Theory of Society, Volume 1

by Niklas Luhmann, Rhodes Barrett (Translator)

This first volume of Niklas Luhmann's two-part final work was initially published in German in 1997. The culmination of his thirty-year theoretical project to reconceptualize sociology, it offers a comprehensive description of modern society on a scale not attempted since Talcott Parsons. Beginning with an account of the fluidity of meaning and the accordingly high improbability of successful communication, Luhmann analyzes a range of communicative media, including language, writing, the printing press, and electronic media as well as "success media," such as money, power, truth, and love, all of which structure this fluidity and make communication possible. An investigation into the ways in which social systems produce and reproduce themselves, the book asks what gives rise to functionally differentiated social systems, how they evolve, and how social movements, organizations, and patterns of interaction emerge. The advent of the computer and its networks, which trigger potentially far-reaching processes of restructuring, receive particular attention. A concluding chapter on the semantics of modern society's self-description bids farewell to the outdated theoretical approaches of "old Europe," that is, to ontological, holistic, ethical, and critical interpretations of society, and argues that concepts such as "the nation," "the subject," and "postmodernity" are vastly overrated. In their stead, "society"—long considered a suspicious term by sociologists, one open to all kinds of reification—is defined in purely operational terms. It is the always uncertain answer to the question of what comes next in all areas of communication.

Genres: Sociology, Philosophy

486 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Niklas Luhmann was a German sociologist, and a prominent thinker in systems theory, who is increasingly recognized as one of the most important social theorists of the 20th century.

Luhmann wrote prolifically, with more than 70 books and nearly 400 scholarly articles published on a variety of subjects, including law, economy, politics, art, religion, ecology, mass media, and love. While his theories have yet to make a major mark in American sociology, his theory is currently well known and popular in German sociology and has also been rather intensively received in Japan and Eastern Europe, including Russia. His relatively low profile elsewhere is partly due to the fact that translating his work is a difficult task, since his writing presents a challenge even to readers of German, including many sociologists. (p. xxvii Social System 1995)

Much of Luhmann's work directly deals with the operations of the legal system and his autopoietic theory of law is regarded as one of the more influential contributions to the sociology of law and socio-legal studies.

Luhmann is probably best known to North Americans for his debate with the critical theorist Jürgen Habermas over the potential of social systems theory. Like his one-time mentor Talcott Parsons, Luhmann is an advocate of "grand theory," although neither in the sense of philosophical foundationalism nor in the sense of "meta-narrative" as often invoked in the critical works of post-modernist writers. Rather, Luhmann's work tracks closer to complexity theory broadly speaking, in that it aims to address any aspect of social life within a universal theoretical framework - of which the diversity of subjects he wrote about is an indication. Luhmann's theory is sometimes dismissed as highly abstract and complex, particularly within the Anglophone world, whereas his work has had a more lasting influence on scholars from German-speaking countries, Scandinavia and Italy.

Luhmann himself described his theory as "labyrinth-like" or "non-linear" and claimed he was deliberately keeping his prose enigmatic to prevent it from being understood "too quickly", which would only produce simplistic misunderstandings.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

It should go without saying that this a very demanding volume. I'd recommend anyone considering tackling it to start with Luhmann's other works, especially Social Systems, as that book introduces a lot of the systems theoretical concepts and problems which preoccupy this volume, but are not elaborated on here.
I think this book ultimately boils down to one main problem, which is: How can we describe a society in which everything described is a contingent formation, a society which is coming to understand itself as made up of contingent formations, a society which includes the contingent formations which we rely upon to describe that society?
The subsequent discussion of various communication technologies (dissemination media), symbolically generalized communication media, system differentation, evolution, history, memory, all revolve around exploring various dimensions of this vast question. There are still some aspects of this I find jarring or unconvincing (e.g. that it's useful to define "power" as symbolic communication medium with a recursive code), but I'm willing to acknowledge that these arguments may be better established elsewhere.

The reason I'm giving it 4 stars is due to style rather than substance. It's a slog. And Luhmann's propensity to make enigmatic statements which perplex rather than clarify is on full display throughout, even if I can't rule out that this is partly due to translation (which must have been a formidable task, so hats off to Rhodes Barrett). Having said that, nothing else I've read in social theory anywhere comes close to the sophistication of thinking in this book.

[Tuija Aalto · Rating 1 out of 5]

I`ll have to get back to this book later. One reading doesn`t quite cut it. But if you welcome the act of dissing Anthony Giddens, Luhmann is your sociologist of choice.

[Adrian Fanaca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This movie is about the sociological theory of society, meaning, the distinction between system and environment, society as a comprehensive social system, cognition, complexity, world society, medium and form, language, morality and the secrets of religion, writing, printing, moral communication, creation, planning and evolution, the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, the variation of elements, selection through media, the restabilization of systems, evolutionary advances, technology, the evolution of ideas, the evolution of subsystems, memory. The book deserves a 3.5 stars because it made me search more on the critical theory of Habermas which borrows from developmental psychology, hermeneutics, phenomenology and I remember therefore the latest advancements in those fields now.

[Krit Chanwong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fuck this guy