scholarly journals Modernisering, social mobilitet og systemteori - en diskussion af Niklas Luhmanns systemteori

1970 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Jakob Arnoldi
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Niklas Luhmann ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Self Reference

Title: Modernization, Social Mobility and Systems Theory - a discussion of the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann The article is concerned with the con¬cepts of meaning, self-reference and sy¬stems autonomy in Luhmann’s theory. The article takes as its starting point empirical data on intergenerational social mobility. Such emperical data indi¬cate, it is claimed, that questions can be raised regarding the concept of systems autonomy in Luhmann’s theory. Based on this, the article performs a more de¬tailed analysis of Luhmann’s theory of self-reference and meaning. Luhmann’s theory is contrasted with Bourdieu’s praxeology in order to show the diffe¬rences between the semantically based systems theory and the, to some extent, pragmatically based praxeology. Bour¬dieus praxeology contains a focus on the relations between social and mental structures which serves to explain social reproduction in spite of systems differentiation. An outline for a different approach that contains both semantics and pragmatics, thereby avoiding the neo-functionalism of Luhmann, is sket¬ched in the last part of the article. This is done by implementing a structuration approach in the systems theory.

scholarly journals By Slow Degrees: Two Centuries of Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lambert ◽  
Kenneth Prandy ◽  
Wendy Bottero
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Linear Trend ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Quality Of Data ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Parental Background ◽  
Long Term Trends

This paper discusses long term trends in patterns of intergenerational social mobility in Britain. We argue that there is convincing empirical evidence of a small but steady linear trend towards increasing social mobility throughout the period 1800-2004. Our conclusions are based upon the construction and analysis of an extended micro-social dataset, which combines records from an historical genealogical study, with responses from 31 sample surveys conducted over the period 1963-2004. There has been much previous study of trends in social mobility, and little consensus on their nature. We argue that this dissension partly results from the very slow pace of change in mobility rates, which makes the time-frame of any comparison crucial, and raises important methodological questions about how long-term change in mobility is best measured. We highlight three methodological difficulties which arise when trying to draw conclusions over mobility trends - concerning the extent of controls for life course effects; the quality of data resources; and the measurement of stratification positions. After constructing a longitudinal dataset which attempts to confront these difficulties, our analyses provide robust evidence which challenges hitherto more popular, politicised claims of declining or unchanging mobility. By contrast, our findings suggest that Britain has moved, and continues to move, steadily towards increasing equality in the relationship between occupational attainment and parental background.

Toward a transdisciplinary integration of research purposes and methods for complex dynamic systems theory: beyond the quantitative–qualitative divide

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Hiver ◽  
Ali H. Al-Hoorie ◽  
Diane Larsen-Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Dynamic Systems ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Dynamic Systems Theory ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Transdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Complex Dynamic Systems ◽  
Human And Social Sciences ◽  
Starting Point

Abstract Complexity theory/dynamic systems theory has challenged conventional approaches to applied linguistics research by encouraging researchers to adopt a pragmatic transdisciplinary approach that is less paradigmatic and more problem-oriented in nature. Its proponents have argued that the starting point in research design should not be the quantitative–qualitative distinction, or even mixed methods, but the distinction between individual versus group-based designs (i.e., idiographic versus nomothetic). Taking insights from transdisciplinary complexity research in other human and social sciences, we propose an integrative transdisciplinary framework that unites these different perspectives (quantitative–qualitative, individual–group based) from the starting point of exploratory–falsificatory aims. We discuss the implications of this transdisciplinary approach to applied linguistics research and illustrate how such an integrated approach might be implemented in the field.

Radical Tense-Indexical Historicality and the De Se

KronoScope ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
Carl Humphries
Keyword(s):  
Alternative View ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
De Se ◽  
Temporal Expressions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Self Reference ◽  
A Current ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract “Being is said in many ways,” claimed Aristotle, initiating a discussion about existential commitment that continues today. Might there not be reasons to say something similar about “having been,” or “having happened,” where these expressions denote something’s being located in the past? Moreover, if history – construed not only as an object of inquiry (actual events, etc.) but also as a way of casting light on certain matters – is primarily concerned with “things past,” then the question just posed also seems relevant to the question of what historical understanding amounts to. While the idea that ‘being’ may mean different things in different contexts has indisputable importance, the implications of other, past-temporal expressions are elusive. In what might any differences of substantive meaning encountered there consist? One starting point for responding – the one that provides the subject matter explored here – is furnished by the question of whether or not a certain way of addressing matters relating to the past permits or precludes forms of intelligibility that could be said to be ‘radically historical.’ After arguing that the existing options for addressing this issue remain unsatisfactory, I set out an alternative view of what it could mean to endorse or reject such an idea. This involves drawing distinctions and analogies connected with notions of temporal situatedness, human practicality and historicality, which are then linked to a further contrast between two ways of understanding the referential significance of what is involved when we self-ascribe a relation to a current situation in a manner construable as implying that we take ourselves to occupy a unique, yet circumstantially defined, perspective on that situation. As regards the latter, on one reading, the specific kind of indexically referring language we use – commonly labelled “de se” – is something whose rationale is exhausted by its practical utility as a communicative tool. On the other, it is viewed as capturing something of substantive importance about how we can be thought of as standing in relation to reality. I claim that this second reading, together with the line of thinking about self-identification and self-reference it helps foreground, can shed light on what it would mean to affirm or deny the possibility of radically historical forms of intelligibility – and thus also on what it could mean to ascribe a plurality of meanings to talk concerning things being ‘in the past.’

scholarly journals What we can learn from semiotics, systems theory, and theoretical biology to understand religious communication

