Social Difference and Constitutionalism in Pan-Asia (Comparative Constitutional Law and Policy)
Cambridge University Press, 2/10/2014
EAN 9781107036277, ISBN10: 1107036275
Hardcover, 368 pages, 23.1 x 15.7 x 2.3 cm
Language: English
In many countries, social differences, such as religion or race and ethnicity, threaten the stability of the social and legal order. This book addresses the role of constitutions and constitutionalism in dealing with the challenge of difference. The book brings together lawyers, political scientists, historians, religious studies scholars, and area studies experts to consider how constitutions address issues of difference across 'Pan-Asia', a wide swath of the world that runs from the Middle East, through Asia, and into Oceania. The book's multidisciplinary and comparative approach makes it unique. The book is organized into five sections, each devoted to constitutional approaches to a particular type of difference - religion, ethnicity/race, urban/rural divisions, language, and gender and sexual orientation - in two or more countries in Pan Asia. The introduction offers a framework for thinking comprehensively about the many ways constitutionalism interacts with difference.
Part I. Language
1. Negotiating differences
India's language policy Benjamin B. Cohen
2. Constitution and language in post-independence Central Asia William Fierman
Part II. Urban/Rural
3. Dreams of redemption
localist strategies of political reform in the Philippines Paul Hutchcroft
4. Constitutional rights and dialogic process in socialist Vietnam
protecting rural-to-urban migrants' rights without a constitutional court Huong Nguyen
Part III. Ethnicity and Race
5. Asymmetrical federalism in Burma David C. Williams
6. Hu wants something new
discourse and the deep structure of Minzu policies in China Gardner Bovingdon
Part IV. Religion
7. Sectarian visions of the Iraqi state
irreconcilable differences? Feisal Amin Rasoul al-Istrabadi
8. Constitutionalism and religious difference in Israel (and a brief passage to Malaysia) Ran Hirschl
Part V. Gender and Sexuality
9. Australia's gendered constitutional history and future Kim Rubenstein and Christabel Richards-Neville
10. Islamic feminism(s)
promoting gender egalitarianism and challenging constitutional constraints Asma Afsaruddin
11. India, Nepal, and Pakistan
a unique South Asian constitutional discourse on sexual orientation and gender identity Sean Dickson and Steve Sanders.