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54 Legal Pluralism & Critical Soc. Analysis 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/jlpul2022 and id is 1 raw text is: LEGAL PLURALISM AND CRITICAL SOCIAL ANALYSIS Routledge 2022, VOL. 54, NO. 1, 1-4 https://doi.org/10.1080/27706869.2022.2084981 Taylor&Francis Group EDITORIAL From the editors Legal pluralism and critical social analysis: what's in a name? While the last issue of 2021 celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, in this first issue of 2022 we say goodbye to this name and introduce a new name for the journal: Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis. Our readers may wonder: what is happening here, and why? As commu- nicated in earlier editorials, this name change is part of a larger number of changes introduced into the journal from this issue onwards, including changes in the edi- torial board and the possibility of publishing a greater variety of article types (see also a below). This editorial provides further explanations of these changes and what we hope they will do for the journal in the future. Stressing the social Why the name change of the journal? Despite the suggestion that names do not matter, as expressed by the famous Shakespearean quote, there is a deeper meaning in this case. Earlier in the journal's history, the broadening of its geographical scope and the growing interest in legal pluralism led to the name change from African Law Studies (established in 1969) to Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law in 1980. This broadening of geographical scope and theoretical orientation, especially the focus on legal pluralism, have become the foundations of the current journal, which is still leading internationally in the field of anthropology of law and socio-legal studies. However, the second part of its name-unofficial law-was rooted in debates about legal pluralism. At a time when the scientific position that there are more legal orders than state law was marginal and widely rejected, unofficial law may have added to confusion rather than providing clarity: what is unofficial, and what official? Are these the same as informal and formal? Non-state and state? Is the official/unofficial dichotomy (or any dichotomy, for that matter) an analytically relevant distinction anyway? And is it not implicitly included in the concept of legal pluralism already? But why then replace unofficial law with critical social analysis? There are several reasons for specifically stressing the social in the new title, which go beyond our foundation in the anthropology of law. First, it emphatically restates the journal's longstanding interdisciplinary ambitions, inviting contributions on legal history, theory, philosophy, or legal analysis. Studying the meaning, use, interpreta- tion, contestation and transformation of law in specific social processes and societal © 2022 Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis