Contestations Over Indigenous Participation in Bolivia's Extractive Industry: Ideology, Practices, and Legal Norms

The participatory rights of indigenous peoples have been at the center of conflicts over resource extraction, which have recently increased in number and intensity across Latin America. Using comprehensive empirical data about the Guaraníes' participation in Bolivia's gas sector, this study finds that competing claims regarding territory, property, participation, and decision making provide important explanations for contestations over consultation practices and legal norms in the country. It argues that the main conflicts can be explained by (1) the Bolivian state's focus on directly affected communities and those with formally recognized land titles, something that clashes with the Guaraníes' principle of "territorial integrity"; (2) the state's conviction that it holds a monopoly over subsoil resources, and the limited rights to participation that it is willing to grant as a consequence, which the Guaraníes reject; and (3) the dissonance between state customs and regulations and Guaraní uses and customs

[En]gendering the norms of customary inheritance in Botswana and South Africa

The article responds to the article by Weinberg in this issue. She traces the trajectory of court hearings concerning the contested inheritance of land in Botswana, which, after several prior judgements eventually resulted in a positive outcome for the woman litigants. I acknowledge the author’s key argument, which concerns the impact of power relations on the construction of customary law and the reproduction of knowledge in the courts. Certain versions of “custom” were promoted and others stilled to the disadvantage of women. I argue that the normative patterns of landholding are indeed gendered, but do not result in a binary structure of men and women. “Gender” should be disaggregated to take into account a range of status criteria within and across the categories of male and female in order to understand the differential impact of social relations on the outcomes of property struggles. The normative lines of property transmission frequently follow a logic of “family property” that allows for qualifying women to rights of property. Family property has vastly different social and legal consequences to private, individualised property rights. The corollary is that it is misleading to speak of the processes of succession to rights of access to, and control of customary property in terms of one-to-one “inheritance” of land. The concept of “living law” inadequately reflects these social dynamics.IBS

Transformasi politik dan hukum di Indonesia : nagari dari kolonisasi hingga desentralisasi

Buku Transformasi Politik dan Hukum: Nagari di Sumatra Barat dari Kolonisasi ke Desentralisasi adalah kajian jangka panjang tentang perubahan historis kesatuan politik nagari di Minangkabau, hubungan kepemilikan, dan relasi yang selalu dinamis antara hukum adat matrilineal Minangkabau, hukum Islam, dan hukum negara. Meskipun fokus utama buku ini adalah periode setelah kejatuhan Presiden Suharto pada 1998, buku ini menelusuri jejak panjang sejarah perubahan politik dan hukum sebelum dan setelah kemerdekaan Indonesia ketika kelanjutan dan perubahan menjadi hal yang sama pentingnya. Buku yang ditulis oleh dua intelektual terkemuka dari Institut Max Planck ini juga mengungkapkan proses transnasional yang menyebarkan dan memberikan makna baru pada gagasan politik dan hukum. Pendekatan melalui berbagai ruang waktu sejarah ini menjadi penting dalam diskusi lebih luas tentang hubungan antara antropologi dan sejarah, pembentukan hukum adat, konstruksi identitas, dan antropologi kolonialisme.xxxii, 544 hlm. : 24 c

»Nicht mehr« und »noch nicht«

Traditional forms of solidarity, especially those deriving from family structures, have been widely considered obsolete and as an impediment to economic development, especially in the context of third-world development and social politics, and have thus been replaced by governmental forms of social security. In the meantime Europe seems to be moving in the opposite direction: here the social (welfare) state is being dismantled, since the level of welfare benefits and claims on the economy seem to be causing an economic decline. The essay treats facts and assumptions about the importance of family-solidarity in the social politics of third world countries and attempts to establish a connection with the debates in Europe on the relation between the state and traditional forms of solidarity