Showing papers on "Social system published in 2006"

Toward a Psychology of Human Agency

Abstract: This article presents an agentic theory of human development, adaptation, and change. The evolutionary emergence of advanced symbolizing capacity enabled humans to transcend the dictates of their immediate environment and made them unique in their power to shape their life circumstances and the courses their lives take. In this conception, people are contributors to their life circumstances, not just products of them. Social cognitive theory rejects a duality between human agency and social structure. People create social systems, and these systems, in turn, organize and influence people's lives. This article discusses the core properties of human agency, the different forms it takes, its ontological and epistemological status, its development and role in causal structures, its growing primacy in the coevolution process, and its influential exercise at individual and collective levels across diverse spheres of life and cultural systems.

Interests, Relationships, Identities: Three Central Issues for Individuals and Groups in Negotiating Their Social Environment

Abstract: This chapter begins with a summary of a model, developed half a century ago, that distinguishes three qualitatively different processes of social influence: compliance, identification, and internalization. The model, originally geared to and experimentally tested in the context of persuasive communication, was subsequently applied to influence in the context of long-term relationships, including psychotherapy, international exchanges, and the socialization of national/ethnic identity. It has been extended to analysis of the relationship of individuals to social systems. Individuals' rule, role, and value orientations to a system--conceptually linked to compliance, identification, and internalization--predict different reactions to their own violations of societal standards, different patterns of personal involvement in the political system, and differences in attitude toward authorities and readiness to obey. In a further extension of the model, three approaches to peacemaking in international or intergroup conflicts are identified--conflict settlement, conflict resolution, and reconciliation--which, respectively, focus on the accommodation of interests, relationships, and identities, and are conducive to changes at the level of compliance, identification, and internalization.

Social Structure and Personality

Abstract: Social structure and personality (SSP) research is concerned with the relationship between macro-social systems or processes and individual feelings, attitudes, and behaviors. It is considered a perspective or framework rather than a theoretical paradigm because it is not associated with general theoretical claims that transcend specific substantive problems. Rather, it provides a set of orienting principles that can be applied across diverse substantive areas. These principles direct our attention to the hierarchically organized processes through which macrostructures come to have relevance for the inner lives of individual persons and, in theory, the processes through which individual persons come to alter social systems. Although the SSP name implies an exclusive focus on social structures, SSP research is concerned more broadly with social systems, sets of "persons and social positions or roles that possess both a culture and a social structure" (House, 1981, p. 542). Whereas House (1981) notes that social structure can be used to refer to "any or all aspects of social systems," he and other SSP researchers define social structure more precisely as "a persisting and bounded pattern of social relationships (or pattern of behavioral intention) among the units (persons or positions) in a social system" (House, 1981, p. 542, emphasis in the original). This definition encompasses features of the macro-social order such as the structure of the labor market and systems of social stratification as well as processes such as industrialization. In contrast, culture is used in SSP research to refer to "a set of cognitive and evaluative beliefs— beliefs about what is or what ought to be—that are shared by the members of a social system and transmitted to new members" (House, 1981, p. 542). The distinction between structure and culture is not always maintained in practice (a point we discuss in more detail later), but

Organizations as Distinction Generating and Processing Systems: Niklas Luhmann’s Contribution to Organization Studies:

Abstract: Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems has been widely influential in the German-speaking countries in the past few decades. However, despite its significance, particularly for organization studies, it is only very recently that Luhmann’s work has attracted attention on the international stage as well. This Special Issue is in response to that. In this introductory paper, we provide a systematic overview of Luhmann’s theory. Reading his work as a theory about distinction generating and processing systems, we especially highlight the following aspects: (i) Organizations are processes that come into being by permanently constructing and reconstructing themselves by means of using distinctions, which mark what is part of their realm and what not. (ii) Such an organizational process belongs to a social sphere sui generis possessing its own logic, which cannot be traced back to human actors or subjects. (iii) Organizations are a specific kind of social process characterized by a specific kind of distinction...

