In April, Springer Press will release “Religious Rules, State Law, and Normative Pluralism: A Comparative Overview,” edited by Rossella Bottoni (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), Rinaldo Cristofori (University of Milan), and Silvio Ferrari (University of Milan). The publisher’s description follows:
This book is devoted to the study of the interplay between religious rules and State law. It explores how State recognition of religious rules can affect the degree of 
legal diversity that is available to citizens and why such recognition sometime results in more individual and collective freedom and sometime in a threat to equality of citizens before the law. The first part of the book contains a few contributions that place this discussion within the wider debate on legal pluralism. While State law and religious rules are two normative systems among many others, the specific characteristics of the latter are at the heart of tensions that emerge with increasing frequency in many countries. The second part is devoted to the analysis of about twenty national cases that provide an overview of the different tools and strategies that are employed to manage the relationship between State law and religious rules all over the world.
analyze groups who have peacefully intermingled for generations, and who may have developed aspects of syncretism in their religious practices, and yet have turned violently on each other. Such communities define themselves as separate peoples, with different and often competing interests, yet their interaction is usually peaceable provided the dominance of one group is clear. The key indicator of dominance is control over central religious sites, which may be tacitly shared for long periods, but later contested and even converted as dominance changes. By focusing on these shared and contested sites, this volume allows for a wider understanding of relations between these communities.