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The attention paid to development since the early 1980s seems ironic in that during the same period, anthropology in Britain and the United States became increasingly self-absorbed with postmodernism and reflexivity. The 'development' investigated by social anthropologists generally involves directed social and economic change in a contemporary context, especially in the 'Third World', and indeed, that is the context within which all the papers in this volume are set. The anthropology of development is particularly strong in Britain and Holland, as these four volumes testify, but almost all countries in which the social anthropological tradition is established on the eastern side of the Atlantic have contributed to work in this field. A crucial element in Escobar's programme for a new type of practice is a concern with 'discourse', and anthropological studies of development discourse are among the most important contributions to work in the anthropology of development.

Controversies over the possible application of Islamic law and practice (Shari’a) in the UK have been gathering pace since the mid-2000s. In 2016 two official inquiries were set in train, one of which, chaired by Mona Siddiqui, Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies, Edinburgh University, reported in February 2018. The Siddiqui Panel focused on two principal issues: the civil registration of Islamic marriages (nikah), and the role of Shari’a councils in the issuing of a religious (not civil) divorce. The paper sets out the background to the Shari’a debate in the UK, reviews the Panel’s recommendations on the two issues, and assesses their implications.

This chapter demonstrates the multiple challenges thrown up by ethnic and cultural diversity, and the consequent problems of balancing rights and accommodating claims involving asymmetries of power. Racism and xenophobia are part of the environment in which issues about culture and cultural diversity enter into the law and the courtroom. Accommodation is a wide-ranging process operating at many levels and in many different sites, and does not only involve those engaged in legislation or in managing cases in the courtroom. Sensitization of judges and legal actors is representative of approaches which puts the onus on the receiving society and its institutions to adapt and accommodate. The concept of interlegality is consistent with anti-essentialist accounts of culture predominant in post-modern anthropology where it is seen less as a body of lore, than as a set of frequently highly contested principles and practices.

This collection brings together papers by anthropologists, political scientists and legal specialists who consider how contemporary cultural and religious diversity challenges legal practice, how legal practice responds to that challenge and how practice is changing in the encounter with the cultural diversity occasioned by large-scale, post-war immigration. Questions about cultural difference, and whether, or to what extent, such difference should be recognized by legal systems, have provoked much discussion among lawyers and others, and raise issues highly pertinent to current debates across the globe about integration, multiculturalism and the governance of diversity. They are also keenly contested. Well-documented controversies such as those over the demands of Sikhs to wear turbans or Muslim schoolgirls to wear the Islamic headscarf (hijab), over legislation to outlaw racial or religious hate-speech, or arranged and forced marriages, or about whether or not legal systems should acknowledge claims by Muslims to be able to live their lives according to shari’a principles, illustrate how contentious is the relationship between the law and diversity. Building on these recent debates, the present book seeks to contribute to theoretical and comparative accounts of the interaction of legal practice and cultural diversity by observing actual practices and interpretations which occur in jurisprudence and in public discussion, and examining how the wider environment shapes legal processes and is in turn shaped by them. The chapters are based on papers presented to a conference held in London in July 2007, sponsored by IMISCOE (the EU-funded Network of Excellence for International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion), and hosted by the Law School, Queen Mary

This introduction to the special issue entitled 'Africa<>Europe: Transnational Linkages, Multi-Sited Lives' outlines the history of the African migrant presence in Europe, gives an account of the contexts which shape contemporary migration, and surveys the approaches to international migration from Africa which have influenced researchers since the 1960s. Linking the contributions to the special issue is the theme of migrants' transnational 'double engagement' with both Africa and Europe. The paper examines this theme across three domains of the lived experience of African migrants and refugees in Europe: 'Livelihoods', 'Families', and 'Identities'. We conclude with an assessment of what can be learned (theoretically and methodologically) from the study of African transmigration, and suggest future lines of research.

