This paper describes the work that jurists, prosecutors, judges and experts had to carry out – sometimes paying with their own life – to defend the thesis that the mafia actually exists. It underlines the effects of this assertion for the ‘moral economy’ of Italian society. The paper starts with a historical reconstruction of the process that led to a legal definition of the mafia as a ‘criminal association’ in September 1982. This juridical recognition was the precondition to any possible trial against this particular secret society. It then analyzes the judicial viability of this initial definition – known as the ‘Buscetta Theorem’ from the name of the former member of the mafia who eventually revealed its structure to the Italian prosecutors – which focused on the organized and centralized nature of the mafia, and the subsequent adjustments of this original formulation to the diffused nature of the mafia phenomenon, producing new penal categories that redefine the boundaries between legal and illegal worlds. The ongoing debates about this definition within Italian society shed a light onto the limits of what can or cannot be accepted within a democratic society.

The author of this paper, a Nobel Laureate in Literature (2008), develops here a plea in favour of the practice of interculturality. He takes the case of its family's historic birthplace, the Island of Mauritius, as an example of intercultural human coexistence, and analyses its achievements, challenges, and possible developments in today's world.

Every year, traditional Balami woodcutters, living on the edge of the Katmandu valley, in Nepal, offer ritual dramatic performances to the people of the surrounding villages. Among these, the small town of Pharping. These performances stage traditional royal sequences. Over the years, changes took place in the plot. Comic dimension fits alongside the more dramatic aspects of these stories. Emotions expressed by the comedians play a critical role in the drama, particularly when it comes to the tears wept by the princesses who witness their husbands’ death. The play is highly structured and codified; religious beliefs are embedded in it. These pieces end with animal sacrifices that took place on stage. Derived from the classical Newar theatre of the Malla era (17th-18th centuries), they are the product of a persistent combination of popular traditions with learned literature.

It was in February 1935 that Lévi-Strauss went to Brazil to teach sociology at the newly founded University of São Paolo. In the stimulating atmosphere of the city soon he struck up a friendship with the founders of Brazilian modernism, in particular with Mário de Andrade, the central figure of the avant-garde movement, who helped the young researcher to finance his expeditions into the Mato Grosso and the Amazon Rainforest. Twenty years later Lévi-Strauss wrote about this period in Brazil, after having encountered other cultures and having made other experiences. The highly reflexive narrative of Tristes Tropiques contains most of the topics which return in his later works and about which the authors of this volume have pondered from different perspectives. This introductory text reconstructs the principal stages of Lévi-Strauss’ enterprises in Brazil and illustrates how his departure for the New World became the start of a great career.

The greater interconnectivity and interdependence unleashed by globalization are not creating a more harmonious, cosmopolitan humanity. On the contrary, the more global the world becomes, the more insistent particular differences, especially of the nationalist kind, are being articulated around the world, often leading to tension and conflict. This seeming paradox cannot be reconciled through simple mantras of ‘unity in diversity’. Rhetorical references to ‘a single humanity’ to overcome structurally entrenched divisions (as institutionalized in the world system of nation-states) are not sufficient for the attainment of greater pan-human solidarity. In response to this predicament this paper argues for a processual cosmopolitan perspective, in which a humanistic universalism should not be seen as a static moral ideal, but as a social and political horizon that must be worked towards, but probably never achieved, through a painstaking and continuing process of cosmopolitanization against the grain of powerful modes of particularist closure.

The phenomenon of Public Interest Litigation (PIL) is a judicially crafted one and primarily consists of the constitutional court's expansion of fundamental rights on the one hand, and procedural innovations to create better opportunities for disadvantaged groups to gain access to the legal system on the other. It has created a renewed conception of justice, and has enabled the court to augment and validate its own authority as the ‘guardian’ of public welfare, and as the constitutionally appointed branch of the state to enforce the rights of the ‘public’. PIL at one level appears to have enabled the justice system and laws to define and shape social and political interactions and to channelize democratic pressures for gaining a response from the state. But it has also been a process by which law and justice emerge from social and political interaction. This new interaction between the realm of judicial decision making and state governance has created adjustments and adaptations and the creation of new legal acts, as well as systemic tensions and conflicts. The paper concludes by looking at broader questions that PIL generates for processes of civic participation, representative democracy and democratic polity under the constitution.

The Afghan normative scenario is composed of customary practices, shari’a principles, laws promulgated by the state and international law. Studies on this arsenal tend to give special attention to the coexistence and/or clashing of different sources of law, but they usually overlook the interrelations that are created through the merging of values, norms and socially recognised customary practices. In particular, little attention has been given to the role that customs play within the judicial structure. A dichotomous perspective has thus prevailed in the history of law in Afghanistan, where ‘formal justice’ is opposed to ‘informal justice’, and where there have been few attempts to observe how the merging of different normative reference systems engenders normative syncretisms and forms of negotiated justice. In this article, after examining the key transition points in the legal history of Afghanistan, I will attempt to show that there is an important customary component in the justice's implementation of Kabul's tribunals, its principal aim being to legitimise the work of judges. An analysis of the current situation, informed by ethnographic research conducted in Kabul beginning in 2005, cannot be understood without a historical retrospective that takes account of the important politico-legal changes that have taken place over the past hundred and fifty years, which have been punctuated by multiple reforms and tumultuous regime changes.

