ABSTRACT
This advanced section offers an overview of the history of legal pluralism and of its future trajectory. The aim is to show how legal pluralism has contributed to the debate on the identification of what counts as law. The angle adopted throughout the section is that of legal pluralism as an alternative paradigm of law to that of legal modernity. Legal pluralism challenges centralised and state-based conceptions of the law and their main attributes. Where legal theorists see the legal unity of modern legal orders, legal pluralism sees multiplicity and fragmentation. The advanced section documents how legal pluralism developed these insights, starting as an offspring of anthropological research, it has then morphed into empirical, conceptual, and critical approaches to legal research and study.