System as Difference

Abstract: This is an edited and translated transcript of a lecture by Niklas Luhmann in which he outlined the foundation of his systems theory based on the notion of difference and distinction. After a brief introduction to early theories of distinction, the central ideas of Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form as the most radical form of differential thinking are presented. For Luhmann’s systems theory, this has four important consequences. First, the system is the difference between system and environment. Second, the system can be defined through a single mode of operation. Third, every (social) system observes internally (i.e. within the system) its own system/environment distinction; there is a re-entry of the system/environment distinction into the system. Fourth, every social theory is part of the social domain and as such part of what it describes.

Forging community in race and class: critical race theory and the quest for social justice in education

Abstract: Among the communities of critical race theorists and its detractors in education, there is an apparent rift as to what theoretical construct best contributes to the social justice project in education. Conferences and meetings have served as quasi‐battle grounds for theorists, activists and scholars to go back and forth about what theoretical construct has the greatest bearing on educational praxis. Debate notwithstanding, the following document argues critical race theory (CRT hereafter) as a viable theoretical construct to address issues of social justice in education. In so doing, the following document couches the discussion in three tasks. The first is to identify the contributions of CRT in education. Second, the document argues for a closer read of the theoretical construct and its subsequent application. The concluding task will be an example of how the points of contention and compliance can be located through an example (in this case narrative) of a school with a social justice agenda at its cen...

Luhmann Explained: From Souls to Systems

Abstract: What are systems? What is society? What happens to human beings in a hypermodern world? This book is an introduction to Niklas Luhmann's social system theory which explains specific functions like economy and mass media from a cybernetic perspective. Integrating various schools of thought including sociology, philosophy and biology Luhmann Explained results in an overall analysis of "world society". Special attention is given to the present-day relevance of Luhmann's theory with respect to globalization, electronic mass media, ethics, and new forms of protest.

A crazy methodology? : On the limits of macro-quantitative social science research

Abstract: Despite the great popularity of macro-quantitative comparative research in the social sciences during the past two decades, it has only had a limited lasting impact on the development of our understanding of social macro-phenomena. The lack of robustness appears to be symptomatic of research findings. The cause of this problem is the difficulty in dealing with complex macro-phenomena by means of statistical analysis. If international comparative research relates to independent and identical behaviour of individuals, which can be portrayed at the macro-level by the idea of the representative agent, the analysis is indeed tricky, but not impossible. However, this road is closed for macro-level characteristics of social systems, since the model cannot be based on assumptions about modal behaviour. In this instance, the sole solution seems to be to accept the limits of small numbers and to improve the elaboration of a macro-narrative based on robust micro-correlations.

