A. Dynastic Realms and Secular States: Introduction

Extract

The conference began with a discussion of law and religion and four days later ended with a discussion of concepts of rights in Southeast Asia. The merging of the two topics in this symposium issue reflects a recognition that both concern questions of social order, political legitimacy, sovereignty, personhood, and belief. It reflects as well a recognition that the topics have a single history. As Frank Reynolds observes (with some understatement) in the essay that begins this part, religion as a cultural system and law as a cultural system “overlap and interact in many very different and complicated ways.”