ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys a wide range of evidence of the contemporary prominence and asks how the idea of culture can be appropriately dealt with juristically. It argues that is to break 'culture' down into component parts and see it as expressed in different types of social relations of community. The chapter argues that a concept of culture, as such, is of limited utility for legal theory because the term 'culture' embraces a too indefinite and disparate range of phenomena. It suggests that these resources should include, above all, a rigorous distinguishing of different abstract types of community. The chapter examines how citizens in various contexts understand law and experience it, often in ways radically at odds with lawyers' professional understandings and experience of law. It suggests that relations of law and culture should be re-conceptualized. A further intersection of law and culture occurs in debates around cultural defences in criminal law.
