ABSTRACT
There is doubtlessly no more audacious venture in matters of social and legal studies today than that of construing one coherent theoretical framework out of the concept of legal culture, on the one hand, and on the theory of social systems, on the other hand. Legal culture is posited, or posits itself, as an indefinite totality, in other words, as a concept that is both oceanically wide and ecumenically all-inclusive. The study of legal culture, thus, enriches legal culture from the inside, which, one might say, is not entirely unproblematic in epistemological terms. Luhmann's ultimate distinction among systems that use meaning for their exchanges is between consciousness-related psychic systems and communication-related social systems. Social phenomenology itself knows of a similar divide: Lebenswelt, it has been admitted since long, fails to cover the integrity of social existence, as it is ever more generally admitted that 'official' life, today often shaped by technological and economical dispositives, plays a role of equivalent importance.
