ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues the effects of use or non-use patterns extend to a much wider range of people and noticeably impinge on the more general understanding of what law is and what it is expected to do. It ignites a looping effect whereby the legal categories that are conjured to account for certain facts affect the identity and self-perception of those who mobilize those categories. The book shows that there are ways of using law that remarkably reduce law's obliquity and even promote creative transformations in the body of law. It focuses on lesbians', gays' and bisexuals' claims to legal recognition of their unions, and more generally on how the transformation of family and kinship practices is being tackled by the law. The book identifies ways of conceiving the plurality of legal orders that escape such a conceptual trap.
