© Copyright 2010 – Birgit Bräuchler. - 1 - THE REVIVAL DILEMMA: REFLECTIONS ON HUMAN RIGHTS, SELF-DETERMINATION AND LEGAL PLURALISM IN EASTERN INDONESIA 1 Birgit Bräuchler Anthropologists analyse competing legal registers, each with its own historical trajectory and historical consequences. They view legal pluralism in the light of historical struggles over sovereignty, nationhood and legitimacy (Vincent 2002: 332). Introduction For many reasons, Indonesia provides excellent case studies to discuss the complexity and contradictions of current debates on human rights and cultural self- determination: the country’s fragmented and multi-ethnic composition, its political transformation during the last decade, its role in the ‘Asian values’ debate and its 1 I would like to thank the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, for supporting this research project and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) and the Van Vollenhoven Institute in Leiden for providing me the opportunity to discuss and revise a draft version of this paper. I also thank Franz von Benda-Beckmann and Gordon Woodman for their inspiring feedback and valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier version.