Embracing Eclecticism

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.

Citation

Ewick, P. (2007), "Embracing Eclecticism", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Special Issue Law and Society Reconsidered (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 41), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(07)00001-4