This article develops the idea that Lévi-Strauss’ thought was shaped all at once in the encounter with structural linguistics. Nevertheless, Lévi-Strauss's readers know that his writings show blunt passages from a level of discourse that refers to the project of scientific modernity (accretion of knowledge and pursuit of generality) to one announcing the dissolution of culture into physicochemical phenomena (here defined as ultramodern level), and from these two to a language usually defined as “literary”. The latter corresponds to a language which articulates the themes of loss, memory, yearning for the primitive, the concerns about the demographic and environmental transformations of the planet, and an “exaggerated” contact of cultures: themes which all persist in Lévi-Strauss’ thought since its shaping as a “structuralist” one, which have been highly controversial and that could be defined as “antimodern”. Accordingly, this article tries to produce a reading of Lévi-Strauss’ work as articulated on three levels, which persist in Lévi-Strauss's thought since its early structuralist formation: three “musical staffs” on which his modernity, ultra-modernity and anti-modernity seem all to flow at the same time.

The notion of subjectivity with which the argument will be carried out may be defined as our ability to reflect critically, to think creatively and to act resolutely in our relation to society and nature. Some essential marks of subjectivity are illustrated through an example taken from rescue operation conducted in the fall of 2010 for the miners trapped in deep underground at the San Jose mine site in Chile for 69 days. With the science and technology applied in constructing the drilling rigs and making the capsule which lifted up the trapped miners to freedom, ingenuity, the resilient sense of mission and perseverance of the rescue personnel, and the purposeful solidarity among the trapped miners are among the decisive factors contributing to the successful accomplishment of the rescue undertaking.

At this critical juncture of the current global economic downturn, it is consequential for us to bring ourselves to reflecting on the seriousness of the predicament which all humanity is in. It is indeed time for the intellectuals to rise up to share responsibility in keeping our world sustainable by setting purposive and resolute subjectivity before themselves and coming forward to tenaciously find ways toward renewing ourselves as well as toward the continuing betterment of humanity.

The essay seeks to vindicate the importance of the humanities or liberal arts deriving from their crucial contribution to the “humanization of humanity”. This vindication is timely in view of the wide-spread curtailment of humanistic or liberal education in many institutions of higher learning. It is also timely as a pedagogical antidote to the fascination with violence in our world (which often culminates in “crimes against humanity”). In a first step, the paper traces the historical development of the humanities or liberal arts in the West. Next, I highlight some crucial features of humanistic education: the emphasis on ethical and character formation; the fine-tuning of moral judgment; and the cultivation of a sensus communis. Another central feature is that such education offers a counterpoint to the overwhelming preoccupation today with career training and utilitarian objectives. In the words of Martha Nussbaum: it is “not for profit”, but serves an intrinsic good. In this respect, humanistic pedagogy bears a close affinity to the needed education for democracy and world citizenship.

According to the author, the most important lesson of Claude Lévi-Strauss at the epistemological level is the interpretation of anthropology as a transversal knowledge: its innovative definition of structure goes in this direction. The failure of its structuralism is however due to a strong and intolerable reduction of the wealth of aspects and dimensions of the ethnographic experience and the purpose to predispose a frame of limited possibilities (closed system). The author proposes to rehabilitate the thesis of anthropology as a transversal (cross-cultural) knowledge resorting to Wittgenstein's idea of family resemblances: a flexible approach (open system) that fits the needs and characteristics of anthropological research.

This article is about the Indian Evidence Act. It explains how evidence is the script that carries law's unconscious. One one hand, evidence is the site of reason, and on the other hand it is the performative site of the unconscious. The operation of the Evidence Act requires a court, arguments, ways of producing evidence, counter-arguments, scrutiny of the nature of the evidence submitted, and finally the disputation around what constitutes an evidence – and then the judgement. This article argues, through a brief presentation of the history of the Act, how law in this way combines the normative and the performative – science of inquiry and the unpredictable script of the outcome, procedure and the spectacle built around elements such as live deposition and the hermeneutic power of the image, rational considerations and emotion, virtuality and the event, serious business in the court and the element of drama. The article suggests (with a bit of irony) the injunction that to see what law is and how it functions we can go to the cinema, and to see what cinema is we can go to the court.

This paper shows how, in the French Assizes Courts, the accusation of foreign defendants (here, mainly Sri Lankans) and the verbal exchanges with them during their trial reveal the implicit codes and presuppositions that govern the French judiciary system. Through an analysis of the part that the language plays in court, and hence the importance of interpreters, this paper will consider the emotions that are revealed during the trial and the role assigned to ‘culture’. It will conclude that the two requirements of equality before the law and of individualization of punishment are often in contradiction.

