Every society has an energy profile, that is, an array of energy sources, ranging in complexity from human power to nuclear fusion, that can be ranked according to their relative importance to that society. From about 4000 BE onward, animal muscle power becomes integrated into the energy profiles of many societies. The forms this integration takes include riding, carrying burdens, pulling wheeled vehicles and sleighs, operating mills and irrigation devices, and pulling plows, threshing sleds,...

Spanning Malaysia’s post-independence period, and using the repression-mobilization nexus as a key theoretical framework, this study outlines how its Christian community delicately and simultaneously defends its religious rights without being construed as anti-Islam in the face of state-led “Islamization”. By primarily focusing on the 1980s to the contemporary period, while considering subnational differences between East and West Malaysia, this study charts the changes in the community...

This book deals with non-conformist aspects of Sufism, and other antinomian movements in the Persianate cultural areas. The chapters cover a variety of subjects, ranging from gender and the role of women in Islamic mysticism, to genuine versus sham piety, belief versus unbelief, the notion of metempsychosis (tanāsukh) in the mystical philosophy of Shihāb al-Dīn Suhravardī, and the influential role of the Persian sage ʿUmar Khayyām in religious discussions on piety in Persia, and his rec...

The book outlines a dramatic history of the failed liberalization of Japanese private law during the Meiji era. Once Japan overthrew the shogunate and fully opened up to contact with the world, modernization of the backward country and its fragmented customary legal system became a crucial objective of the new ruling elites. The initiated codification of law included the drafting of the first Civil Code, designed to revolutionize the traditional societal ties in Japan. The legal project, seem...