Agroecology in Action: Extending Alternative Agriculture through Social Networks

Abstract: The formation, evolution, and dissolution of social networks remain understudied phenomena. In Agroecology in Action , Keith Douglass Warner describes a set of particularly important social networks involved in rethinking industrial agriculture and in bringing to the fore new techniques of environmentally sensitive agricultural practices. These networks—comprised of growers, scientists, federal and state agencies, and various agricultural organizations—emerged in response to significant problems associated with the widespread use of agricultural pesticides, fertilizers, and other agrochemicals. Public information about practical alternatives to agrochemicals has remained partially hidden, in part because of the structure of institutionalized agricultural science. Agricultural science, Warner argues, has mostly focused on developing and promoting economically valuable technologies to improve farm productivity, such as pesticides and fertilizers. By contrast, alternative farming techniques—which require greater investment in labor, more sophisticated ecological knowledge, and may present heightened economic risk—have been generally ignored. Warner describes a variety of farming practices that have transcended the conventional, chemicalintensive norm. These include grape, pear, and almond farming in California; rotational grazing in the Midwest; and winter wheat farming in Washington, among others. Farmers became increasingly concerned with the environmental consequences of high chemical use, and sought alternatives. Their quest to develop new agricultural practices required them to forge new social links with other farmers, scientists, and government agencies. Understanding the formation of these new social networks is central to Warner’s main thesis: adequate protection of common resources necessitates novel forms of “social learning,” defined as the “participation by diverse stakeholders as a group in experiential research and knowledge exchange…” (p. 3). Knowledge exchange, in Warner’s examples, requires social networks whose formation was motivated mostly by farmers unwilling to accept the chemical-intensive status quo. Such networks are varied, and Warner attempts to specify the structural differences among them. To this end he analyzes networks of almond, pear, prune, and winegrape growers. His is a good first step; the sociograms he develops of each network provide points of departure for further research. However, the development and evolution of these networks could be more clearly specified, for example through the application of appropriate graph theoretic mathematical models. Although Warner cites Wasserman and Faust’s 1997 Social Network Analysis , he does not make use of the mathematical tools presented in that volume. The general point is that the analysis of social networks and knowledge exchange will need to be as detailed and precise as, for example, the analysis of the biology of the naval orange worm ( Amyolois transitella ), an almond pest whose damage to the California almond crop could not be managed with pesticides. Biological analyses remain more sophisticated than social analyses; the latter may eventually catch up with the former. Both, however, are vital in understanding how knowledge exchange functions in evolving networks of farmers engaged in alternative agriculture. Warner points out that the new criterion for agricultural success is not profitability, or at least not solely profitability. The new criterion for success is sustainability. This requires a clearer recognition of the fact that ecosystems are not simply natural systems. They are also, and simultaneously, social systems. This point is especially apposite for agriculture: nature and culture cannot be clearly separated. Analysis must incorporate elements of both the social and the natural. Studies of soils, nutrients, pests, pesticides, water, and crops—the realm of conventional agricultural science—remain insufficient without concurrent Jenkins: Review: Agroecology in Action: Extending Alternative Agriculture through Social N...

Rights of Non‐humans? Electronic Agents and Animals as New Actors in Politics and Law

Abstract: Personification of non-humans is best understood as a strategy of dealing with the uncertainty about the identity of the other, which moves the attribution scheme from causation to double contingency and opens the space for presupposing the others' self-referentiality. But there is no compelling reason to restrict the attribution of action exclusively to humans and to social systems, as Luhmann argues. Personifying other non-humans is a social reality today and a political necessity for the future. The admission of actors does not take place, as Latour suggests, into one and only one collective. Rather, the properties of new actors differ extremely according to the multiplicity of different sites of the political ecology.

The Self-Organization of Social Movements

Abstract: The New Social Movement Approach and the Resource Mobilization Approach are the dominant approaches in social movement research. They focus either on macro-aspects and externalism or on micro-aspects and internalism. This paper suggests that the notion of self-organization is one way of taking into account both internal and external, structural- and action-based aspects of social movements and that it allows a dynamic concept of protest. The emergence of social movements is not determined, but a complex result of crisis, resource mobilization, cognitive mobilization, self-production—searching for singular laws of the emergence of movements is an expression of one-dimensional, linear, and deterministic thinking. Protest and social problems are non-linearly related. Social movements are part of the civil society system, by producing alternative topics and demands, they guarantee the dynamic of the political system. Existing system-theoretic approaches on social movements (Luhmann, Japp, Ahlemeyer, Hellmann) are rather uncritical and ignore the productive relationship between human actors and social structures in processes of social self-organization. Social movements are dynamic communication systems that permanently react to political and societal events with self-organized protest practices and protest communications that result in the emergence and differentiation (production and reproduction) of protest structures (events, oppositional topics, alternative values, regularized patterns of interaction and organization). The dynamic of social movements is based on the permanent emergence and mutual production of protest practices and protest structures. The self-organization of a social movement is a vivid process, it is based on the permanent movement and differentiation of actors and structures that communicate public protest, a social movement is only a movement, as long as it communicates protest and moves itself. In critical phases of protest new social systems of protest emerge whose form, content and effects are not determined, but dependent upon old structures, i.e., old structures enable and constrain new structures. The emergence of new protest issues, methods, identities, structures, and organizational forms starts as singular innovation, if it is widely imitated then it spreads within the protest system and transforms the system as a whole. In terms of Hegelian dialectics this means that novel qualities sublate the old structure of the total system, i.e., the system is transformed, reaches a higher level, incorporates old qualities, and creates new qualities. In critical phases protest can spontaneously and quickly spread and intensify itself. This reflects the idea of complexity thinking that small causes can spontaneously have large effects. The notion of self-organization as the idea of the networked, co-operative, synergetic production of emergent qualities and systems should be employed in order to arrive at a dynamic concept of protest. In order to reflect the increasing complexity of society and the emergence of a stratified knowledge society, a multidimensional model of class that is structurally coupled to the concept of social movements is suggested.

