Luhmann's Theory Research Articles

Contested Delineations: Planning, Law, and the Governance of Protected Areas

In this paper we reflect on the relationship between planning and law. We analyse the Dutch interpretation and implementation of the European Union Habitats and Birds Directives by investigating the practices of delineation of protected areas. These directives provide a legislative framework for the designation of protected sites as well as for decision making about social and economic activities that might have negative effects on the conservation objectives. The formal boundaries of the protected area can have legal, political, and economic consequences and are therefore the subject of much debate. Using Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory, we analyse the debates concerning delineation and the potential for planning to reduce tensions and balance interests. It is argued that the irreducible differences between the economic, political, and legal perspectives, in combination with the Dutch path of a legalistic interpretation of EU directives, have produced a situation in which the role of planning is reduced and new forms of planning are hard to implement.

System Theory as Global Sociology-Japanese Ramifications of Parsonian and Luhmannian Thought

This article explores various engagements of system theory with Germany and Japan, looking in particular at the theories of Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann. Talcott Parsons based his sociological theory on the idea of a system of the values of a given society. Niklas Luhmann’s extended version was based on the idea of self-reproduction (or “autopoiesis”) of social systems within all modernized societies. Two studies have recently re-examined system theory on basis of its engagement with Japan: Gunther Distelrath has subjected Parsonian theory on Japanese modernity to a structural revisioning in Die japanische Produktionsweise (1996); and Peter Fuchs has reconciled what he calls the “dividualism” of the Japanese psyche with the Luhmannian theory of functional differentiation in Kommunikation — Japanisch (1995). Distelrath critiques the Parsonian school of thought for giving Japan the status of a backward “follower” of the West. Fuchs, in contrast, endorses the universalist premise of Luhmann’s concept of society and makes Japanese “dividualism” the paradigm of effective modernization. Following on from Fuchs, I argue that system theory has the potential to overcome cultural limitations and become a global sociology. Its theoretical agenda in the twenty-first century includes the refinement of its concepts of the psychical system, the revision of its notion of the public and the mass media, as well as a systematic contribution to environmental protection and ecological communication in a functionally differentiated world society.

Educational technologies for the benefit of students

By Yngve Troye NordkvelleEditorThis issue of Seminar.net offers four different experiences on how students can gain from using educational technologies. In the article "Adopting digital skills in an international project in teacher education", associate professor Hugo Nordseth of Nord-Trøndelag University College present the aims of a project aimed at making students in teacher training able to collaborate across national borders and contexts. The project demonstrates the feasibility of training students to use new technologies that offer opportunities for learning. Nordseth emphasizes the importance of proper training in the selected tools.Professor Ragnhild Nilsen, of the University of Tromsø, presents her article "Digital Network as a Learning Tool for Health Sciences Students", as an example from studies in health. She presents how an online learning module for health sciences students with different educational backgrounds was implemented at the University of Tromsø (UiT). The intention was to improve communication and cooperation abilities across professional boundaries. The purpose of this article is to examine how participation in a joint, web-based course can be a didactic tool that helps health sciences students learn from one another by means of collaboration. Yvonne Fritze and Yngve Troye Nordkvelle, both editors of the journal present their article "Online dating and education". The research was carried out in their home institution, Lillehammer University College.Taking its inspiration from Luhmann's communication theory, this article looks at online dating from the perspective of teaching and education. The findings of this project indicate that students do use netdating as an experience and that quite a few of them find this valuable for their own communicative skills. The article explores those features of online dating characteristic of distance dialogue, and discusses the extent to which these can be transferred to communication in the teaching context. The article was first presented in a book published in Danish (Michael Paulsen & Lars Qvortrup (ed.) (2007) Luhmann og dannelse, København: Unge Pædagoger). This version provides extended discussions of the implications for flexible education. In the final article, with the title "Developing Contextual Knowledge Arenas in the Global Classroom", associate professor Siv Oltedal of Nordland University, discuss challenges in the development of contextual knowledge arenas by focusing on how the contextual perspective is brought into a masters program in social work. She explores the development of different knowledge areas and how they offer different learning opportunities for a group of international students.

Online dating and education

Taking its inspiration from Luhmann's communication theory, this article looks at online dating from the perspective of teaching and education. While Eros obviously plays an important role in regenerating the desire to communicate, this ardour is often absent from the domain of net-based teaching. The article explores those features of online dating characteristic of distance dialogue, and discusses the extent to which these can be transferred to communication in the teaching context. We further argue that participation in online dating increases communicators' competence and self-reflection.

