Demonstrating how users of law, who often operate in multi-sited situations, are forced to deal with increasingly complex legal circumstances, this volume focuses on political and social processes through which people appropriate, use and create legal forms in multiple legal settings. It provides new insights into social and political processes through which transnational law is locally appropriated by different actors and presents empirical studies of confrontation, adaptation, vernacularization and hybridization of law due to its transplantation across the borders of national states. The contributors offer insights into modern dynamics of legal change, challenging assumptions about increasing homogeneity in law, with a keen eye for the historical situations in which current legal changes stand.

'Anthropologists, lawyers, sociolegal scholars and human rights advocates will find here highly current projects on the new conflicts, idioms, purposes, institutions, partnerships and risks emergent from the ground-level effects of globalization, as these are registered through law. Thematically, regionally and methodologically varied, the essays - together with the editors' critical synthesis of the field - yield a thoughtful provocation toward a new legal anthropology.' Carol Greenhouse, Princeton University, USA '...the focus is commendable...the essays are well-written and represent the results of extensive field research.' The Law and Politics Book Review

Franz von Benda-Beckmann and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann are both Professors and Project Directors at Legal Pluralism, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Dr Anne Griffiths is Reader in Law for the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh, UK.