Governance, Microgovernance and Health

Abstract: Governance, by which I mean the management of the course of events in a system, is an overarching issue of concern to health from an ecological point of view. Governance consists largely in the policing social relations, environmental conditions and the allocation of resources essential to well-being. Who decides, and how they decide, are key drivers of substantive policy. Moreover, there is at least some epidemiological evidence that the ability of people to participate in the governance of their communities is in itself significant for health. This paper offers an emerging theory of "nodal governance" to describe the management of events in social systems. The use of this theory in mapping, assessing and then productively "destabilizing" these systems is discussed, with particular attention to the extent to which promoting "microgovernance" institutions is a plausible strategy for improving population health. Nodal governance focuses attention on how governance happens - how power is wielded - at specific points within a system, and thus raises essential normative questions about democratic decision making. But the theory, with its obvious intellectual debts to network theory, systems theory and the work of Hayek, also seems to imply a challenge to the sort of thinking about regulation and law often encapsulated in the idea of the "risk society." In the final section of the paper I conclude with some speculations about new, constitutive paradigms for social governance.

Beyond the learning society: globalisation and the moral imperative for reflective social change

Abstract: The argument of this paper is that the learning society, as presented by the dominant discourse, has emphasised scientific rationality and work–life learning to the exclusion of both a comprehensive understanding of lifelong learning and also the breadth of human experience and knowledge. This is because global capitalism has emphasised scientific and technical knowledge and the competitive market; its other driving force has been information technology, which has, paradoxically, made us all aware of the extremes of global capitalism and evoked a moral sentiment that will lead to social change. The moral argument here is pragmatic but it also reflects but does not rely on Pitirim Sorokin’s theory of social change, in which we move from a sensate to an ideational society, and with the change the discourse on the learning society will necessarily change.

The Form of the Firm

Abstract: This paper presents a sociological and constructivist model of the organization of a firm. It presents five suggestions, and one problem, on which the theory of the firm may be based. These are history, business, culture, management, systems references and context respectively. It goes on to introduce George Spencer Brown’s notion of form as an appropriate device with which to handle the problem. Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems is considered to be an important step in developing a theory of differentiation that combines closure with structure, or self-referentiality with coupling, in showing how dependent communication emerges from independent contingency. The model then focuses on the idea of a contingent co-variation of the variables product, technology, organization, economy, society and individuals. It is developed with respect to five levels of re-entry: work, business, corporate culture, communication and philosophy. The idea of the paper is that models of this kind may be able to contribu...

Niklas luhmann's theory of social systems and journalism research

Abstract: “Why Systems?” asked the German sociologist Dirk Baecker in an article about Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems. To answer the question, it is necessary and important to pose the more fundam...