Emergence and Communication in Computational Sociology

AbstractComputational sociology models social phenomena using the concepts of emergence and downward causation. However, the theoretical status of these concepts is ambiguous; they suppose too much ontology and are invoked by two opposed sociological interpretations of social reality: the individualistic and the holistic. This paper aims to clarify those concepts and argue in favour of their heuristic value for social simulation. It does so by proposing a link between the concept of emergence and Luhmann's theory of communication. For Luhmann, society emerges from the bottom‐up as communication and he describes the process by which society limits the possible selections of individuals as downward causation. It is argued that this theory is well positioned to overcome some epistemological drawbacks in computational sociology.

The Complexity-Sustainability Trade-Off in Niklas Luhmann's Social Systems Theory

This paper explores the way the idea of sustainability is linked to categories traditionally examined by the general systems theory—the categories of system, environment, and complexity. Toward this end, the paper builds upon the social systems theory of Niklas Luhmann to explain the nature of the trade-off between complexity and sustainability. Exemplified by Luhmann's theory of ecological communication, the trade-off emerges because the growing systemic complexity entails the increasing risk that systems develop insensitivity to those environmental conditions on which they critically depend. The key implication of the trade-off is that it may be rational for social systems to withdraw their internal complexity to maintain their sustainability in a given environment. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The three inevitabilities of human being

PurposeThis paper seeks to address the need for a comprehensive theoretical reference underlying the concerns of social complexity. The shortcomings of a very powerful yet cognitively biased theoretical model like Luhmann's theory of social systems especially call for the integration of the whole person into conceptualising social complexity. The paper aims to question what the conditions are for the possibility to successfully conceptualise social complexity.Design/methodology/approachBased on field research to explore the practical challenges of dealing with social complexity, the paper comprises discourse analysis and literature review. Luhmann's theory of social systems proved to be a fruitful starting point to integrate the latter research in neurosciences in a systemic way.FindingsThe paper finds that embedded mind thinking and holonic evolution of organism, psyche and society emerged out of the research as powerful thought figures. They allow for an improved practical and theoretical navigation on the ocean of social complexity.Practical implicationsThe results implications for how we conceptualise social complexity and the ways we approach ourselves, how we govern, teach, heal, coach, learn, train, create, improve and innovate. Increasing our capabilities to meet social complexity will improve management, change, governance and project performance.Originality/valueAddressing Luhmann's theory of social systems in the broader context of social complexity and neurosciences allowed for a reintegration of the whole person into the field of social complexity based not only on meaning but on feeling as well.

‘Regulating the Poor’: Observations on the ‘Structural Coupling’ of Welfare, Criminal Justice and the Voluntary Sector in a ‘Big Society’

AbstractThe article argues that the criminalizing tendency in contemporary social policy gets to the heart of how contemporary welfare systems work today. Analyses which point to criminalizing social policy (Rodger 2008), governing through crime (Simon 2007), cultures of control (Garland 2001) and the penalization of the poor (Wacquant 2009) all focus on what I will argue is actually the normal working of contemporary Western welfare systems. In the face of autonomous global economic processes, and largely uncontrollable macro‐economic systems which place governments in a subordinate relationship to global financial forces, governance of present‐day society is increasingly focused on the management of the behavioural dispositions of populations. In order to make these key themes and relationships visible, the article draws on Niklas Luhmann's functional structural systems theory and his concept of structural coupling to theorize the emerging policy relationships between the welfare system, the criminal justice system and civil society.

La science du social et l'involution de la socialité : de Durkheim à Luhmann

The paper argues that Durkheim's thesis of the social nature of the categories of human understanding comes to completion and full acuity in Luhmann's theory of the social contingency of the leading distinctions generating all meaning. Such a thesis and a theory entail the inversion of the canonical relationship between philosophy and the social sciences. Within that frame philosophy occupied the foundational level, whereas the social and human sciences had to entrust it with their epistemological description and legitimisation. The inversion introduced by the sociologisation of human understanding goes through a de-ontologisation of thinking which henceforth operates within the absolute relativity of contingent spaces of intellection and communication. The spherical closure of a planetary whole constituted by "world society" – in the Luhmannian sense of Weltgesellschaft – represents a topological transformation of sociality which leaves it with no outside and no axis of self-centeredness.