Debates about the incompatibility of different ways of living are occurring in the UK as in most multicultural societies. These debates, which include diverse voices among both majority and minority ethnic populations, may be observed in public policies, the speeches of politicians and religious leaders, printed media, radio, television, the Internet, in novels, plays and films, and ethnographically in everyday conversations. One point of view, now widely expressed in Europe, is that multicultural countries have become ‘too diverse’, and the presence of communities adhering to values at odds with those of ‘Western’ secular society threaten cohesion. Focusing on the UK, the article examines what has been called a ‘cultural-diversity skeptical turn’ or ‘backlash against difference’, emphasizes the ‘fuzziness’ of the concepts involved, and proposes that the backlash should be understood inter alia in terms of the problems of the governability of what are, in a neo-liberal, transnationalized ecumene,...

There were a number of problems with the anthropology of transmigration in the 1990s which have gradually been addressed. It is now well understood that transmigration is not a singular phenomenon: there are different ways of being transnational, and transnationalism affects people in different ways—e.g. by gender. There was also a tendency to treat transmigration as a static phenomenon, whereas it is a long-term process which may be viewed, from an analytical perspective, as a trajectory, or rather as a multiplicity of potential trajectories. The paper examines these trajectories in the light of various terms such as cosmopolitan, translocal, hybrid, and l'homme des confins that have been used to characterise actors who in some sense transcend traditional boundaries. Frequently, however, these terms are employed in ways which tend to decontextualise and conflate different personal and institutional subject positionings, and in doing so analyses may overlook the extent to which transmigrants remain bound ...

Parekh and Touraine have stressed the importance of intercultural dialogue in the construction of multicultural societies. When, in 2004, the Repertory Theatre in Birmingham, UK, produced Behzti (‘Dishonour’ in Punjabi), by a British-born Sikh playwright, local Sikhs entered into a dialogue with the theatre management and tried unsuccessfully to change aspects of the play they believed offensive to their faith. A demonstration outside the theatre turned violent and the production was halted, with an international outcry against this affront to artistic licence. Although frequently represented as a Manichaean conflict between proponents of free speech and those who sought to protect religious sensibilities, the affair may not have been about, or not mainly about, the clash between religious and secular values at all. It was much more complex, with a diversity of voices and arguments that slithered between principles of liberal and religious faith, culture, gender, and ‘race’.

During 2002-3, the British Government, responding to popular moral panic about asylum-seekers, sought drastically to reduce the numbers trying to enter the country. Long-term policy aimed to process all asylum applications overseas, but meantime this had to be undertaken in dispersed induction centres in Britain itself. Proposals to create such centres invariably met with opposition from local residents. The article documents one such protest, in a suburb along the South Coast of England, demonstrates the localist and cosmopolitan discourses employed by anti- and pro-asylum-seeker groups, and considers the extent to which the former overlapped with that of the extreme right British National Party. By examining how those opposed to the centre framed their opposition and how they sought to distance themselves from charges of racism, the study explores the significance of such protests for our understanding of xenophobia in contemporary middle-class Britain and asks how their denials of racism might be interpreted.

This paper forms the introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on ‘Islam, Transnationalism, and the Public Sphere in Western Europe’. Taking as its starting point the seminal volume edited by Gerholm and Lithman—The New Islamic Presence in Western Europe (1988)—the paper reviews continuities and changes in European Muslim communities and their relationship with others. Drawing extensively on case studies based on anthropological research in four European countries (Britain, France, Germany and Italy), the paper first examines the problematic character of the category ‘Muslim’, and identifies ways in which Islam in a European context can be considered transnational. It then explores how the question of living as a Muslim in Europe is being addressed in the context of transnationalism, considers whether there is an emergent ‘European Islam’ or ‘European Muslim’ identity, and ends with consideration of the problems and prospects for Islam in European public spheres.

