In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country, Muslims struggle to reconcile radically different sets of social norms and laws, including those derived from Islam, local social norms, and contemporary ideas about gender equality and rule of law. In this study, John Bowen explores this struggle, through archival and ethnographic research in villages and courtrooms of the Aceh Province, Sumatra, and through interviews with national religious and legal figures. He analyses the social frameworks for disputes about land, inheritance, marriage, divorce, Islamic History and, more broadly, about the relationships between the state and Islam, and between Muslims and non-Muslims. The book speaks to debates carried out in all societies about how people can live together with their deep differences in values and ways of life. It will be welcomed by scholars and students across the social sciences, particularly those interested in anthropology, cultural sociology and political theory.

Prizes

Winner of Law and Society Association Herbert Jacob Book Prize 2004

'… John Bowen has presented one of the most comprehensive studies of the workings of legal pluralism in Indonesia … impressive. This is indeed a book that should be read by all interested in the origins, processes and consequences of legal pluralism in Indonesia and the problems of gender equality and justice.' Asian Anthropology
'The latest volume of Bowen's Gayo trilogy is superb anthropology.' Rezensionen

John R. Bowen is Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts and Sciences, Professor of Anthropology, and Chair of the Program in Social Thought and Analysis at Washington University, St Louis. He is the author of Sumatran Politics and Poetics (1991), Muslims through Discourse (1993), Religions through Practice, 2nd edition (2001), and the co-editor of Critical Comparisons in Politics and Culture (Cambridge, 1999).