ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book engages with these theoretical strands in order to explore the possibility of understanding the law in dissociation from the State while, at the same time, establishing the conditions of meaningful communication between various legalities. Critical legal pluralism comes much closer to realizing the emancipatory potential of law, but it is undermined by its refusal to provide anything more than a vague and wholly indeterminate conception of legality. It is possible to formulate a universal sense of law, understood as the combination of the law's normative and factual aspects, which is thin enough not to over-prescribe. The book describes that what positivistic legal pluralism, that is early sociological and anthropological accounts, falls prey to the same methodological and substantive shortcomings of their monistic counterparts by applying too rigid epistemological criteria from an external perspective in order to conceptualize and recognize legality.