‘Translocal development’ refers to policies of cooperation decentralisee, which decentralise aid practices to institutions below the level of the state, especially local authorities, and stress the importance of involving institutions in both North and South so that all are jointly engaged in an enterprise of codeveloppement. Our specific concern in this paper is with projects that include transnational migrants and their associations, and we examine how they might provide space for migrant workers to integrate their own (often prior) independent, individual and collective development initiatives with those of national and local governmental and non-governmental agencies. This has been widely discussed in France under such headlines as ‘immigrants develop their country’, but hardly mentioned elsewhere. The case of Senegalese migrants in Italy, particularly those who embarked on micro-development projects aimed at their country of origin, leads us to emphasise the practical difficulties facing the implementation of such policies and the complex (micro and macro) politics in which they are embroiled. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This book focuses on the way in which public debate and legal practice intersect when it comes to the value of free speech and the need to regulate "offensive", "blasphemous" or "hate" speech, especially, though not exclusively where such speech is thought to be offensive to members of ethnic and religious minorities. The themes addressed are of great significance for contemporary societies in many parts of the world, including Europe and North America, and although the volume focuses principally on the European context, it also addresses the theme on an international level. Contributions look at the transnational intertextuality of the debate, as well as comparing approaches to regulation in different countries (notably between the European Court of Human Rights and the United States Supreme Court). This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

In this article we introduce five papers, all by social anthropologists, all concerned with transnational households and ritual. Despite wide–ranging research on transnational migration and diasporas, many aspects have been accorded less consideration than they deserve. The transnational practices of migrant families, other than remittances and other economic activity, remain under–investigated. Some thought has been given to the transnational dimension of religious belief systems, notably Islam, but the micro–politics of religion has been largely ignored, and there has been little discussion of transnational religious practices (rituals) at the level of households and families, especially those performed by migrants back in their countries of origin. Household–level analyses of the performances of and meanings attributed to life–crisis rituals and consideration of what Salih has called the ‘transnational division of ritual space’ offer a valuable route to understanding relations between place, culture, ethnicity and gender among migrants in a transnational world, and illuminate contemporary processes of globalization.

Adopting a comparative perspective, the article focuses on ethnically heterogeneous cities as sites shaped by political economy, and asks whether varieties of the plural city can be mapped against varieties of polity. Four ideotypical configurations of city, society and polity (preindustrial-patrimonial, colonial, modern-industrial-capitalist, neoliberal-postmodern-global) are discussed in terms of their modalities of ethnicity. In preindustrial-patrimonial cities, rulers were concerned less with the ethnicity of subordinate minority populations than their ability to render tribute, taxes and labour. The colonial city was grounded in the differentiation of the population in terms of supposed 'racial' distinctions. Modern-industrial-capitalist cities sought the cultural and linguistic homogeneity of their immigrant populations through assimilation, or, where certain groups ('races') were thought unassimilable, through exclusion. In the late twentieth century such cities have shifted towards postindustrial ...

This is a valuable yet frustrating collection which will enlighten and annoy readers of JEMS: enlighten because its take on African migrants’ and others’ experience of displacement, from the point ...

Contents: Legal practice and cultural diversity: introduction, Roger Ballard, Alessandro Ferrari, Ralph Grillo, Andre J. Hoekema, Marcel Maussen and Prakash Shah Cultural diversity: challenge and accommodation, Roger Ballard, Alessandro Ferrari, Ralph Grillo, Andre J. Hoekema, Marcel Maussen and Prakash Shah Indian secular pluralism and its relevance for Europe, Werner Menski Legal pluralism and differentiated morality: Shari'a in Ontario?, Veit Bader Transforming to accommodate? Reflections on the Shari'a debate in Britain, Prakash Shah Shari'a in a European context, Mathias Rohe Objection, Your Honour! Accommodating niqab-wearing women in courtrooms, Natasha Bakht The challenge of African customary laws to English legal culture, Gordon R. Woodman Religious challenges to the secularized identity of an insecure polity: a tentative sociology of Quebec's 'reasonable accommodation' debate, Jean-FranA ois Gaudreault-DesBiens Does the Dutch judiciary pluralize domestic law?, Andre J. Hoekema The influence of culture on the determination of damages: how cultural relativism affects the analysis of trauma, Alison Dundes Renteln Jews and Muslims in France changing responses to cultural and religious diversity, Martine Cohen L'affaire du foulard in the shadow of the Strasbourg court: Article 9 and the public career of the veil in France, Claire de Galembert The changing position of religious minorities in English law: the legacy of Begum, Russell Sandberg Approaches to diversity in the domestic courts: Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Samantha Knights Human rights in contexts of ethnic plurality: always a vehicle for liberation?, Roger Ballard Index.

