ABSTRACT
Plurality is the defining epistemological attribute of the postmodern. Admittedly, the cultural identity of families is determined by a plethora of social processes. Constructivist analysis makes these imagined evidences visible. Within European societies today, diverging legal concepts, understandings and notions of family often collide, so that family-law theory and practice may encounter conflicts of cultures and norms. Islamic law has a part to play in the application of law in European countries, because private international law refers to it and accords it applicability. In the 'post-national' and 'post-secular' society which Habermas postulates, attempting to use national borders to decide the relevant context for the determination of identity ultimately amounts to legal reductionism. In Europe, increasing convergence in substantive family law has been accompanied by a gradual erosion of the importance accorded to marital status. Legal anthropology teaches us that social space is not a normative vacuum.