Combining Luhmann and Actor-Network Theory to see Farm Enterprises as Self-organizing Systems ∗

Abstract: From a rural, sociological point of view no social theories have so far been able to grasp the ontological complexity and special character of a farm enterprise as an entity in a really satisfying way. The contention of this paper is that a combination of Luhmann’s theory of social systems and the actor-network theory (ANT) of Latour, Callon, and Law offers a new and radical framework for understanding a farm as a self-organizing, heterogeneous system. Luhmann’s theory offers an approach to understand a farm as a self-organizing system (operating in meaning) that must produce and reproduce itself through demarcation from the surrounding world by selection of meaning. The meaning of the system is expressed through the goals, values, and logic of the farming processes. This theory is, however, less useful when studying the heterogeneous character of a farm as a mixture of biology, sociology, technology, and economy. ANT offers an approach to focus on the heterogeneous network of interactions of human and non-human actors, such as knowledge, technology, money, farmland, animals, plants, etc., and how these interactions depend on both the quality of the actors and the network context of interaction. But the theory is weak when it comes to explaining the self-organizing character of a farm enterprise. Using Peirce’s general semiotics as a platform, the two theories in combination open a new and radical framework for multidisciplinary studies of farm enterprises that may serve as a platform for communication between the different disciplines and approaches.

Trust, Reflexivity and Dependence: A 'Social Systems Theory' Analysis in/of Medicine

Abstract: Given the centrality of'trust' in both the Theory of Social Quality and as a central motif of life in late modernity, this paper focuses attention on public (mist)trust in social systems and the potential ramifications of engagement with medical services, in addition to feelings of social exclusion and disembeddedness. Using data from a qualitative study of lay perceptions of local primary health care services, the paper reveals the complex and often contradictory ways in which trust is won, developed and lost. In addition, mistrust in local general practitioners (GPs) was found to be a factor of mistrust in a variety of social systems, organisations and institutions of government, rather than solely related to mistrust of either the GPs or the medical system. Nevertheless, there was not a widespread abandonment of the use of GPs or Western medicine, which may partly be explained by the perceived dependence of these people these people on the medical system. Overall, generalised mistrust existed at both inter-personal and systems-based levels and was levied at a variety of social systems and institutions of governance - mistrust was a pervading dimension of life in this community.

The Distinctions within Organizations: Luhmann from a Cultural Perspective

Abstract: Cultural theories of organization generally focus on deciphering and deconstructing forms of meaning and social constructions of reality used in organizational behaviour. In line with this approach, Luhmann emphasizes the important role of distinctions and semantics for the production and orientation of organizations. However, producing organizations is, in his view, not just a matter of reality construction. It means the actual production of a specific social system using specific distinctions in recursively related communications. This paper first shows that Luhmann’s writings are helpful to identify the constitutive distinctions for organization as a specific type of social system. Relating Luhmann’s theory of organization to his theory of functionally differentiated society, it identifies, second, the specifying distinctions that are responsible for the specific problem orientations typical of modern organizations. In a third step, it shows how the distinctions and schemes used in organizations fit in...

Science and Market as Adaptive Classifying Systems

Abstract: As the cognitive sciences – particularly neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and a rejuvenated artificial intelligence movement that has largely abandoned the model of the mind as a formal machine – have seen major development over the past quarter-century, it is inevitable that the findings thrown up by this ‘cognitive revolution’ should be examined for their relevance to the understanding of economic behavior. This ongoing examination has tended to emphasize those characteristics of human cognitive capabilities that call into question the descriptive adequacy of the rational-choice model, focusing on departures from individual rationality that may have economic consequences at the market level.1 Such a move may be the obvious one for an economist confronted with this interdisciplinary challenge, but it is not the only one. The new insights into the functioning of the brain can also be deployed in the understanding of complex systems in general – and of specific social arrangements in particular – and that is the direction taken here. By critically examining the systemic similarities and differences between the social arrangements of science and market, the aim is to show how a complex systems approach, inspired by developments in cognitive psychology but applying these at the level of the system rather than of the individual, can provide a new and useful way of understanding social systems.