The family lives of immigrants and ethnic minority populations have become central to arguments about the right and wrong ways of living in multicultural societies. While the characteristic cultural practices of such families have long been scrutinized by the media and policy makers, these groups themselves are beginning to reflect on how to manage their family relationships in a world where migration is a transnational piece of the pluralized global puzzle. Exploring case studies from Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Australia, The Family in Question explores how those in public policy often dangerously reflect the popular imagination, xenophobically stereotyping immigrants and their families, rather than recognizing the complex changes taking place within the global immigrant community.

This chapter analyses the circumstances surrounding the Behzti affair of December 2004, and seeking clues as to how to interpret a confrontation between the incompatible values of artistic licence and religious sensitivity. It presents two sets of views about the affair: those of Sikh elders, who stressed the play's offence, and "muscular liberals", who stressed the rights of free speech. The chapter then locates Behzti in the context of British ulticulturalism, investigating the role of what are called 'faith communities' in contemporary society and government policy, and assesses the place of law in these conflicts of secular and religious value through an examination of the arguments surrounding the UK's Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. Finally, it identifies certain similarities and differences between Behzti and other episodes, before concluding with a discussion of a possible convergence of views on the regulation of expressions of opinion about the culture. Keywords: Artistic Licence; Behzti affair; British ulticulturalism; Free Speech; Multicultural Society; muscular liberals; Religious Sensibilities

R. A. Lodge, A sociolinguistic history of Parisian French. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xi, 290. Hb $70.Detailed longitudinal studies of urban sociolinguistic change are few and far between. They are intrinsically difficult and of vast scope and pose severe theoretical and methodological problems concerning the availability and reliability of data. Lodge's survey of how the speech of Paris “has evolved hand in hand with demographic and socio-economic change” (p. 250), over some 800 years, is a largely convincing attempt to overcome these problems.

Epstein, Arnold Leonard [Bill] (1924–1999), social anthropologist, was born on 13 September 1924 at 152 Bedford Street, Liverpool, the son of Maurice Epstein (1898–1965), a travelling draper, from Liverpool, and his wife, Ethel Esther (1897–1989). Epstein, whose family came from Austrian Poland, was himself brought up in Belfast and attended the Royal Belfast Academical Institution (1938–41). He read law at the Queen's University, graduating with an LLB in 1944 before war service with the Royal Navy as a communications rating.

In spring 1965,1 the Kenya Government published its long-awaited policy statement, ‘Sessional Paper No. 10, African Socialism and its application to planning in Kenya’ (Republic of Kenya 1965). It is this document, which one observer thought ‘sounded as if it had been drafted by neither an African nor a socialist’ (‘Critic’ in Nationalist of Tanzania, 28 June 1965, cited in Odinga 1967:310), which is at the core of this chapter.

Jorgen S. Nielsen and Lisbet Christoffersen (eds), Shari’a as Discourse: Legal Traditions and the Encounter with Europe Farnham: Ashgate, 2010, 284 pp., £65.00 hb. (ISBN 978-0-7546-7955-4) Since th...

Development Anthropology: Encounters in the Real World. Riall Nolan. Cambridge: Westview Press, 2002. 345 pp.