everyone to profess values that were not necessarily concerned with survival. For the first time in history the broad masses were able to express their individualism, which made social stigmatisation like illegitimacy socially as well as morally unacceptable. Our WVS map now indicates that the secular and self-expressive variables have moved towards their most radical positions ever. The concept of legitimacy belongs to the very core of Western family law. Legitimacy as a legal entity is traceable back at least to Roman law, even though its canon law background and the context of the Gregorian reform and feudal society in the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries is obvious. The doctrine on legitimacy survived for half a millennium into the age of industrial society and for obvious reasons. Legitimacy provided the necessary legal means to administrate property that was held and shared by a family much larger than the modern nuclear one. As soon as individual property rights were introduced, legitimacy was challenged as a viable means of keeping away intruders. Only after the victory of individualism in the Western societies did legitimacy disappear as a pivotal part of family law. Legitimacy had itself succumbed to social change, as has the traditional extended family. The history of family law in general and legitimacy in particular reflect a profound change in our legal culture itself. Legitimacy had no longer any kulturelle Bedingungen. Interpreting family law and legitimacy in the light of the WVS can add significant background data to better realise that legal cultures are no God given eternal entities as little as cultures in general are. They emerge, mature and disappear according to the social 138 Legal cultures - a post-modern obscurity?
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