Embracing Eclecticism

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Studies in Law, Politics, and Society

ISSN: 1059-4337
Series editor(s): Professor Austin Sarat

Subject Area: Sociology and Public Policy

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Document Information:
Title:	Embracing Eclecticism
Author(s):	Patricia Ewick
Volume:	41 Editor(s): Austin Sarat ISBN: 978-0-7623-1460-7 eISBN: 978-1-84950-511-6
Citation:	Patricia Ewick (2007), Embracing Eclecticism, in Austin Sarat (ed.) Special Issue Law and Society Reconsidered (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Volume 41), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.1-18
DOI:	10.1016/S1059-4337(07)00001-4 (Permanent URL)
Publisher:	Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Article type:	Chapter Item
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.