This collection of essays interrogates how human rights law and practice acquire meaning in relation to legal pluralism, ie, the co-existence of more than one regulatory order in a same social field. As a social phenomenon, legal pluralism exists in all societies. As a legal construction, it is characteristic of particular regions, such as post-colonial contexts. Drawing on experiences from Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe, the contributions in this volume analyse how different configurations of legal pluralism interplay with the legal and the social life of human rights. At the same time, they enquire into how human rights law and practice influence interactions that are subject to regulation by more than one normative regime. Aware of numerous misunderstandings and of the mutual suspicion that tends to exist between human rights scholars and anthropologists, the volume includes contributions from experts in both disciplines and intends to build bridges between normative and empirical theory.

This interdisciplinary book brings together leading social and legal scholars to tackle the incompatibility of marriage laws with contemporary social reality in Europe. Their critique is based on the assumption that individuals should be able to choose how they organise their close relationships. The contributors emphasise the importance of pluralism of beliefs, values, cultures, and lifestyles and the consequent need for legal recognition to make individuals' private choices valid and respected. The first part of the book establishes the foundation for the subsequent chapters by exploring the advantages and challenges of focusing on values while accommodating relationship design plurality, the impact of the European Court of Human Rights on the issue, and the transformation of the institution of marriage. The second part presents different legal responses to non-state marriages, particularly religious marriages among Muslim communities, and proposals for reform. The third part of the book features empirical research on the marital experiences of two communities: Muslims and migrants. The chapters concentrate on polygyny among female converts to Islam, the importance of religious knowledge for practising Muslim women in securing rights in their marital relationships, transnational and interreligious marriages, and the impact of acculturative orientation and position in the dual labour market on the choice of life partner among Polish migrant women. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers, and policymakers working in the areas of human rights law, family law, legal anthropology, law and religion, socio-legal studies, feminism and queer studies, and sociology of family.

Over the past two decades Global Legal Pluralism has become one of the leading analytical frameworks for understanding and conceptualizing law in the 21st century. Wherever one looks, there is conflict among multiple legal regimes. Some of these regimes are state-based, some are built and maintained by non-state actors, some fall within the purview of local authorities and jurisdictional entities, and some involve international courts, tribunals, and arbitral bodies, and regulatory organizations. Global Legal Pluralism has provided, first and foremost, a set of useful analytical tools for describing this conflict among legal and quasi-legal systems. At the same time, some pluralists have also ventured in a more normative direction, suggesting that legal systems might sometimes purposely create legal procedures, institutions, and practices that encourage interaction among multiple communities. These scholars argue that pluralist approaches can help foster more shared participation in the practices of law, more dialogue across difference, and more respect for diversity without requiring assimilation and uniformity. Despite the veritable explosion of scholarly work on legal pluralism, conflicts of law, soft law, global constitutionalism, the relationships among relative authorities, transnational migration, and the fragmentation and reinforcement of territorial boundaries, no single work has sought to bring together these various scholarly strands, place them into dialogue with each other, or connect them with the foundational legal pluralism research produced by historians, anthropologists, and political theorists. Paul Schiff Berman, one of the world's leading theorists of Global Legal Pluralism, has gathered over 40 diverse authors from multiple countries and multiple scholarly disciplines to touch on nearly every area of legal pluralism research, offering defenses, critiques, and applications of legal pluralism to 21st-century legal analysis. Berman also provides introductions to every part of the book, helping to frame the various approaches and perspectives. The result is the first comprehensive review of Global Legal Pluralism scholarship ever produced. This book will be a must-have for scholars and students seeking to understand the insights of legal pluralism to contemporary debates about law. At the same time, this volume will help energize and engage the field of Global Legal Pluralism and push this scholarly trajectory forward into another two decades of innovation.

This book argues for an intensely humanist engagement with the company and presents a model of company regulation that is compatible with the protection, respect for and fulfilment of human rights. Dr Barrett provides a theoretical framing for corporate regulation in the context of human rights States. He argues that States which have ratified the fundamental human rights instruments should, on principle, exclude bodies corporate from the human rights ecosystem, except to the degree necessary to respect property rights of humans and human rights in business. He therefore develops a ‘neo-concession’ account of the corporation as the basis for a model of corporate regulation to protect human rights. The book outlines and recommends the principal features of a company under a neo-concession model, and the role of regulators in furthering the State’s human right obligations. It also delves into the potential issues of technological developments, including decentralised autonomous organisations, and the lessons policymakers can gain from First Nations’ approaches to business. This is a thought-provoking volume that will appeal to scholars in the disciplines of human rights law and corporate governance, as well as policymakers and regulators interested in regulating business for greater societal good.

In this thoroughly revised second edition editors Bård A. Andreassen, Claire Methven O’Brien and Hans-Otto Sano advance contemporary discussions on human rights methodology, bringing together an array of leading scholars to offer instruction and guidance on the methodological approaches to human rights research.