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2-4) ◽  
pp. 192-223
Author(s):  
Volkhard Krech
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
Physical Processes ◽  
Religious Communication ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Cultural Sphere ◽  
Meaning System ◽  
Religious Evolution ◽  
Societal Evolution

If religion is a socio-cultural meaning system as part of the socio-cultural sphere, then how does it relate to mental, organic, and physical processes that belong to the environment of religion? The article contributes to answering this question by referring to semiotics, systems theory, and theoretical biology. The starting point is understanding religious evolution as a co-evolution to societal evolution, namely, as one of the latter’s internal differentiations. In turn, societal evolution is a co-evolution to mental, organic, and physical evolution. These evolutionary spheres mutually constitute one another’s environments. The eigenstate of the socio-cultural sphere consists of language activated via communication. Language is the replicator of socio-cultural processes corresponding to the function of the genome in organic processes. The differentiation of spheres in general evolution concerns respective organic, mental, and socio-cultural substrates, while the substrate-neutral structure of the two evolutionary dimensions of organic and societal processes, including religion, is revealed as semiotic patterns that organic and societal processes have in common. Organic and religious processes of generating information are isomorphic. Thus, semiosis mediates between religious communication and its environment.

Luhmann, Latour and global petroleum governance

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörn Richert
Keyword(s):  
Functional Differentiation ◽  
Niklas Luhmann ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Global Energy ◽  
Structural Coupling ◽  
External Structure ◽  
Governance Systems ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Energy Governance ◽  
Theoretical Reflection

Global energy studies have produced a flurry of empirical analyses. However, the amount of theoretical reflection on the topic remains comparatively low. This article takes two specific limitations of the literature as its starting point: First, the often-unclear relationship between states and markets in global energy governance, and, second, the concept of energy as a material and external structure. With the aim of providing more nuanced perspectives on these issues, the article turns to the work of Niklas Luhmann and Bruno Latour. Luhmann’s ideas of functional differentiation and structural coupling provide a new look at the interaction of states and markets. Latour’s symmetric anthropology allows us to rethink energy as a hybrid that is in the midst of instead of outside society. While these thinkers provide interesting ways forward for global energy studies, they also appear to be utterly incompatible. Instead of accepting this incompatibility, however, the article uses the tension between Luhmann and Latour’s work as a productive resource for further reflection on global energy governance. It develops a ‘Luhtourian’ approach, arguing that hybrid, issue-specific governance systems can emerge whenever a resistant hybrid instigates the emergence of symbolically generalized governance objects.

Systems Theory and Introducing Action

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Catherine Raeff
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Multiple Processes ◽  
Complex Phenomena

The goals of this chapter are to summarize systems theory, which provides an overarching theoretical basis for the current work, and to introduce action as the key concept that will be conceptualized in more detail in subsequent chapters. Systems theory is the starting point for the current work because it is based on integrative and relational assumptions and because it offers a way of understanding complex phenomena in terms of multiple processes that mutually affect each other. In this chapter, systems theory is further summarized in terms of connections among parts and wholes, multiple kinds of causality, emergence, stability, and variability. Action is then identified as the wider whole or system that represents what people do. The chapter ends by acknowledging some of the values that inform how the author is thinking about action.

Feminism and rethinking our models of the self

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Meehan
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
The Self ◽  
Developmental Systems Theory ◽  
Developmental Systems ◽  
Starting Point

In this article I argue that Butler and Benhabib work with models of the self that should be jettisoned. Butler relies on what I call the outside-to-inside model, while Benhabib shuttles between an outside-to-inside and an inside-to-outside model. Because of the inherent limitations of these models neither can do what both authors set out to do, which is to describe the ontogeny of the self. I trace their discussions over the course of their writings and then propose that the notion of emergence that one finds in Developmental Systems Theory offers a much better starting point for account of the nature and development of the self.

Systems Theory and Journalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armin Scholl ◽  
Maja Malik
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Functional Differentiation ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Niklas Luhmann ◽  
External Observer

Observing, describing, and analyzing journalism as part of society requires theories on a macro level. Unlike normative theories, which criticize journalism with respect to its achievements and failures within society, systems theory operates with the concept of function in a non-normative sense. Based on the groundwork of Talcott Parsons’ theory of social systems, Niklas Luhmann developed systems theory further and radicalized it by strictly avoiding any kind of structural conservatism. His approach is built on the assumption that social systems operate autonomously on the basis of the functional differentiation to their environment. Macro-level systems, i.e., societal systems, fulfill unique functions for and within society. Functional autonomy and singularity make a modern society highly efficient but force each system to rely on the functional performances of all other societal systems. Hence, societal systems are structurally coupled and interdependent. Epistemologically, systems do not exist as ontological units but are strictly observer-related, be the observer the system itself or an external observer, such as the scientific community is. In journalism research, Luhmann’s systems theory has been applied to journalism as a societal system. Several competing approaches with different perspectives on the system observed (journalism, the mass media, or the public sphere) have been developed with respect to identifying the basic characteristics on which the system operates. Despite their differences they have this in common: journalism is not considered the sum of individual journalists and their (individual) way of working, instead, the systems-theoretical perspective is holistic. However, compared to theories of professionalism, which is also a holistic concept, systems theory neither identifies journalism with the profession of journalism, nor commits it to professional journalism. Instead, the structure of journalism is flexible, i.e., functionally equivalent, as long as its function is fulfilled. This function can be specified: journalism provides society periodically with current, independent, factual, and relevant information. Empirically, systems theory helps defining the population of journalists by deducing it from its function. Unlike mere empirical approaches, which arbitrarily draw samples from an unknown population, it is possible to clearly draw distinctions between journalism and other forms of public communication, such as public relations, advertising, propaganda, or lay communication. Still, it is challenging to operationalize such an abstract theory, as it is not specially made for hypothesis-driven research.

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