Bright, excellent, ignored: the contribution of Luhmann's system theory and its problem of non-connectivity to academic management research

Erhellend, exzellent, ignoriert - Luhmann's Beitrag zur Systemtheo- rie und seine Nicht-Anschlussfahigkeit zur akademischen Managementfor- schung«. Niklas Luhmann's theory has been largely ignored in organization studies, compared to other sociological approaches like Weick's sensemaking, Giddens' structuration theory, or Latour's Actor-Network Theory. While having being applied on a number of fields, such as philosophy, sociology, theology, law and political sciences, application of Luhmann's theory is still limited in or- ganization studies (e.g. Munro 2010). In this paper, we attempt to explain the reasons of this ignorance and limited use, focusing on Luhmann's writing style, but also on the theoretical and empirical limitations his theory poses. Believing that Luhmann's theory holds great potential to be applied to organizational studies and explain organizational phenomena, we then discuss how it could contribute to radically changing the conventional ways of studying and analyz- ing organizational phenomena, fostering at the same time, the debate about the value of his theory. We analyze organizations as communicative processes that continuously produce and reproduce themselves to create knowledge, make decisions, structure expectations, and redefine organizational boundaries. Finally, we address the empirical challenges of applying Luhmann's theory on organization studies.

Understanding Political Consulting: A Systems‐Theoretical View

The article analyses political consulting as an attempt at controlling political communication effects, using Luhmann's theory of social systems as the framework. On the basis of causal attributions, the instruments of political consulting provide campaign decisions with special expertise. However, the selectivity of these causal attributions intensifies the second‐order observation of public opinion. An appraisal of the, mostly American, literature on election campaigns and consulting therefore leads to the conclusion that political consulting both reduces the uncertainty of specific campaign decisions and increases the overall uncertainty of politics. The double‐edged effects of political consulting are a consequence of the self‐referential operation of a differentiated political system. This is highlighted by a comparison with Russia where, under conditions of inchoate functional differentiation, the equivalent of political consulting takes on a different character.

Ambiguous citizenship: ‘Postmodern’ versus ‘modern’ welfare at the margins

This article discusses the classic welfare state problem of balancing universal values with an attention to particular individuals and needs. Welfare for marginalized citizens is addressed as a particular urgent case in point. The article first considers Baumann as emblematic for a postmodern position on welfare. In contrast, Luhmann's systems theory is then presented to form a program of observation of concrete welfare services, using the ‘rigour’ of the latter to bound the ‘liquidity’ of the first. Instead of suspecting modern institutions tout cout, the article analyses in detail the discursive ordering practices of welfare services for marginalized citizens, i.e. the homeless. On this basis, it contrasts what we term a ‘modern’ versus a ‘postmodern’ perspective upon organized welfare. Some limits to a postmodern position are indicated, in particular with respect to the ideal of including ‘the whole person’ in modern welfare arrangements.

Skills development for employability (TVET) in higher education: issues and challenges

Historically, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and higher education (HE) emerged from opposing traditions, with the universities providing academic knowledge and TVET providing skills for employability. Mass and elite HE and vocational institutions have developed complex relationships in many countries. Even European Union capitalist countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom have different approaches to HE and TVET. With the trend of the massification of HE, universities are increasingly moving away from the tradition of mainly producing and transmitting academic knowledge and are putting emphasis on skills development for employability. This has resulted in a move towards the vocationalization of HE and the bridging of academic and vocational learning. In this article, Luhmann's theory of society is used to consider the relationships between TVET and HE. These can be analysed in terms of a self-organizing (autopoietic) system that was developed by Luhmann in 1984. In accordance with this theory, satisfaction of industry's needs through the development of personal skills by means of university training would be harmonized through the function of stabilization in the time dimension. The dynamics of this are developed through communication. Luhmann (1984, Soziale Systeme. Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp (Translated version printed in 1995)) specified that the relations between the social communication system and what he called ‘individual consciousness systems’ (i.e. actors) are ‘structurally coupled’: the social communication system cannot operate without individuals who communicate, but only the message (i.e. the action) and not the actor is communicated. The action will thus have different meanings for the sending actor, for the receiving actor and for the social communication system, since they are different systems of reference. The social system has its own dynamics and gradually universities could be harmonized with the market economy. This article refers to the current discourses on vocation and HE relationships that can be viewed on four levels – political, economic, epistemological and human development.

PERFORMING SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN GOVERNANCE: DUTCH PLANNING EXPERIENCES

We present an analytical framework for analyzing the functions of failure and success ascriptions in public administration. The framework incorporates concepts and insights from Michel Foucault, Mieke Bal, and other discourse theorists, enriched with notions derived from Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems. The Dutch system of spatial planning serves as a context to investigate the rhetorical functions, performance, discursive configurations, and consequences of success and failure. Two cases nested in the Dutch context are used to elaborate on the performance and performativity of success and failure. We discuss the performance of success and failure in terms of productive competition between discourses and organizations, and emphasize the self‐reinforcing nature of success and failure ascriptions in the creation of developmental pathways of the governance system.

