Michael G. Peletz's Books

Sharia Transformations

Cultural Politics and the Rebranding of an Islamic Judiciary

By: Michael G. Peletz

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Sharia Transformations

Cultural Politics and the Rebranding of an Islamic Judiciary

By: Michael G. Peletz

Few symbols in today’s world are as laden and fraught as sharia—an Arabic-origin term referring to the straight path, the path God revealed for humans, the norms and rules guiding Muslims on that path, and Islamic law and normativity as enshrined in sacred texts or formal statute. Yet the ways in which Muslim men and women experience the myriad dimensions of sharia often go unnoticed and unpublicized. So too do recent historical changes in sharia judiciaries and contemporary strategies on the part of political and religious elites, social engineers, and brand stewards to shape, solidify, and rebrand these institutions. Sharia Transformations is an ethnographic, historical, and theoretical study of the practice and lived entailments of sharia in Malaysia, arguably the most economically successful Muslim-majority nation in the world. The book focuses on the routine everyday practices of Malaysia’s sharia courts and the changes that have occurred in the court discourses and practices in recent decades. Michael G. Peletz approaches Malaysia’s sharia judiciary as a global assemblage and addresses important issues in the humanistic and social-scientific literature concerning how Malays and other Muslims engage ethical norms and deal with law, social justice, and governance in a rapidly globalizing world.

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Page Count

307

Publisher

University of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520339924

ISBN 13

9780520339927

Gender Pluralism

Southeast Asia Since Early Modern Times

By: Michael G. Peletz

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Gender Pluralism

Southeast Asia Since Early Modern Times

By: Michael G. Peletz

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2009! This book examines three big ideas: difference, legitimacy, and pluralism. Of chief concern is how people construe and deal with variation among fellow human beings. Why under certain circumstances do people embrace even sanctify differences, or at least begrudgingly tolerate them, and why in other contexts are people less receptive to difference, sometimes overtly hostile to it and bent on its eradication? What are the cultural and political conditions conducive to the positive valorization and acceptance of difference? And, conversely, what conditions undermine or erode such positive views and acceptance? This book examines pluralism in gendered fields and domains in Southeast Asia since the early modern era, which historians and anthropologists of the region commonly define as the period extending roughly from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

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Page Count

688

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1135954887

ISBN 13

9781135954888

Islamic Modern

Religious Courts and Cultural Politics in Malaysia

By: Michael G. Peletz

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Islamic Modern

Religious Courts and Cultural Politics in Malaysia

By: Michael G. Peletz

How do Islamic courts work? What sorts of cultural understandings inform judicial process and litigants' strategies? How do women's claims fare? Do these courts promote social tolerance? And how do states use them to consolidate power, build nations, and shape a modern citizenry? These are among the questions addressed in this book, which not only enhances our understanding of diversity among and within the world's Muslim communities, but also provides ethnographic, historical, and transnational perspectives on contemporary Islam in the shifting landscape of a strategically important region of the world. Focusing on Malaysia, which has sustained more rapid development than probably any other Muslim nation, Michael Peletz explores the culture, political economy, and history of Islamic courts. He demonstrates that they are centrally involved in the creation and policing of new Malay-Muslim identities (such as middle-class urban dwellers) that the state sees as the basis for a national polity that will be highly competitive. He also shows how and why Islamic courts are key sites in struggles involving ethnic and religious groups, social classes, political parties, and others with a major stake in defining Islam's role with respect to the maintenance of sovereignty and the achievement of modernity and civil society in an age of globalization. Peletz deepens our knowledge of Islamic political development in a country very much concerned with forging an Islamic modernity viewed by its leaders as a viable alternative to Western-style modernization.

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Page Count

360

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691187452

ISBN 13

9780691187457

Reason and Passion

Representations of Gender in a Malay Society

By: Michael G. Peletz

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Reason and Passion

Representations of Gender in a Malay Society

By: Michael G. Peletz

This book provides a historical and ethnographic examination of gender relations in Malay society, in particular in the well-known state of Negeri Sembilan, famous for its unusual mixture of Islam and matrilineal descent. Peletz analyzes the diverse ways in which the evocative, heavily gendered symbols of "reason" and "passion" are deployed by Malay Muslims. Unlike many studies of gender, this book elucidates the cultural and political processes implicated in the constitution of both feminine and masculine identity. It also scrutinizes the relationship between gender and kinship and weighs the role of ideology in everyday life. Peletz insists on the importance of examining gender systems not as social isolates, but in relation to other patterns of hierarchy and social difference. His study is historical and comparative; it also explores the political economy of contested symbols and meanings. More than a treatise on gender and social change in a Malay society, this book presents a valuable and deeply interesting model for the analysis of gender and culture by addressing issues of hegemony and cultural domination at the heart of contemporary cultural studies. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.

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Page Count

416

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520326873

ISBN 13

9780520326873

A Share of the Harvest

Kinship, Property, and Social History Among the Malays of Rembau

By: Michael G. Peletz

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A Share of the Harvest

Kinship, Property, and Social History Among the Malays of Rembau

By: Michael G. Peletz

The inhabitants of the Malaysian state of Negeri Sembilan have long been of interest to outside observers. They are Muslims yet they have matrilineal clans, and both houses and land tend to be owned and inherited by women. In the face of British rule, modern market forces, and Islamic nationalism, the Malays of the Rembau district of Negeri Sembilan have succeeded in retaining many features of their matrilineality. Michael Peletz examines persistence and change in the social organization of these Malays in the period 1830 to 1980.

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