, but can they find the babies and catch the killer before it's too late? Or is this case larger than they realize? Things are never as they appear to be on the surface...

Oliver is a little dog who has an animal family, and a people family, and a number of problems that make him feel that he is a lesser being. He writes his thoughts down and he goes through an experience that brings him to greater awareness and happiness. The drawings and writing and antics of the animals in this book are intended to provide a bit of fun and a smile for the children. While they smile they can discover personal responsibility, and their own spirituality, and their own healing energy, which they can direct towards their own healing. Even better; they too can contribute to the very much needed healing of the world that is their inheritance. I have asked the children, with 'Oliver's help', to join with me in raising the existing consciousness of the world in to a lighter consciousness of love, light, and peace. I am sure they will, and that they and this book will make a difference.

Transformations on the Ground considers the ways in which power in all its forms-local, international, legal, familial-affects the collision of global with local concerns over access to land and control over its use. In Botswana's struggle to access international economies, few resources are as fundamental and fraught as control over land. On a local level, land and control over its use provides homes, livelihoods, and the economic security to help lift populations out of impoverishment. Yet on the international level, global capital concerns compete with strategies for sustainable development and economic empowerment. Drawing on extensive archival research, legal records, fieldwork, and interviews with five generations of family members in the village of Molepolole, Anne M. O. Griffiths provides a sweeping consideration of the scale of power from global economy to household experience in Botswana. In doing so, Griffiths provides a frame through which the connections between legal power and local engagement can provide fresh insight into our understanding of the global.

The contributors to this volume examine the importance of democracy as a system of goverment. Exploring various forms of democractic government throughout the world, they assess how democracy works in theory and in practice.Chapters cover how to improve democracy using case studies from the Caribbean and Spain; how to make parliaments more effective, looking at issues such as technology and the structure of parliamentary bodies; the comparative benefits of different electoral systems; finally, the contributors examine problems thrown up by various recent elections including the American election in 2000, Sri Lanka, Poland and various African experiences.