Post-modern normative systems from a criminological perspective

Abstract

In the post-modern context, the obligation exerted by normative systems would appear to no longer have any effect. On one hand - at the level of core value orientations, at least - such systems are challenged by rebelling crowds while, on the other hand (which, in fact, is deeply conformist), they are undermined by the I-would-prefer-something-else mentality, i.e. by the impatient consumer's wish list, which is aggressively exacerbated by the advertising industry. Although the structural crisis in the capitalist economy has exposed the grotesque absurdity of the dominant ideals, the intelligentsia are still babbling about solving the situation the "good old way": more work, more competition, more private ownership, etc. And, above this, they have unfurled the tattered umbrella of "human rights" - a doctrine which is radical at its very core (because it calls into question the existing regime of ownership rights) and which the ideological apparatus of the bourgeois state has modified to the extent that it has become acceptable even for the Establishment and its guardian angels.