This article analyzes some of the most salient features of the state and the legal system in Mozambique. I propose the concept of the heterogeneous state to highlight the breakdown of the modern equation between the unity of the state, on the one hand, and the unity of its legal and administrative operation, on the other. The centrality of legal pluralism is analyzed in light of an empirical research focused on community courts and traditional authorities. I use the concept of legal hybridization with the purpose of showing the porosity of the boundaries of the different legal orders and cultures in Mozambique and the deep cross-fertilizations or cross-contaminations among them. Special attention is given to the multicultural plurality resulting from the interaction between modern law and traditional law, the latter conceived here as an alternative modernity.

/pdf/the-heterogeneous-state-and-legal-pluralism-in-mozambique-3p76qwcewv.pdf

The Heterogeneous State and Legal Pluralism in Mozambique

(1998). Ideological Combat and Social Observation. The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law: Vol. 30, No. 42, pp. 21-59.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07329113.1998.10756513

Ideological Combat and Social Observation

Contents: Law, politics and society in the post-modern condition Dynamic legal pluralism Muslim legal pluralisms Muslim legal pluralism in England Muslim legal pluralism in Turkey Muslim legal pluralism in Pakistan Post-modern Muslim legality and its consequences Looking to the future Bibliography Index.

Muslim Laws, Politics and Society in Modern Nation States: Dynamic Legal Pluralisms in England, Turkey and Pakistan

Twenty-four years ago Henry Morris and Jim Read, in Indirect Rule and the Search for Justice, provided a wealth of illuminating information about the history of the legal systems of the East African colonial states. But an even greater merit of their book than its detailed data is its coherence and depth of analysis. These result from their adherence to a constant reference point, the “search for justice”. This concept may still be useful in the study of law in Africa today.

Legal Pluralism and the Search for Justice

China and Islam examines the intersection of two critical issues of the contemporary world: Islamic revival and an assertive China, questioning the assumption that Islamic law is incompatible with state law. It finds that both Hui and the Party-State invoke, interpret, and make arguments based on Islamic law, a minjian (unofficial) law in China, to pursue their respective visions of 'the good'. Based on fieldwork in Linxia, 'China's Little Mecca', this study follows Hui clerics, youthful translators on the 'New Silk Road', female educators who reform traditional madrasas, and Party cadres as they reconcile Islamic and socialist laws in the course of the everyday. The first study of Islamic law in China and one of the first ethnographic accounts of law in postsocialist China, China and Islam unsettles unidimensional perceptions of extremist Islam and authoritarian China through Hui minjian practices of law.

/pdf/china-and-islam-the-prophet-the-party-and-law-1uf0nym7c0.pdf

China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law

Legal Pluralism: Toward a General Theory Through Japanese Legal Culture . By Masaji Chiba. Tokyo: Tokai University Press, 1989. xii, 236 pp. ¥7,000. (Distributed by Maruzen, P.O. Box 5050, Tokyo International 100–31, Japan)

Masaji Chiba

Papers

Legal Pluralism: Toward a General Theory Through Japanese Legal Culture . By Masaji Chiba. Tokyo: Tokai University Press, 1989. xii, 236 pp. ¥7,000. (Distributed by Maruzen, P.O. Box 5050, Tokyo International 100–31, Japan)