Luhmann’s sociology contains a crucially important set of interventions in a number of theoretical discourses and intellectual disciplines. On the other hand, his work always generated an increasing amount of both exposition and critique. His critiques such as Piyush Mathur[1], consider Luhmann to be self-referential, repetitive, highly abstract, and somewhat elitist and presented in a difficult style.
Indeed, understanding Luhmann is not easy, even if one reads German fluently or has access to translations of his major works. The difficulties are largely not difficulties of only words or language but of concepts (King & Anton, 1994). 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 (Luhmann, 1995).
Specifically, Luhmann’s theory of society provoked a variety of criticisms; ranging from a difficulties in empirical application of his social systems theoretical approach, the challenging interaction between social systems, complications in defining the components of social systems, to hypothetical outcomes of dehumanization of social theory (since for Luhmann human beings do not ’belong to’ a social system such as society but merely to the environment).
In retrospect of these critics considering today’s complex globalized closely knitted and increasingly homogeneous societies, I see two short falls in Luhmann’s perspective, i.e.:
Theory of Autopoiesis
The initial functionalist assumptions overemphasize social unity. If we consider social system as an interconnected whole, early structural functional theories stressed the integration among the various parts of societies and organizations. This rational underestimated the reality and power of social conflict which tends to disrupt predictability of systematic order (Dahrendorf, 1958); neglected the impact of any dynamic change that could potentially encumber the entire system (Turner, 2009). Although, as in earlier arguments Luhmann’s work could address some of these questions, I critically consider if the theory of autopoiesis - as defined by Luhmann – can be really applied to social systems, that is, whether social systems are autopoietic?
In the beginning, systems theories dealt with open systems that process or transform inputs into outputs. This concept can be applied to an organization quite easily, where resources are taken in, they are processed, and delivered as products and services. However, adopting this overly functionalist view to seek patterns and orders within society that requires more dynamic processes of change and development is challenging (Buckley, 1968). Luhmann tried to address this problem of change with a much more dynamic view of systems, where he visualized societies as complex adaptive systems which used internal feedback processes to change their structures to better survive in a turbulent and changing environment. There are, however, severe problems with this open-systems view (Mingers, 2002).
First, claimed supremacy of environment enforces that the system that has to adapt itself to the environment. This implies that it is the environment that establishes, manages and controls the structure and functions of a social system. But what is the environment of today’s global social systems? Is it the physical world? Is it other societies that are geographically, culturally, and economically differentiated in ever globalizing world? Even if we can precisely define the environment of a modern social system, what are those possibly inputs and outputs of such a system?
Although the concept of autopoietic systems are quite different (they do not transform inputs into outputs, instead it transforms itself into itself, thus in a continual dynamic state of self-production) applying these ideas to reality are difficult. For example, according to autopoiesis thinking; within social systems, “we” as the individuals and the people are only a part of the whole and can only act at best as observers. If this notion holds true, then the people of Egypt would never be energized and mobilized by a citizen Wael Said Abbas Ghonim to initiate a pro-democracy movement.
Likewise arguably if social systems are essentially “a continual dynamic state of self-production”, what exactly is that they are producing? If human beings are taken as the components of social systems then it is clear that they are not produced by such systems but by other physical and biological processes. If we do not take humans as components, then what are the components of social systems? Following the same logic - again, taking people as components – individuals can choose to belong or not belong to particular groups or networks, and will be members of many at any time. What is it then that could constitute the boundaries of such a systems? What might be its environment? And, how can it be said that such a social system can act as a unity or whole - surely it is only individual people who act? Based on this reasoning, a more radical approach may apply to autopoiesis beyond physical systems (such as groups of people) but to concepts or ideas or rules. To do so, if we define a unity as any entity (concrete or conceptual) separated from a background by a concrete of conceptual operation of distinction (Maturana, 1975), then social autopoiesis can be abstracted as concepts, or descriptions, or rules, or communications which interact and self-produce.
Functional Differentiation
Since Luhmann considers modern society as a primarily functionally differentiated society, the main point of his theory is that problems are better solved by the functional subsystems of society than by the society containing those subsystems(Viskovatoff, 1999). These subsystems - science, economics, politics, art, media, law, education, religion - constitute function domains that have crystallized into these autonomous subsystems. The autonomy of these subsystems does not mean that they are completely independent of one another, but that they are mutually independent with respect to the development of the function domain of which they are in charge (Braeckman, 2006).
However, our societies today are increasingly complex and contingent. It almost impossible to map how we make day to day decisions and selections. For most of us in Western societies, there are no longer exclusive guidelines offered by religion or political isms. The legal system in particular and a basic set of “normative” principles in general maintain the social order. Yet, Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems does not consider the power of normative forces that play in a society, in which conformity leads to legitimacy, structuration and homogeneity as an isomorphic pressure to establish and uphold order.
[1] Piyush Mathur is a major critique of Luhmann. His detailed exegesis are published in works titled “Theorizing Ecological communication" (Mathur, 2003) and “Gregory Bateson, Niklas Luhmann, and Ecological Communication” (Mathur, 2008).
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