Legal pluralism and the experience of the state in the Caucasus are at the centre of this edited volume. This is a region affected by a multitude of legal orders and the book describes social action and governance in the light of this, and considers how conceptions of order are enforced, used, followed and staged in social networks and legal practice. Principally, how is the state perceived and how does it perform in both the North and South Caucasus? From elections in Dagestan and Armenia to uses of traditional law in Ingushetia and Georgia, from repression of journalism in Azerbaijan to the narrations of anti-corruption campaigns in Georgia - the text reflects the multifarious uses and performances of law and order. The collection includes approaches from different scholarly traditions and their respective theoretical background and therefore forms a unique product of multinational encounters. The volume will be a valuable resource for legal and political anthropologists, ethnohistorians and researchers and academics working in the areas of post-socialism and post-colonialism.

Legal pluralism and the experience of the state in the Caucasus are at the centre of this edited volume. This is a region affected by a multitude of legal orders and the book describes social action and governance in the light of this, and considers how conceptions of order are enforced, used, followed and staged in social networks and legal practice. Principally, how is the state perceived and how does it perform in both the North and South Caucasus? From elections in Dagestan and Armenia to uses of traditional law in Ingushetia and Georgia, from repression of journalism in Azerbaijan to the narrations of anti-corruption campaigns in Georgia - the text reflects the multifarious uses and performances of law and order. The collection includes approaches from different scholarly traditions and their respective theoretical background and therefore forms a unique product of multinational encounters. The volume will be a valuable resource for legal and political anthropologists, ethnohistorians and researchers and academics working in the areas of post-socialism and post-colonialism.

In order to analyse configurations of power that transcend the territorial trap, the Caucasus is an excellent case in point. Its past and present exhibit an extraordinary richness in power practices of diverse forms that intersect on various scales. This comprehensive volume offers an innovative procedural perspective on the actual workings of power not necessarily tied to the nation-state. Its focus goes well beyond national scales to tackle the manifold impacts of transboundary flows. The authors, from a wide range of academic disciplines, provide original empirical data from this intriguing but largely untapped region, with respect to the critical study of statehood. They also shed light on the diversity of political space and the ongoing process of spatial re-alignment. The chapters in this collection focus on: land governance practice in the North Caucasus; practices of local administration in Georgia; Shia influence from Iran in Azerbaijan; and trajectories of Ottoman influence in Adjara and Abkhazia respectively. They cover the South as well as North Caucasus, examining configurations of power that entangle smaller and larger scales, and providing perspectives on transboundary flows between the area and both Turkey and Iran. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Eurasian Geography and Economics.

Within the Latin American context, legal pluralism is often depicted as a dichotomy between customary law and national law. In addition, the use of customary law alongside national law is frequently portrayed as a vehicle of resistance. This book argues that, because ordinary Indians are not positively biased in favor of customary law per se, a heterogeneity of legal practices can be observed on a daily basis, which consequently undermines the commonly held view of customary law as a "counter-hegemonic strategy", even if, on other socio-geographical levels, this thinking in terms of resistance holds true. Based on qualitative research, the work analyzes how internal conflicts among indigenous inhabitants of the Ecuadorian highlands are being settled in a situation of formal legal pluralism, and what can be learned from this in terms of Indian-state relationships. It is shown that, on a local level, the phenomenological dimension of legal pluralism can be termed "interlegality." On a macro level, ontological assumptions underscore that legal pluralism is still seen as a dichotomy between customary and national law. Multidisciplinary in nature, the book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of Legal Pluralism, Cultural Anthropology and Latin American Studies.

This book traces the development of the rule of law in Georgia since its independence and speculates on its future direction. It does so by focusing on changes in the legal profession after 1991. Intriguingly, the book, which is based on extensive field-work, concludes that culture and informal regulation are key to understanding how Georgian lawyers are governed, or rather govern themselves. Indeed, for several years after independence from the Soviet Union there was no functioning law on attorneys; informal regulation, based on the importance of reputation and networks, was the only sort of regulation. Other topics addressed in the book include Georgia's legal history, its current human rights situation, theories of professionalization, and the link between law and development. The book also compares the Georgian experience to that country's South Caucasian neighbors - Armenia and Azerbaijan - thus rounding the book out as a regional study.

