law bringing together individuals so as to constitute a collective entity. The latter is clearly non-statist, since it corresponds to the multiplicity of legal systems which social law
generates. Gurvitch makes also an important distinction between the plurality of the sources of law and legal pluralism.
9
Gurvitch’s theory did not receive very much attention. This may be attributed to different reasons, among which his vague, fanciful, complex and abstract
language, on the one hand, and the fact that “his concept of ‘social law’ challenged and disturbed the traditional juristic notion of law which was founded on a state-centralistic
ideology”.
10
B. Law and the many social fields
The seventies and the eighties witnessed the blossoming of a more fully integrated attempt to deal with law from a social perspective denying the state its monopoly on, and
even its mastering of, the production of law. In his radicalism, John Griffiths’ article “What Is Legal Pluralism”
11
might prove instrumental for describing the basic tenets of this new trend. Moreover, it remains a seminal contribution in the field.
12
Griffiths first identifies his main enemy: legal centralism, the law of which “is an exclusive, systematic and unified hierarchical
ordering of normative propositions, which can be looked at either from the top downwards as depending on a sovereign command Bodin, 1576; Hobbes, 1651; Austin, 1832 or from the
bottom upwards as deriving their validity from ever more general layers of norms until one reaches some ultimate norms” Kelsen, 1949; Hart, 1961.
13
Claiming that legal centralism is an ideology, he charges many social scientists with having confused a normative stance and
a descriptive one. According to him, law does not exist where the heralds of legal centralism
9
N. ROULAND, Anthropologie juridique, Paris, PUF, 1988.
10
R. BANAKAR, ‘Integrating Reciprocal Perspectives. On Georges Gurvitch’s Sociology of Law’, Oñati Prize
Essay in Sociology of Law , OñatiInternet, 2000. One can consider that L. Pospisil’s conception of “legal levels”
does not stand far away from Gurvitch’s concept of social law. According to Pospisil, societies are never fully integrated. On the contrary, society is a mosaic of subgroups that belong to certain types with different
memberships, composition, and degree of inclusiveness, every such subgroup largely owing its existence “to a legal system that is its own and that regulates the behavior of its members”, L. POSPISIL, Anthropology of
Law: A Comparative Theory
, New York, Harper Row, 1971.
11
J. GRIFFITHS, ‘What Is Legal Pluralism’, Journal of Legal Pluralism, No 24, pp. 1-55.
