Prescience or serendipity? Parallelism in living systems theory and modern sociological theory

Abstract

During the 1950s and 1960s, Parsonian functionalist systems theory was the dominant theory in American sociology. Since that time, the systems perspective has waned in sociology. Functionalism was widely critiqued, and no other systems theory has emerged (until recently) within sociology to take its place. However, there are still remnants of systems theory in contemporary sociological theory, and still some interest in the perspective. In fact, there are major points of congruence between prominent aspects of contemporary social theory and the “new” systems theories such as Living Systems Theory (LST), social entropy theory and autopoietic theory. There is also a great deal of interest in micro-macro linkages among contemporary sociological theorists. The purpose of this paper is to integrate LST and contemporary sociological theory. I will show that both approaches have a number of points in common, such as emphases on time, space, process, structure, and concrete systems. In addition to this basic congruence, I will also show that LST covers a number of areas not sufficiently dealt with in contemporary sociological theory, thus adding breadth and richness to it. Among the important contributions made by LST that are either entirely missing or relatively neglected in contemporary sociological theory are the analyses of types of systems (abstracted, concrete, conceptual), the 20 subsystems, the eight levels, the concept of organizational pathology, the study of information-input overload, and the concept of a social marker. Thus, I will demonstrate that LST and contemporary sociological theory are congruent in many ways, and compatible or complementary in many others. There are no or few real points of conflict between them. The major problem to date is that so few sociologists have a working knowledge of LST. Social theorists can benefit greatly from an understanding of LST, and this integration of LST and contemporary sociology is designed to, among other things, further that goal. Specifically, I will integrate LST with key mainstream sociological theories including Alexander's neofunctionalism, Giddens' structuration theory, and Collins' conflict theory.