The product of a collaboration between leading theorists in law and anthropology, this book develops an innovative analysis of legal practices. Specifically, it focuses on how law constructs persons and things, and develops new approaches to the question of ownership. These approaches are of particular value in understanding the cultural impact of biotechnology. At the same time, they illuminate the history of Western law, and develop thought-provoking comparisons between Western law and Islamic law.

Was ""modernity"" in the Middle East merely imported piecemeal from the West? Did Ottoman society really consist of islands of sophistication in a sea of tribal conservatism, as has so often been claimed? In this groundbreaking new book, Martha Mundy and Richard Saumarez Smith draw on over a decade of primary source research to argue that, contrary to popular belief, a distinctively Ottoman process of modernization was achieved by the end of the nineteenth century with great social consequences for all who lived through it. Modernization touched women as intimately as men: the authors'...