Refers to a social structure in which many small groups maintain their unique cultural identity within a broader culture. In an art context, pluralism refers to the late 1960s and 1970s when art, politics and culture merged as artists began to believe in a more socially and politically responsive form of art. The art historian Rosalind Krauss characterised this period as 'diversified, split and factionalised. Unlike the art of the last several decades, its energy does not seem to flow through a single channel for which a synthetic term, like Abstract Expressionism, or Minimalism, might be found. In defiance of the notion of collective effort that operates behind the very idea of an artistic 'movement', 70s art is proud of its own dispersal. '