Theory of Society, Volume 2

by Niklas Luhmann, Rhodes Barrett (Translator)

This second volume of Niklas Luhmann's two-part final work was first published in German in 1997. The culmination of his thirty-year theoretical project to reconceptualize sociology, it offers a comprehensive description of modern society. 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. 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 triggered potentially far-reaching processes of restructuring, receives 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 A concluding chapter on the semantics of modern society's self-description bids farewell to the outdated theoretical approaches of "old Europe"―that is, to ontological, holistic, ethical, and critical interpretations of society―and argues that concepts such as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: Nonfiction, Sociology, Philosophy

470 pages, Paperback

First published August 19, 2013

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

[Ian Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luhmann wanted to find a way to replace sociology, and he succeeded. Not worth reading unless you’re a big dork for systems theory.

[Mascifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Segmentation, Stratification, Core/Periphery, Functional Differentiation.

[Mark Plakias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Society is communication between systems, each with its own codings, and a complicated dance of irritation and closures to mark the boundary between the system and environment. Its complicated, and it is getting more so every day, making whatever we think we know today obsolete tomorrow, and the determinant, indeterminate. The present is already past, making for a future we know will obsolete as well, kind of a relief, actually.

[Bender · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quidem exercitationem vero quo. Illo tempore repudiandae eius nostrum deserunt tenetur. Qui minus alias. Incidunt rem omnis et debitis eius.