Thesis (doctoral)--Harvard University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-310).

This dissertation explores how the social and political consequences of armed conflict affect legal pluralism; specifically, the coexistence of Russian state law, Sharia, and customary law in Chechnya. The study draws on qualitative and quantitative data gathered during seven months of fieldwork in Chechnya. The data include over one hundred semistructured interviews with legal authorities and religious and traditional leaders; an original survey of the population; and a novel dataset of all civil and criminal cases heard in state courts. First, the dissertation argues that armed conflict disrupted traditional social hierarchies in Chechnya, which paved the way for state penetration into Chechen society. The conflict particularly disrupted gender hierarchies. As a result of the highly gendered nature of the conflict, women in Chechnya became breadwinners in their families and gained experience in serving important social roles, most notably as interlocutors between communities and different armed groups. This change in women’s bargaining power within households and increase in their social status came into conflict with the patriarchal social order, which was based on men’s rigid interpretations of religious and customary norms. In response, women started utilizing the state legal system, a system that at least formally acknowledges gender equality, in contrast to customary law and Sharia. State law is corrupt, inefficient, slow, and its use is associated with community and family ostracism. Nevertheless, this dissertation shows that many Chechen women use and support state law. Second, the dissertation establishes that the political context of the conflict moderates the effect of war on legal pluralism. The penetration of state law through disruption of social hierarchies is driven by the Second Chechen War (1999-2009). In contrast, communities that were exposed to violence during the First Chechen War (1994-1996) ultimately rejected Russian state law and rely predominantly on Sharia and customary law. In these communities, the structural effects of disrupted hierarchies were overpowered by alienation from the Russian state. The study explains this discrepancy by showing how communities victimized during the First War developed strong collective identities that filtered blame for the war. Third, the dissertation shows that war-induced female empowerment in Chechnya faced a strong backlash from the Chechen government. The most notorious manifestations of the neotraditionalist policies of the Chechen government are the semiformal introduction of polygamy, support for the practice of honor killings, and a restrictive female dress code. Furthermore, the officials in charge of state law actively disrupt its functioning in gendered cases. The study finds that state officials in Chechnya are less supportive of state law than the average Chechen. This is the result of the incorporation of former rebels into the government, which is a structural legacy of the conflict. In addition, the dissertation argues that the Chechen regional government promotes legal pluralism and undermines state law strategically, as part of its coalition-building effort. The government allows men to keep control over their families, relying on custom and religion in exchange for their political loyalty. Finally, the dissertation suggests that government promotion of legal pluralism is a political strategy that has several objectives: (1) it allows the government to borrow legitimacy from tradition and religion, which both have large appeal among the Chechen population; (2) it increases the government’s discretion and allows it to cherry-pick norms across alternative orders while avoiding regulations embedded in them; and (3) it gives the regional government additional leverage vis-à-vis the federal center by signaling to the Kremlin that it cannot rule Chechnya directly and that its local intermediaries are indispensable. Overall, the dissertation shows that legal pluralism is not just a reflection of ‘political culture’ or ‘weak state capacity,’ but rather is an inherently political phenomenon, an arena for the pursuit of interests by the government and individuals alike.

This thesis explores the potential of the theory of legal pluralism. It examines the extent to which such a theory can contribute to an understanding of the regulatory crisis of the nation-state and serve as a point of departure for new regulatory approaches. A historical overview which looks at the disciplinary origins of legal pluralism is followed by an analysis of several legal pluralist concepts. This analysis serves as the basis for an elaboration of the descriptive and normative aspects of legal pluralism. The concept is compared with other social theories which are concerned with similar questions as legal pluralism. To illustrate the legal pluralist approach, same specific examples from the media sector are introduced. The thesis concludes by showing where a legal pluralist analysis might be appropriate and, moreover, how the theory can contribute to regulatory ways alternative to direct state intervention and market conceptions.