Systems in Context: On the Outcome of the Habermas/Luhmann-Debate

Abstract: Usually regarded as a 1970s phenomenon, this article demonstrates that the debate between Jurgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann continued until Luhmann’s death in 1998, and that the development of the two theorists’ positions during the 1980s and 1990s was characterised by convergence rather than by divergence. In the realm of legal theory, the article suggests, convergence advanced to the extent that Habermas’ discourse theory may be characterised as a normative superstructure to Luhmann’s descriptive theory of society. It is further shown that the debate’s result was an almost complete absorption of Habermas’ theory by Luhmann’s systems theoretical complex – an outcome facilitated by Luhmann’s deliberate translation of central Habermasian concepts into systems theoretical concepts. The article argues that both the debate and Habermas’ conversion were made possible because not only Habermas’ but also Luhmann’s work can be considered a further development of the German idealist tradition. What Luhmann did not acknowledge was that this manoeuvre permitted the achievement of Habermas’ normative objectives; nor did he notice that it could eradicate a central flaw in the system theoretical construction, by allowing the context within which distinctions are drawn to be mapped – an issue of pivotal importance for grasping relationships between different social systems, and coordinating them, via the deployment of legal instruments.

Self-Organising Mechanisms from Social and Business/Economics Approaches

Abstract: This paper discusses examples of socially inspired self-organisation approaches and their use to build socially-aware, self-organising computing systems The paper presents different mechanisms originating from existing social systems, such as stigmergy from social insects behaviours, epidemic spreading, gos- siping, trust and reputation inspired by human social behaviours, as well as other approaches from social science related to business and economics It also elaborates on issues related to social network dynamics, social network patterns, social networks analysis, and their relation to the process of self-organisation The applicability of socially inspired approaches in the engineering of self-organising computing systems is then illustrated with applications concerning WWW, computer networks and business communities

Social trauma: The pathogenic effects of untoward social conditions

Abstract: Psychoanalysis has traditionally overlooked the fact that unsuitable and damaging life conditions, originating in the social milieu, play a part in the pathogenesis of emotional suffering and mental disorders. Nonetheless, the self establishes an object relation with the social system, as well as with the non-human environment. This is expected to act as a container–contained relationship. Whenever the community and its institutions fail to act as a container for individuals and groups, this generates a trauma, which can be compared with the baby's experience of a failure in mothering. Such failures can be classified in several categories. The first is when the social system fails to contain, nurture, care for, and protect individuals, as in the case of the lack of assistance and compassion towards the victims of poverty, disease, natural catastrophe, social turmoil, economic crisis, violence, or war. The second category occurs when there is a blatant attack, on the part of the authorities or pri...

The New Indonesian Social Security Law A Blessing or Curse for Indonesians

Abstract: ��� The Indonesian Government has recently passed a new national social security law, which supporters have said would make the existing social system works better for the beneficiaries and would extend social security coverage to more workers and their families, both in the formal and informal sector. However, opponents have stated that the new law is flawed in many ways. The paper attempts to critically analyse the law and to predict its possible impacts on Indonesian workers and economy in general. From this analysis, we can conclude that there are several serious flaws in the government plan as outlined in the new law, such as a worsening of Indonesia’s labour market conditions, financial unsustainability, and added pressures on the state budget. Also, it does not allow competition in the provision of social security benefits to Indonesians. A better policy would be to strengthen the family support system, which has been the major source of old-age support for elderly Indonesians. In addition, Indonesia should seriously consider adopting a social security scheme based on the widely used multipillar approach to replace the current public social security monopoly.

The social dimension of system dynamics‐based modelling

Abstract: In this paper, the social dimension of system dynamics (SD)-based modelling is explored. Three manifestations of this dimension are identified: SD-models are made of social systems, they are built in social systems, and SD-models are built for social systems. The paper (1) explains the nature of these three manifestations of the social dimension, (2) discusses problems emerging from them and (3) gives an overview of knowledge, required to deal with these problems.

