Background
Niklas Luhmann was born on December 8, 1927, in Lüneburg, Germany.
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book
Introduction to Systems Theory
( Niklas Luhmann ranks as one of the most important socio...)
Niklas Luhmann ranks as one of the most important sociologists and social theorists of the twentieth century. Through his many books he developed a highly original form of systems theory that has been hugely influential in a wide variety of disciplines. In Introduction to Systems Theory, Luhmann explains the key ideas of general and sociological systems theory and supplies a wealth of examples to illustrate his approach. The book offers a wide range of concepts and theorems that can be applied to politics and the economy, religion and science, art and education, organization and the family. Moreover, Luhmanns ideas address important contemporary issues in such diverse fields as cognitive science, ecology, and the study of social movements. This book provides all the necessary resources for readers to work through the foundations of systems theory no other work by Luhmann is as clear and accessible as this. There is also much here that will be of great interest to more advanced scholars and practitioners in sociology and the social sciences.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0745645720/?tag=2022091-20
Theory of Society, Volume 2 (Cultural Memory in the Present)
(This second volume of Niklas Luhmann's two-part final wor...)
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.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080477160X/?tag=2022091-20
Art as a Social System (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)
(This is the definitive analysis of art as a social and pe...)
This is the definitive analysis of art as a social and perceptual system by Germany's leading social theorist of the late twentieth century. It not only represents an important intellectual step in discussions of art?in its rigor and in its having refreshingly set itself the task of creating a set of distinctions for determining what counts as art that could be valid for those creating as well as those receiving art works?but it also represents an important advance in systems theory. Returning to the eighteenth-century notion of aesthetics as pertaining to the "knowledge of the senses," Luhmann begins with the idea that all art, including literature, is rooted in perception. He insists on the radical incommensurability between psychic systems (perception) and social systems (communication). Art is a special kind of communication that uses perceptions instead of language. It operates at the boundary between the social system and consciousness in ways that profoundly irritate communication while remaining strictly internal to the social. In seven densely argued chapters, Luhmann develops this basic premise in great historical and empirical detail. Framed by the general problem of art's status as a social system, each chapter elaborates, in both its synchronic and diachronic dimensions, a particular aspect of this problem. The consideration of art within the context of a theory of second-order observation leads to a reconceptualization of aesthetic form. The remaining chapters explore the question of the system's code, its function, and its evolution, concluding with an analysis of "self-description." Art as a Social System draws on a vast body of scholarship, combining the results of three decades of research in the social sciences, phenomenology, evolutionary biology, cybernetics, and information theory with an intimate knowledge of art history, literature, aesthetics, and contemporary literary theory. The book also engages virtually every major theorist of art and aesthetics from Baumgarten to Derrida.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804739072/?tag=2022091-20
Theory of Society, Volume 1 (Cultural Memory in the Present)
(This first volume of Niklas Luhmann's two-part final work...)
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.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804739501/?tag=2022091-20
Social Systems (Writing Science)
(A major challenge confronting contemporary theory is to o...)
A major challenge confronting contemporary theory is to overcome its fixation on written narratives and the culture of print. In this presentation of a general theory of systems, Germany's most prominent and controversial social thinker sets out a contribution to sociology that reworks our understanding of meaning and communication. Luhmann concedes that there is no longer a binding representation of society within society, but refuses to describe this situation as a loss of legitimation or a crisis of representation. Instead, he proposes that we search for new ways of coping with the enforced selectivity that marks any self-description under the conditions of functionally differentiated modern society. For Luhmann, the end of metanarratives does not mean the end of theory, but a challenge to theory, an invitation to open itself to theoretical developments in a number of disciplines that, for quite some time, have been successfully working with cybernetic models that no longer require the fiction of the external observer. Social Systems provides the foundation for a theory of modern society that would be congruent with this new understanding of the world. One of the most important contributions to social theory of recent decades, it has implications for many disciplines beyond sociology.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804726256/?tag=2022091-20
Trust and Power
(In this important book, Niklas Luhmann uses his powers as...)
In this important book, Niklas Luhmann uses his powers as an analyst of the social system to examine two of the most important concepts which hold that system together and allow it to evolve: trust and power. He criticises those theoretical accounts whose roots lie in what he refers to as ideologies accounts which use implicit beliefs in particular conceptions of human nature to explain and predict social action in a one-dimensional way. Theories of rational choice and moralistic explanations are taken to task, as are the theories of both Marx and Habermas. Luhmann's unique scientific sociology underpins every page and enables him to highlight the potential shortcomings of these narrative approaches. Underlying this approach is the idea that ideologically-based social theory, whether critical or conservative, is unable to do justice to the complexities existing within the parameters of social systems, individuals, and the interactions between them. He aims to show instead how only a painstaking systems analysis can capture these intricacies. Although written over 40 years ago, Luhmann's complex vision of the operations of trust and power provides a wealth of insights of considerable value to scholars and students grappling with contemporary social and economic problems. The editors' introduction to this new edition and the significant revisions they have made to the translation will help to reveal the richness and clarity of this vision and its relevance to the ways that trust and power operate in today's society.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1509519459/?tag=2022091-20
Niklas Luhmann
Edit Profilephilosopher scientist sociologist
Education
He studied law at the University of Freiburg/Breisgau in the years 1946-1949 and pursued further legal studies in preparation for the German state exam in 1953. He entered the civil service in 1954 and from 1956 to 1962 worked in the ministry of culture of the state of Lower Saxony, overseeing educational reform. He spent 1960-1961 on leave at Harvard University, studying sociology and administrative science. The teaching of the famous Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons would prove to be an especially important influence on Luhmann's later work.