This book provides an unprecedented portrayal of a lively shari'a court in contemporary West Jerusalem, which belongs to the Israeli legal system but serves Palestinian residents of the eastern part of the city. It draws a rich picture of an intriguing institution, operating in an environment marked by legal pluralism and by exceptional political and cultural tensions. The book suggests an organizational-institutional approach to legal pluralism, which examines not only the relations between bodies of law but also the relations between courts of law serving the same population. Based on participant observations in the studied court as well as on textual and legal analyses of court cases and rulings, the study combines history and ethnography, diachronic and synchronic perspectives, and examines broad, macro-political processes as well as micro-level interactions. The book offers fresh perspectives on the phenomenon of legal pluralism, on shari'a law in practice and on Palestinian-Israeli relations in the divided city of Jerusalem. The work is a valuable resource for academics and researchers working in the areas of Legal Pluralism, Islamic Law, and socio-legal history of the Middle East.

American legal scholars have debated for some time the need for a cultural defense in criminal proceedings where minority cultural information seems perti nent to a finding of criminal responsibility in situations where a minority cultural defendant has violated a valid criminal statute. This work presents a systematic analysis of this issue. Drawing from sociological, anthropological, and philosophical materials, as well as traditional legal discussions, the authors develop a scheme that indicates when cultural factors can be used as the basis for such a defense and when they are irrelevant to a finding of criminal responsibility. The argument moves from general concerns of social justice that apply under conditions of social and cultural pluralism to practical policy recommendations for the operation of American criminal justice. It thus connects more theoretical materials with the practical concerns of jurisprudence. The justification for legal recognition of a cultural defense in American criminal law is anchored firmly in American constitutional law.

While we know a great deal about the benefits of regional integration, there is a knowledge gap when it comes to areas with weak, dysfunctional, or nonexistent regional fabric in political and economic life. Further, deliberate “un-regioning,” applied by actors external as well as internal to a region, has also gone unnoticed despite its increasingly sophisticated modern application by Russia in its peripheries. This volume helps us understand what Anna Ohanyan calls “fractured regions” and their consequences for contemporary global security. Ohanyan introduces a theory of regional fracture to explain how and why regions come apart, consolidate dysfunctional ties within the region, and foster weak states. Russia Abroad specifically examines how Russia employs regional fracture as a strategy to keep states on its periphery in Eurasia and the Middle East weak and in Russia's orbit. It argues that the level of regional maturity in Russia’s vast vicinities is an important determinant of Russian foreign policy in the emergent multipolar world order. Many of these fractured regions become global security threats because weak states are more likely to be hubs of transnational crime, havens for militants, or sites of protracted conflict. The regional fracture theory is offered as a fresh perspective about the post-American world and a way to broaden international relations scholarship on comparative regionalism.

Discussions of the illicit and the illegal have tended to be somewhat restricted in their disciplinary range, to date, and have been largely confined to the literatures of anthropology, criminology, policing and, to an extent, political science. However, these debates have impinged little on cognate literatures, not least those of urban and regional studies which remain almost entirely undisturbed by such issues. This volume aims to open up debates across a range of cognate disciplines. The Illicit and Illegal in Regional and Urban Governance and Development is a multidisciplinary volume that aims to open up these debates, extending them empirically and questioning the dominant discussions of governance and development that have been rooted largely or entirely in the realm of licit and legal actors. The book investigates these issues with reference to a variety of different geographical contexts, including, but not limited to, places traditionally considered to be associated with illegal activities and extensive illicit markets, such as some regions in the so-called Global South. The chapters consider the ways in which these questions deeply affect the daily lives of several cities and regions in some advanced countries. Their comparative perspectives will demonstrate that the illicit and the illegal are an underappreciated structural aspect of current urban and regional governance and development across the globe. The book is an edited collection of research-informed essays, which will primarily be of interest to those taking advanced undergraduate and taught postgraduate courses in human geography, urban and regional planning and a range of social science disciplines that have an interest in urban and regional issues and issues related to crime and corruption.

This book is a comprehensive collection of key scholarship on informality from the whole post-socialist region. From Bosnia to Central Asia, passing through Russia and Azerbaijan, the contributions to this volume illustrate the multi-faceted and complex nature of informality, while demonstrating the growing scholarly and policy debates that have developed around the understanding of informality. In contrast to approaches which tend to classify informality as ‘bad’ or ‘transitional’ – meaning that modernity will make it disappear – this edited volume concentrates on dynamics and mechanisms to understand and explain informality, while also debating its relationship with the market and society. The authors seek to explain informality beyond a mere monetaristic/economistic approach, rediscovering its interconnection with social phenomena to propose a more holistic interpretation of the meaning of informality and its influence in various spheres of life. They do this by exploring the evolving role of informal practices in the post-socialist region, and by focusing on informality as a social organisation determinant but also looking at the way it reshapes emergent social resistance against symbolic and real political order(s). This book was originally published as two special issues, of Caucasus Survey and the Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe.