ABSTRACT
A central question 191
Debates about inter-disciplinarity 193
The relationship between scientific and applied research 195
New topics and directions 197
Further reading 199
This text has covered a large number of theoretical traditions, each of which have different assumptions about the relationship between law and society, and how to study legal phenomena. For specialists, the summaries will hopefully be recognisable, even if they do not fully convey the range of approaches or debates within any tradition. The general reader is encouraged to follow the guides to further reading that will take you into the different literatures. One recent text about sociological method (which is particularly strong on the positivist/interpretivist debate) has a picture of a multi-coloured ball of twine on its cover that is probably intended to represent the Gordian Knot encountered by Alexander the Great (Hughes and Sharrock 2007). This may exaggerate the difficulties involved in studying these theories. Although there is no simple way of cutting through or simplifying the knot, it is possible to find your way around through understanding a few general debates.