He received a number of honorary degrees.
Career
The (translated) titles of Luhmann's main publications in German convey the focus and range of his work: Functions and Consequences of Formal Organization (1964), Fundamental Rights as an Institution: A Contribution to Political Sociology (1965), The Goal Concept and System Rationality: On the Function of Goals in Social Systems (1968), Theory of Society or Social Technology (1971; a famous debate with the German social theorist Jürgen Habermas), Societal Structure and Semantics (3 volumes; 1980, 1981, 1989); Social Systems: Outline of a General Theory (1984; perhaps Luhmann's theoretical masterpiece, in which he developed the concept of "autopoietic" or self-producing systems, to be published in English by Stanford University Press), and four volumes of essays under the general title Sociological Enlightenment.
To his credit, Luhmann's biography listed 377 works he had written; the last as late as 1996; twelve of which have been translated into English. He and his work was cited in The Graduate Journal of the Program in Comparative Literature, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia as late as April 1997. The article includes an interview with his friend and colleague, Friedrich A. Kittler.
Achievements
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Luhmann received the prestigious Hegel Prize of the City of Stuttgart in 1988. Articles in German newspapers and numerous speaking engagements at professional meetings enabled him to broaden his audience. Largely working independently, Luhmann became one of the most prolific and original sociological theorists in the world.
Works
book
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Trust and Power
(In this important book, Niklas Luhmann uses his powers as...)
-
Art as a Social System (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)
(This is the definitive analysis of art as a social and pe...)
-
Social Systems (Writing Science)
(A major challenge confronting contemporary theory is to o...)
-
Introduction to Systems Theory
( Niklas Luhmann ranks as one of the most important socio...)
-
Theory of Society, Volume 1 (Cultural Memory in the Present)
(This first volume of Niklas Luhmann's two-part final work...)
-
Theory of Society, Volume 2 (Cultural Memory in the Present)
(This second volume of Niklas Luhmann's two-part final wor...)
-
Trust and Power
Views
His works, which for the most part were written in a relatively dense and scholarly style, drew on disciplines ranging from philosophy to linguistics to information science. They covered a wide spectrum of subjects, including law and love, politics and religion, education and the environment. Based as they were on a thorough familiarity with the tradition of Western thought, Luhmann's writings were often considered unusually complex and abstract by conventional sociological standards. Yet this complexity and abstractness can be reduced considering the basic themes and methods which ran through Luhmann's work and gave it systematic coherence. The proper starting point was the central idea of a "system, " which referred to any entity selecting certain possibilities available in its environment, thus becoming less complex and more stable than the environment. This term can be applied to any number of things, ranging from large organizations to brief conversations. Luhmann's general question, then, was: What makes different systems work? How can they maintain themselves and relate to other systems?
Luhmann was especially interested in systems which operate on the basis of "meaning, " in particular, systems of human communication. He regarded society not as a network of individuals united by shared beliefs, but rather as the totality of all communications. But in modern societies many kinds of communication were highly "differentiated, " which meant essentially they operated independently according to the specific functions they served. The bulk of Luhmann's work consisted of systematic analyses of these kinds of communication (especially those organized in the form of full-fledged institutions, such as education and law) using a set of basic conceptual tools he developed beginning in the 1960s. Economic communication by means of money (rather than exchange in kind) was a case in point; it made possible interaction between buyers and sellers and laid the foundation for a whole economic system with its own specifically economic functions.
Like money, trust also served as a specific medium in modern societies, for example in interaction between professionals and laypersons: on some issues we had to accept the judgment of competent experts without checking its validity. Without some such trust, many social relationships would break down very quickly. Even love was now a specialized kind of communication, made possible by the passion exchanged between individuals who were supposed to treat each other as lovers without regard to their other social roles.
Like many social theorists before him, Luhmann analyzed the implications of the transition from traditional to modern society. In older, stratified societies the various functions that had to be performed were arranged in a hierarchy, from the aristocracy down to the peasantry. By contrast, modern societies have separated various social tasks in a "horizontal" fashion, a pattern Luhmann called functional differentiation. This had many advantages; for example, institutions handled more complex problems and individuals generally enjoyed greater opportunities. But it also raised new problems. Institutions (such as religious ones) that in the past played a broad role must now redefine and limit that role. Also, since all institutions now focused on their own function and performance, certain societal problems may be neglected because everyone can claim it was "none of their business" according to Luhmann, this was one source of the current environmental crisis.
Although Luhmann suggested various applications of his ideas, he did not think sociological theory should assume a political role. He concentrated on developing a deliberately open-ended way of analyzing the world rather than formulating formal models and easily testable propositions. While his work often seems highly technical, it was usually based on simple empirical observations and existing historical materials that Luhmann "translated" into his own abstract theoretical language. Only by means of abstraction, he suggested, could social scientists grasp the complexity of modern society and reduce that complexity at the same time.
Quotations:
"Humans cannot communicate; not even their brains can communicate; not even their conscious minds can communicate. Only communication can communicate. "
"The effect if not the function of the mass media seems to lie, therefore, in the reproduction of non- transparency through transparency, in the reproduction of non-transparency of effects through transparency of knowledge. "
Connections
Luhmann married Ursula von Walter in 1960; she died in 1977. They had two sons and one daughter. He has been a Professor of Sociololgy, University of Bielefeld since 1968.
