The inner tensions of legal culture in consumer society

Abstract

The present article explores the inner tensions of the legal culture in consumer society as a consequence of the interaction between democracy, liberalism and market economy under globalization. The interaction between democracy and modern political thought has given rise to liberal democratic society, moral and religious pluralism, and modern law. The interplay between liberal democracy and the market (“new liberalism”) has generated the idea of “instrumental reason”, whose penetration into many realms of life has transformed the structure of society and democracy itself: consumer society and a dangerous tendency of social decline prevail. Under the expansion of globalization and social decline, instrumental law may not be enough to ensure the functioning of society. Consumer society does not understand modern law and thus renders it inefficient. The analysis of the nature of social structures demonstrates that in the light of the interaction between moral relativism, the decline in the instrumental powers of the nation state and the expansion of globalization, the lack of the concept of legal duties and the reluctance to assume them becomes a fundamental agent of destruction of social structures. The parameters of legal culture in consumer society, such as legal order, the scale of the prevalence of individual lawful actions, and legal consciousness, have been increasingly on the decline.