chapter 1 Introduction
part Part I The state and its attributes
chapter 2 Human rights talk and anthropological ambivalence The particular contexts of universal claims
chapter 3 Vigilantism Order and disorder on the frontiers of the state
chapter 4 Trading in ambiguity Law, rights and realities in the distribution of land in northern Mozambique
part Part II Sexuality and legitimacy
chapter 5 The law and the market rhetorics of exclusion and inclusion among London prostitutes
chapter 6 In praise of bastards the uncertainties of mestizo identity in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Andes
part Part III The complicity of religion and state
chapter 7 Living their lives in courts the counter-hegemonic force of the Tswana kgotla in a colonical context
chapter 8 A public flogging in south-western Iran juridical rule, abolition of legality and local resistence
chapter 9 Which centre, whose margin? Notes towards an archaeology of US Supreme Court Case 91-948, 1993(Church of the Lukumi vs. City of Hialeah, South Florida).