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Multi-religious and multi-ethnic democracies face the challenge of constructing accommodative arrangements that can both facilitate cultural diversity and ensure women's rights within religio-cultural groups. This thesis is an investigation of the Indian state's policy of legal pluralism in recognition of religious family laws in India. The Indian state has adopted a model of what I have termed "shared adjudication" in which the state shares its adjudicative authority with internally heterogeneous religious groups and civil society in the regulation of marriage among Hindus and Muslims. / Combining theoretical frameworks of state-society relations, feminist theory, and legal pluralism, and drawing from ethnographic research conducted in state courts, caste and sect councils, and "doorstep law courts," I pay analytical attention to state-society interactions at the interface of religious family laws. State and non-state sources of legal authority construct internally contested and heterogeneous notions of the conjugal family, gender relations, and religious membership, and they transmit them across legal spheres. These dynamic processes of communication reconstitute the interiors of religious, state, and civic legal orders, and they fracture the homogenised religious identities grounded in hierarchical gender relations within the conjugal family. / Within the interstices of state and society---which are used imaginatively by state and societal actors---the Indian model points towards an open-ended and process-oriented conception of state-society relations that encompasses not only the binary of conflict and cooperation, but also communication between state and society. The "shared adjudication" model facilitates diversity as it allows the construction of hybrid religious identities, creates fissures in ossified group boundaries, and provides institutional spaces for ongoing inter-societal dialogue between religious groups, civil society, and the state. This pluralized legal sphere, governed by ideologically diverse legal actors, can thus increase women's rights in law, and despite its limitations, the transformative potential of women's collective agency effects institutional change.

This thesis investigates the history and phenomenon of legal pluralism in Indonesia. The need to explore this topic has been urged by the revival there of Islamic law and adat law, the two greatest non-state normative orderings, in the last two decades. At the same time the ideal of modernity in Indonesia has been characterized by a state-driven effort in the post-colonial era to make the institution of law an inseparable part of national development. The result has been a conception of law as a homogenous system in which the ideology of legal positivism represents the basic tool for lawmaking. This, however, has led to an impasse, seeing that pluralism and multiculturalism are in fact self-evident phenomena in the society. The state has been obliged, therefore, to accommodate these non-state normative orderings. / The discussion of Indonesian legal pluralism in this thesis focuses on understanding the state's attitude and behavior towards the three largest legal traditions currently operative in the society, i.e., adat law, Islamic law and civil law. Socio-political factors are shown to have much influenced the relations between state and non-state laws. The state's strategy of accommodation of legal pluralism has in fact largely depended on the extent to which those legal traditions have been able to conform to national ideology. Certain "national legal postulates" have functioned as a yardstick by which the country's legislative and judicial institutions have measured the extent of their accommodation of legal pluralism, although they have had little choice but to do so. / Influenced by Masaji Chiba's theory of "three levels of law" (i.e., official law, unofficial law and legal postulates), this thesis analyzes two aspects of legal pluralism in Indonesia: the political and "conflictual" domains of legal pluralism. The analysis is thus generally based on the state policy of legal pluralism reflected in the legal and political strategies confronting the issue of unofficial laws as well as the conflicts arising from such situations. The first aspect is addressed by looking at a number of statutes and regulations promulgated specifically to deal with Islamic law and adat law, while the second is analyzed in terms of actual cases of private interpersonal law arising from conflict between state and non-state legal traditions, as reflected in legislation and court decisions. From a discussion of these two aspects, the thesis concludes that, although the form of the relations between official and unofficial laws may have changed in conjunction with the socio-political situation of the country, the logic behind legal pluralism has in fact never altered, i.e., to use law as a tool of state modernism. Thus conflicts arising from the encounter between different legal traditions will usually be resolved by means of "national legal postulates," making the unofficial laws more susceptible to the state's domination of legal interpretation and resolution.

This thesis develops an interdisciplinary, theoretical framework for analyzing moments of legal pluralism in banishment cases in Samoa. In the first two chapters, select theoretical forms, discourses and practices from legal anthropology, comparative legal scholarship and law and society studies are critically analyzed. Chapter three examines the role of metaphors in theorizing legal pluralism and legal change in both comparative legal scholarship and law and society scholarship. In chapters four and five, elements that were critically analyzed in chapters one through three are drawn together and recombined to theorize legal pluralism in Samoa. As part of this recombination, I employ two metaphors to guide my analysis. Metaphor one, woven objects, is employed to represent select strands of legality existent in Samoa. Metaphor two, the weaving process, is used to analyze how people create moments of legal pluralism in Samoan banishment cases through the adoption of particular subjectivities, through articulation of legal information, and via relations of power.

Thesis (LL.M.). / Written for the Biomedical Ethics Unit, Faculty of Law. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/12/04). Includes bibliographical references.

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