Religion in Disputes ─ Pervasiveness of Religious Normativity in Disputing Processes

Religion manifests in an array of disputes in different geographical contexts. Here, the contributors examine such questions through case studies from Europe, the United States, Israel, Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. The conflicts range from those involving religious authorities to disputes in non-religious contexts in which actors nevertheless invoke religious rhetoric and repertoires and disputes in settings that at first sight have nothing to do with classical disputing processes, such as rituals and crisis pregnancy centers. The analyses are grounded in extensive ethnographical and historiographical research and show how different dimensions of the religious may enter into, transform, affect, and be affected by the course and outcome of dispute processes at different moments of their unfolding.

Franz von Benda-Beckmann is Research Affiliate of the Department Law and Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Until the end of 2012, he headed the Project Group Legal Pluralism together with Keebet von Benda-Beckmann. He is Professor Emeritus of Wageningen University, the Netherlands and an Honorary Professor of the Universities of Leipzig and Halle, Germany.

Keebet von Benda-Beckmann is Research Affiliate of the Department Law and Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Until the end of 2012, she headed the Project Group Legal Pluralism together with Franz von Benda-Beckmann. Before moving to Halle she held a personal chair in the anthropology of law at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is Honorary Professor of the Universities of Leipzig and Halle, Germany.

Martin Ramstedt is Senior Researcher of the Department of Law and Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Previously, he was European Science Foundation research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden, the Netherlands, and researcher at the Meertens Institute, a Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences institute in Amsterdam.

Bertram Turner is Senior Researcher of the Department of Law and Anthropolgy at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. He was Academic Assistant at the Institute of Social Anthropology and African Studies in Munich between 1993 and 2001 and has held university teaching positions at various universities.