The Interplay between Social and Environmental Degradation in the Development of the International Political Economy

Abstract: This article considers capitalism as a dissipative system, developing at the expense of exporting disorder into two sorts of ‘environment’: the physical ecosystem; and a subordinate area of society which serves to nourish mainstream order without experiencing its benefits. Particularly significant is the relationship between the two forms of dissipation. The paper begins by assessing the dangers of translating systems theory into social relations, concluding that the project is nevertheless worthwhile, provided that exploitation and struggle are constantly borne in mind. Exploring the concepts of ‘core’ and ‘periphery,’ the paper highlights the contradictory nature of an attribute of chaos which is both ascribed to the out-group, and also really exported to it. If the core’s growth merely destroyed peripheral order, the entropy of capitalism would be starkly exposed in the form of an exhaustion of future room for maneuver. This problem can be kept at bay by maintaining a self-reproducing ‘low’ order within the subordinate social system; however the fundamental entropy is still there, and will sooner or later manifest itself in the shape of threats to the sustainability of that subordinate system. At the level of the international political economy (IPE), this dialectic unfolds against the background of a ‘lumpy’ development whereby (following structural crises) order can be reconstituted, but at a cost which must be absorbed somewhere. In the case of the post-World War II reordering, this cost was massively exported to the physical environment. Since a high level of ecological depletion now appears permanently embedded within the capitalist IPE, future major efforts of order-building cannot rely on this dimension to the same degree, and must instead access some new forms of dissipative relationship with the social environment. The paper argues that this is the fundamental significance of the ‘sustainable development’ discourse: it brings together the physical and social environments into a single approach, where substitution between one and the other can be experimented. To some extent, the social environment can be treated as ‘fuel,’ and contemporary management sys-tems are noteworthy for exploring the access to an added value through the self-exploitation of small producers, realized through emergent process such as production chains. But ultimately, the ‘fuel’ definition cannot be separated from the other definition of dissipa-tion, the export of disorder; and this must be managed somehow. The dominant interests respond by means of social engineering in the periphery, for example by pushing the sustainability notion in the direction of social development theories like ‘sustainable livelihoods.’ Most immediately the problem appears in the form of purely negative phenomena: namely unmanageable levels of poverty and conflict. But there is another issue, even more threatening to the capitalist order, but hopeful for those critical of it: the increasing likelihood of unco-opted forms of emergent social order.

Systems in Context: On the Outcome of the Habermas/Luhmann debate

Abstract: Usually regarded as a 1970s phenomenon, this article demon‐ strates that the debate between Jurgen Habermas and Niklas Luh‐ mann continued until Luhmann’s death in 1998, and that the development of the two theorists’ positions during the 1980s and 1990s was characterised by convergence rather than by diver‐ gence. In the realm of legal theory, the article suggests, conver‐ gence advanced to the extent that Habermas’ discourse theory may be characterised as a normative superstructure to Luh‐ mann’s descriptive theory of society. It is further shown that the debate’s result was an almost complete absorption of Habermas’ theory by Luhmann’s systems theoretical complex – an outcome facilitated by Luhmann’s deliberate translation of central Haber‐ masian concepts into systems theoretical concepts. The article ar‐ gues that both the debate and Habermas’ conversion were made possible because not only Habermas’ but also Luhmann’s work can be considered a further development of the German idealist tradition. What Luhmann did not acknowledge was that this ma‐ noeuvre permitted the achievement of Habermas’ normative ob‐ jectives; nor did he notice that it could eradicate a central flaw in the system theoretical construction, by allowing the context with‐ in which distinctions are drawn to be mapped – an issue of pivotal importance for grasping relationships between different social systems, and coordinating them, via the deployment of legal in‐

Nesting social-analytical perspectives : an approach to macro-social analysis

Abstract: This paper introduces an approach to macro-social analysis based on the concept of "nesting" social-analytical perspectives. This approach provides a way to use multiple viewpoints or perspectives together in order to gain deeper systemic insights into whatever social situation is being analysed, whether it be for the pure study of social systems, the development of organisational strategy, or the formulation of policy options. The approach is demonstrated using a set of perspectives to examine aspects of international relations and the history of the world system.

