ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to create a space for a conversation to take place inside disciplines as well as across them, with the final aim of creating bridges between different accounts and perspectives of hybridity and hybridization. It also aims to steer the discussion away from the celebratory conception of hybridity by meshing it with considerations of power structures and relations. Migrating from the cultural and postcolonial fields, hybridity considerations have now permeated many disciplines, including peace and conflict studies, international development, and law. Not unlike hybridity, legal pluralism is understood as a 'common historical condition', a feature which makes the two phenomena hard to analyse without entering into a wider sociological study of socio-legal or socio-political order. The book focuses on how hybridity can be more than a descriptive lens and become an analytical lens, highlighting how it gains relevance through a critical approach.
