Human Rights and Modern Society: A Sociological Analysis from the Perspective of Systems Theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 281-304
Author(s):  
Gert Verschraegen
1997 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-388 ◽  
Author(s):  

AbstractData protection was introduced in Western Europe in the early 1970s and now also extends to Central and East European countries. It is a remarkable example of the response given by Human Rights law to the challenges of modern society. The applications of science and technology in the fields of informatics and biomedicine have produced results unforeseen by any legislator. Regulation has been developed under the leadership of the Council of Europe. It aims at laying down basic principles of data protection but without blocking the future. The author presents a historical survey of the Council of Europe's two main treaties relevant to protection of medical and genetic data, those of 1981 (data protection) and 1997 (bioethics) and of several other texts. He concludes that the European Human Rights Convention should be reinforced with specific provisions on 'medical human rights' and on data protection. He also comes out in favour of separate treatment of traditional medical files and genetic data.


Author(s):  
Etienne Balibar

Many on the Left have looked upon “universal” as a dirty word, one that signals liberalism's failure to recognize the masculinist and Eurocentric assumptions from which it proceeds. In rejecting universalism, we have learned to reorient politics around particulars, positionalities, identities, immanence, and multiple modernities. This book builds on these critiques of the tacit exclusions of Enlightenment thought, while at the same time working to rescue and reinvent what universal claims can offer for a revolutionary politics answerable to the common. In the contemporary quarrel of universals, the book shows, the stakes are no less than the future of our democracies. The book investigates the paradoxical processes by which the universal is constructed and deconstructed, instituted and challenged, in modern society. It shows that every statement and institution of the universal—such as declarations of human rights—carry an exclusionary, particularizing principle within themselves and that every universalism immediately falls prey to countervailing universalisms. Always equivocal and plural, the universal is thus a persistent site of conflict within societies and within subjects themselves. And yet, the book suggests, the very conflict of the universal—constituted as an ever-unfolding performative contradiction—also provides the emancipatory force needed to reinvigorate and reimagine contemporary politics and philosophy. In conversation with a range of thinkers from Marx, Freud, and Benjamin through Foucault, Derrida, and Scott, the book shows the power that resides not in the adoption of a single universalism but in harnessing the energies made available by claims to universality in order to establish a common answerable to difference.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1951 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-258
Author(s):  
JORGEN S. DICH

The subject of this talk concerns social medicine in the Scandinavian countries, not socialized medicine. The term socialized medicine has a political bias which is not in conformity with the conception of social medicine in Scandinavia. Every step in the development of the Scandinavian social medicine program has been adopted unanimously by all parties, irrespective of their attitudes toward socialism itself. Political parties have advocated liberalism and opposed socialism with the same ardor with which they have supported the expansion of social medicine. In Scandinavia, therefore, it is not necessary to advise us to "Keep politics out of this picture." Politics have always been omitted, even to the extent that a phrase corresponding to the American "socialized medicine" has never been used in Scandinavia. And if you were to try introducing it, it would not be understood. What is social medicine? It can be defined as an organization of the medical services according to a certain conception of individual or human rights and public obligations in a modern society. In all countries it is accepted that there are some basic needs which everyone has the right to satisfy, irrespective of income. Protection of personal freedom belongs to this group; so does education of the children.


Author(s):  
Marinos Diamantides ◽  
Anton Schütz

While early 20th century Social Darwinism has been discredited, post-WW2 theories have re-emphasized Darwin's notion of the environment. On this basis, and substituting social systems for natural species, society has been analyzed as a system-in-evolution, a machinery that, reflexively or self-referentially, produces itself at every moment anew. Modern society, according to social systems theory, continuously makes itself, thanks to countless simultaneous communications taking place at once. There are two equally disquieting lessons here. On the one hand, modern law, understood as the communicative system that applies the distinction lawful/unlawful to everything that gets in its way, is placed within an environment constituted by other communicative social systems (the economy, politics, religion, art etc) and the conditions created by those. On the other hand, social systems at large are separated from the realm of human consciousness, i.e. of collective or individual identity (the ‘psychic systems’). While ‘social' and ‘psychic’ systems never meet, they rely on absolute indifference with respect to their other side, as only this indifference enables especially social systems to assure their (superior) fact-creating potential. Our own project consists in spelling out the implications of this scissile sense of ‘meaning’, at once understood as a shorthand for what is actually happening (fragmented communications) and as consciousness-as-identity (imaginary unity).


2019 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladislav Valentinov ◽  
Anna Hajdu

Purpose The stakeholder theory encompasses instrumental and normative varieties whose mutual relationship remains unclear and exhibits a classic tension between rational self-interest and moral motivation. The purpose of this paper is to develop a strategy for navigating this tension. Design/methodology/approach Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory is concerned with the limited ability of social systems to codify, and be receptive to, the complexity of the environment. Drawing on this theory, the paper juxtaposes the codification problems of two types of social systems: the for-profit firm and the economic function system. Findings This juxtaposition allows to identify four firm behavior patterns, two of which can be aligned with instrumental and normative stakeholder theories. If the codification capacity of the economic function system is assumed to be sufficient, the codification problems of the for-profit firm are shown to specify the range of applicability of the instrumental stakeholder theory. Dropping the above assumption is shown to specify the range of applicability of the normative stakeholder theory. Originality/value The argument offers a fresh way of understanding the institutional economics foundations of the stakeholder theory. Given that the systems-theoretic idea of codification reflects the functioning of the real-world institutions, the argument shows that both instrumental and normative stakeholder theories reflect the institutional texture of the modern society in distinct but equally legitimate ways.


Author(s):  
Armin Scholl ◽  
Maja Malik

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.


2018 ◽  
pp. 79-86
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Butsenko

The paper analyses the interrelation between different methods of cognition of the modern world and its inward processes, in particular, social upheavals at the beginning of the 21st century which are enquired with varied tools: artistic interpretation, sociological analysis, philosophical insight and historical evaluation. Building on the pictorial suite Mani-Festa by well-known Catalan modern artist Antoni Miró (b. 1944), the paper addresses causes, nature and visible outputs of the global phenomenon named “people on streets” using thoughts, considerations, views and conclusions of such scientists, thinkers, writers and historians as Z. Bauman, L. Donskis, M. Castells, R. de la Calle, M. Shore, R. Dasgupta and others. The analysed Catalan artist reflects in faces of his protagonists the collective image of the struggle for human rights, paraphrasing R.de la Calle. It is a collective image of some spiritual unity which emerges around a common objective uniting people of diverse background, professions, nationalities, age. Analysing the creative interpretation of “social context” by the case of art works of the Catalan painter, Antoni Miró, the author demonstrates how the thoughts, suggestions and conclusions of related disciplines – sociology, philosophy and history, existing in a given social time, are condensed in artistic expressions. And sometimes, it is a work of art or a work of literature that could help to understand better the ongoing processes and phenomena of surrounding world providing deeper, more comprehensive and more emotional vision. Along with mentioned thinkers and writers, the artist puts the question: what would be then, after the building ground, as Z. Bauman coined, has been cleaned. Should it be a new – perhaps, creative – and better solution for the world affirming the “there-is-no-alternative” principle.


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