Sociology

Embracing Eclecticism

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Since its emergence as a field of study, law and society scholarship has grown to encompass an array of disciplines, perspectives, methods, and political orientations. A consequence of this disciplinary hypostatization has been to produce a scholarly goulash which, while at times nourishing, now faces the dual dangers of institutional fracture and intellectual incoherence. The aim of this essay is to map a way to embrace the eclecticism that characterizes the field and yet avoid the dangers of dilettantism and to cultivate the interdisciplinarity its founders envisioned without sacrificing a sense of shared purpose or abandoning the possibility of collectively producing a better understanding of law. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Publication Title

Studies in Law Politics and Society

Publication Date

12-4-2007

Volume

41

First Page

1

Last Page

18

ISBN

9780762314607

DOI

10.1016/S1059-4337(07)00001-4

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