Parsonian economic sociology : Bridges to contemporary economics

Abstract: Parsons conceives of economic sociology in terms of a sociological analysis of the economy, including markets, which has become a standard definition of the field (Smelser and Swedberg 1994; Swedberg 2003). In general, his economic sociology is an analysis of the relations between economy and society (as the title of his main work in the field suggests), especially of the impact of the latter on the former. Adopting socioeconomic holism exemplified in a systems approach to these relations, the hallmark of Parsonian economic sociology is treating the economy as a particular social system in relation to the other, noneconomic subsystems of a society. Curiously, Parsons rarely uses the term economic sociology and seldom explicitly defines its subject and scope, usually defining it by implication. Thus, he implicitly defines economic sociology by reference to its Weberian formulations. For instance, in his introduction (1) to the English translation of (the first volume of) Weber's Economy and Society, Parsons comments that Weberian economic sociology is characterized by "two deep underlying convictions" that differ from the "dominant tone" of orthodox economics: first, the "fundamental variability" of social institutions; second, the "inherent instability" of social structures. In particular, Parsons notes that in (Weberian) economic sociology, the concrete association of economic rationality with--more precisely, its dependence on--"settled routine" social conditions indicates a special link between "institutional patterns, backed by moral sentiments, and the 'self-interest'" (Parsons 1947: 53). His implied case in point is the Weberian historical interconnection or "elective affinity" between the ethic of ascetic Protestantism (Calvinism) and the emergence of the "spirit and structure" of modern capitalism. Like Weber's (and, for that matter, Marx's) early formulation, Parsons's is mostly an economic sociology of modern capitalism, a sociological conception and analysis of the social, notably institutional and cultural, conditions of the capitalist economy. As known, Parsons's first academic work (his doctoral dissertation) is devoted to the "concept of capitalism" (in the German literature, e.g., Marx, Weber, Sombart), which continues to occupy a prominent place in his later works in the field of economic sociology. Thus, in his 1937 magnum opus The Structure of Social Action, referring to Weber's investigation of the "relations of Protestantism and capitalism, " he implies that economic sociology represents an examination of the principal social or noneconomic features of the "modern economic order" or capitalism, also termed "free enterprise" or "economic individualism." These features, inter alia, include an integral system of cultural values, an institutional structure, and an economic-political ideology. Specifically, Parsons remarks that a "single, relatively well-integrated system" of cultural values (or value attitudes) is epitomized in Weber's notion of the spirit of modern capitalism. Moreover, Parsons generalizes and reinforces Weber's connection of Protestantism and capitalism by arguing (also) a la Durkheim that such an integration between cultural values and economic structures, including markets, is "one reason why Marxian [pessimistic] predictions about the 'capitalistic' economy have not materialized" (Parsons and Smelser 1956: 160-161). Also, Parsons emphasizes the institutional structure of modern capitalism, as manifest in what he calls the "institutionalization of self-interest, " a social process that helps explain the observed "acquisitiveness" or "possessive individualism" of capitalist society. He identifies still another social feature of modern capitalist society as an ideological one consisting in the concept of capitalism (just as socialism), deemed an instance of "political and economic ideologies" (Parsons and Shills 1951: 169-170). While Parsons's first two social features of modern capitalism deliberately evoke Weber as well as Durkheim, the third feature is somewhat unwittingly reminiscent of Marx (and Mannheim), thus creating a curious mixture of Weberian-Durkheimian and Marxian elements. …