The present moment in human history is marked by the ever-accelerating movement across the world of materials, peoples and information, creating various problems and, of course, opportunities as well – especially, the movement of the people, which makes multiculturalism a major issue. Differences between the immigrants and the receiving society create conflict. One solution would be found in the legal provision for the equality of rights for all the members of society, including cultural minorities, but if the legal solution alone is considered effective, there would be waste of resources accumulated in cultures as enabling agents of amenable human life. But multiple cultures in a single society easily become a source of conflict, as another culture encroaching upon one's own culture is often felt as a threatening challenge to one's identity, as identity is constructed in the subjective process of culture. It implies the master-and-slave struggle between two subjectivities. Cultural subjectivities, personal or collective, could be induced to constitute a complex system of federated subjectivities. Even such a system would not, however, completely eliminate tension and conflict. Intervention by an ethic universally conceived on the minimal basis would meet the urgent need to prevent escalation of conflict, but it would ultimately prepare a common ground for the development of a global culture incorporating multiple cultures as historically inherited resources for enrichment of human life. Ethical awareness is what reveals the otherness of the other and also the ontological ground of human life on earth; as ethics and epistemology coincide, a human reason would emerge as the ground of a new global culture, and the world would hopefully become a single Lebensraum for entire humanity.

In this paper the affiliation of Lévi-Strauss with the functional structuralism of Trubetzkoy and Jakobson is defined as “explicit linguistics” and the consonance with the works of Franz Boas is also thrown into relief. As “implicit linguistics” is defined his accurate attention to lexical facts, in the case of questions of nomenclature and in particular of the terminology of kinship. As this regards, Lévi-Strauss perfectly captures not only the differences between linguistic systems and anthropological systems, but also their respective integration. In this way he comes to surmount the model itself of the functional structuralism of a certain linguistics which is too predictive. Finally, in homage to the great scholar, two examples are proposed of the integration of linguistics “without adjectives” and anthropology “without adjectives” in relation to the etymology of gr. anthropos, seen from the point of view of a specific sociolinguistic hierarchy and within the frame of the Indo-Mediterranea area, and of the Indo-European name of the woman of marriageable age (gr. gyné) seen in the perspective of the innovative conditions of exogamous marriage.

Since January 2004, violent conflicts in the deep South of Thailand have caused 4,453 deaths, 7,239 injuries in 10,386 violent incidents. The numbers are increasing every day. Myriads of studies, strategies and proposals have been put forth to address and redress this deep-rooted problem. This paper is a modest attempt to find analysis and inspiration from the rich cultural resources of Buddhism to address the question of conflict and conflict transformation in Thai society.

The Buddhist “Genesis” or The Agganna-sutta has been analyzed by Thai and Western Buddhist scholars as offering an allegorical tale which details a long, inter-dependent process of human beings’ moral degradation on the one hand, and socio-political evolution on the other. This is considered to be the Buddhist equivalent of the Genesis without God.

This paper offers a re-reading of this important sutta as a narrative of conflict and conflict transformation. It argues that the personal conflict of the two young Brahmins aspiring to be fully ordained is transcended and transformed by the Buddha's allegorical tale of human socio-political evolution. This paper offers an analysis of the narration and demonstrates that in the narrating process, the Buddha was “substituting” the Hindu creation myth with the Discourse on What is Primary (Agganna-sutta). This narrative replacement subverts the deep-rooted cultural force of the Hindu creation myth which serves as a cosmological justification for a hierarchy of classes/castes in the social world. Once the creation Hindu myth is de-mythologized, the structure of meaning for the personal conflict of the two Brahmins evaporates. In this way, the Buddha's approach to conflict transformation addresses three dimensions simultaneously, namely, the personal, the socio-political and the cosmological.

This re-reading is one paradigmatic example of how to revitalize Buddhism to function as an agent of social transformation by offering a Buddhist creative approach to conflict transformation.

Citizen participation in Chinese justice may take the shape of assessors sitting alongside professional judges, or, as it is sometimes the case on an experimental basis, of the introduction of a people's jury in local courts. Yet, these forms of participation do not alter the fundamental features of Chinese governance: the lack of legal autonomy of law, and the lack of independence of judges with respect to the political authority. These remain the main obstacles to the extablishment of the rule of law in China. In fact, the changes in the system of assessors and jurors have failed to legitimate the judicial power through participation and transparency. Experience has shown, on the contrary, that assessors and jurors remain fully subordinate to professional judges, who continue to have the controlling hand over the justice system. Nevertheless Chinese citizens, along with the parties involved in trials, are not duped by such arrangements. Once the limits of the practical utility of assessors and jurors becomes apparent, the question of the relationship between the people and judicial authority will inevitably be posed anew. The reply to the question will be even more pressing, since it will no longer be possible to use the same subterfuge. That is why citizen participation in justice is so crucial in a China in search of democracy.