Fear as a medium of communication in asymmetric forms of warfare

Fear is defined as the distinction between risk and danger, a distinction that operates in communicative forms. War is always also warfare about the form of war. The article describes how fear in warfare becomes a symbolically generalized medium of communication, mainly focusing on how the form of fear evolves in asymmetric warfare. Asymmetric war induces fear in both parties, but in a communicative form that leads to very different experiences. Fear is observed and analysed with Niklas Luhmann's theory of self-referential systems of communication as well as his theory of risk. Following Luhmann and in continuation ofClausewitz' conceptual tools, yet with other means, the article proposes to observe war as a system that can de-ontologize itself and thereby concern moving centres of gravity such as communication lines, motivation, public fear, and perceptions of risk and insecurity. The final section draws together the theoretical insights by formalizing a risk analysis of fear.

La evolución del constructivismo (desde una perspectiva constructivista)

This article discusses the evolutionary conditions of constructivism on society, from Luhmann's social systems theory. First, we review some of the basic notions of the theory of social and cultural evolution, focusing on the concepts of variation, selection and stabilization of semantics in expectation structures. We suggest that these elements find empirical scenarios suitable for observation in scientific and philosophical communications, as well as in cultural productions. Our discussion leads to the question regarding the likeliness of stabilization of constructivism in expectations that operate in everyday life. We conclude with the hypothesis that constructivism -on its expressions on several systems- constitutes an evolutionary acquisition, as it allows the coupling of new and more complex communications in contemporary society.

La teoría de la diferenciación funcional en el horizonte de sus críticas

The theory of functional differentiation can be regarded as one of the oldest concepts in the field of the theory of society. Nevertheless, in sociology there is not complete agreement about basic theoretical figures and diagnoses amongst those who use the concept. This contribution uses several criticisms of Niklas Luhmann's theory of society as an opportunity to make clear the lines of theoretical conflict, to comment on this discourse from a systems theoretical point of view, and to line out some adjustments and supplementation with regard to some theoretical problems. In particular the contribution deals with the question of the unity of society, with the question of selective differentiation of functional subsystems, and with an integration of the problem of social inequality into a systems theoretical theory of society.

A diferenciação funcional da religião na teoria social de Niklas Luhmann

O objeto deste artigo é investigar o lugar da religião na teoria de sistemas sociais de Luhmann com a finalidade de destacar algumas de suas ambiguidades e contradições internas. A especificidade da religião está no fato de que a participação na comunicação religiosa depende muito estreitamente do engajamento da consciência por intermédio da fé, o que dificulta a manutenção de sua fronteira sistema/ambiente. Apresentamos a religião como caso específico de diferenciação funcional que ocorre por reação à diferenciação dos sistemas não religiosos da sociedade e como privatização da experiência religiosa. A sociologia de Weber é utilizada para ilustrar historicamente nosso argumento. Ao final, sugerimos um breve reparo conceitual capaz de adaptar a teoria de sistemas sociais à observação do fenômeno religioso na sociedade contemporânea.

The human right to medicines in relation to patents in sub-Saharan Africa: some critical remarks

Sub-Saharan Africa is affected by the largest burden of diseases in the world and by extremely low access to medicines. The affordability of medicines can be severely reduced by the registration of patents on these products. However, patent protection can increase access to innovative medicines and support other rights, interests, liberties and needs in society. As a matter of fact, most African countries provide patent protection for pharmaceutical products. This article examines whether international human rights law, and in particular a ‘human right to medicines’, can guide and redress the problematic issues of medicine patenting products in sub-Saharan Africa. Besides analysing the human rights law, it discusses whether, normatively, the problem of patents on medicines in sub-Saharan Africa ought to be solved by utilising a human rights framework. The enquiry identifies several strong limitations of human rights law in addressing the problem of access to medicines in sub-Saharan Africa, and presents the concern that human rights may serve biopower rather than function as an emancipatory tool. The relevance and merits of this argument are grounded on different instances of critical–analytical research, including interdisciplinary and empirical research on the operationalisation and implementation of human rights norms relating to access to medicines as well as theoretical insights from socio-legal studies, in particular drawn from Luhmann's social systems theory and Foucault's theory of biopower.

Social work practice and contextual systemic intervention: improbability of communication between social work and sociology

Insofar as social work is not capable of critically analysing some of the classical theoretical frameworks on which it is based and the new ones that arise, it will run the risk of sliding into epistemological stagnation. From this premise, this article will first summarize the modern systems theory developed by Niklas Luhmann. Following that, we will describe the theoretical and normative foundations of contextual systemic intervention. This concept has been presented recently by some authors as an attempt to take Luhmann's sociological theory to the field of social intervention. Finally, we will assess the possibilities for the application of this proposal to social work. The conclusion obtained is that this proposal is insufficient for social work as its normative foundation is too lax. This is an example of how some differences in the nature of social work and sociology are an obstacle to a closer relationship between the two.