Transnational Food Security addresses food security from an international relations, political economy and legal perspective analysing the relationship between food security and the environment and climate change, trade, finance and contracts, and the intersection between food and human rights. The topic of food concerns one of the most basic and profound aspects of human survival. Universal and equal access to food is, at the same time, ridden with problems of power, inequality, distribution and implicated in old and new geopolitical conflicts. As such, ‘food’ and food security are central to conditions of poverty and hunger, development and ‘modernisation’, transitional justice and rule of law reform around the world. As a problem of critique and scholarly inquiry, food prompts an inter-disciplinary assessment of the nature of food security in the modern world. The contributors to this book take us deep into the complexity of food and illustrate the challenges of adequately understanding and approaching questions of food security and food sovereignty in a globally interconnected world. Transnational Food Security will be of great interest to scholars of international relations, political economy, and transnational law. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Transnational Legal Theory Journal.

Texts and Materials on International Human Rights offers a carefully tailored overview of the subject that covers sources and theories, institutions and structures, and substantive rights. The fourth edition is fully updated to include all key developments in the law, in particular issues around reform in the UN and the topical application of human rights around the world. This collection of materials offers a comprehensive overview of the institutional structures relevant to international human rights law, crucial to the understanding of how law works in this challenging area. Designed to guide students through the fundamental texts for this subject, the author’s commentary contextualises each extract to explain its relevance, while highlighted further reading makes links to cutting-edge academic commentary to provide next steps for student research. Offering a clear text design that distinguishes between materials and author commentary, and including reflective questions throughout to aid understanding, this book is ideal for students seeking to engage with the key issues in the study of international human rights.

Defensive Relativism describes how governments around the world use cultural relativism in legal argument to oppose international human rights law. Defensive relativist arguments appear in international courts, at the committees established by human rights treaties, and at the United Nations Human Rights Council. The aim of defensive relativist arguments is to exempt a state from having to apply international human rights law, or to stop international human rights law evolving, because it would interfere with cultural traditions the state deems important. It is an everyday occurrence in international human rights law and defensive relativist arguments can be used by various types of states. The end goal of defensive relativism is to allow a state to appear human rights compliant while at the same time not implementing international human rights law. Drawing on a range of materials, such as state reports on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and cases from the European Court of Human Rights involving freedom of religion, this book provides a definitive survey of defensive relativism. Crucially, Frederick Cowell argues, defensive relativism is not about alternative practices of human rights law, or debates about the origins or legitimacy of human rights as a concept. Defensive relativism is instead a variety of tactical argument used by states to justify ignoring international human rights law. Yet, as Cowell concludes, defensive relativism can’t be removed from the law, as it is a reflection of unresolved tensions about the nature of what it means for rights to be universal.

Shifts across the corpus of international law have brought the international legal system into a closer alignment with the interests of the individual. This has led to a great and growing interest in the roles and status of individuals in international law, and provided new impulses for debate. The Individual in International Law is an exploration of what is described as the humanisation of international law. It examines how international law has accommodated individuals, and how individual status, rights, and obligations have become denser and more important in the international legal system. Split into two parts, the book analyses the humanisation of international law in different historical periods and from various theoretical perspectives. The first part focuses on the historical evolution of international law, exploring how the interests of individuals have shaped the development of the legal system from antiquity to 1945, providing a counterpoint to State-centric readings of international law's history. The second part contains theoretical debates, critical approaches, and interdisciplinary investigations, offering perspectives from ius positivism and ius naturalism, Marxism, TWAIL, feminism, global law, global constitutionalism, law and economics, and legal anthropology. The book aims to stimulate further research on the humanisation and dehumanisation of new fields ranging from the ius contra bellum to climate law. The editors' introduction and conclusion frame the contributions, draw together their findings, and address critiques comprehensively. Written by a team of acknowledged experts in their fields, this volume elucidates how the interests, rights, obligations, and responsibilities of individuals have shaped international norms and regimes, and suggests how a reoriented transformative humanism can inform and develop international law in an era of profound ideological, ecological, and technical challenge. This is an open access title. It is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International licence. It is available to read and download as a PDF version on the Oxford Academic platform.

In this new edition of the anthropological classic Exotic No More, some of today’s most respected anthropologists demonstrate the tremendous contributions that anthropological theory and ethnographic methods can make to the study of contemporary society. With chapters covering a wide variety of subjects—the economy, religion, the sciences, gender and sexuality, human rights, music and art, tourism, migration, and the internet—this volume shows how anthropologists grapple with a world that is in constant and accelerating transformation. Each contributor uses examples from their adventurous fieldwork to challenge us to rethink some of our most firmly held notions. This fully updated edition reflects the best that anthropology has to offer in the twenty-first century. The result is both an invaluable introduction to the field for students and a landmark achievement that will set the agenda for critical approaches to the study of contemporary life. Contributors:Ruben Andersson, Philippe Bourgois, Catherine Buerger, James G. Carrier, Marcus Colchester, James Fairhead, Kim Fortun, Mike Fortun, Katy Gardner, Faye Ginsburg, Roberto J. González, Tom Griffiths, Chris Hann, Susan Harding, Faye V. Harrison, Laurie Kain Hart, Richard Jenkins, George Karandinos, Christopher M. Kelty, Melissa Leach, Margaret Lock, Jeremy MacClancy, Sally Engle Merry, Fernando Montero, Matt Sakakeeny, Anthony Alan Shelton, Christopher B. Steiner, Richard Ashby Wilson