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A great deal of attention has been devoted to risk research.
Sociologists in general have limited themselves to varying
recognitions of a society at risk and have traced out the paths to
disaster. The detailed research has yet to be undertaken. In Risk,
now available in paperback, Niklas Luhmann develops a theoretical
program for such research. His premise is that the concept of risk
projects essential aspects of our description of the future onto
the present. Risk is conceived as the possibility of triggering
unexpected, unlikely, and detrimental consequences by means of a
decision attributable to a decision maker.
A great deal of attention has been devoted to risk research.
Sociologists in general have limited themselves to varying
recognitions of a society at risk and have traced out the paths to
disaster. The detailed research has yet to be undertaken. In Risk,
now available in paperback, Niklas Luhmann develops a theoretical
program for such research. His premise is that the concept of risk
projects essential aspects of our description of the future onto
the present. Risk is conceived as the possibility of triggering
unexpected, unlikely, and detrimental consequences by means of a
decision attributable to a decision maker.
Niklas Luhmann is recognised as a major social theorist, and his
treatise on the sociology of law is a classic text. For Luhmann,
law provides the framework of the state, lawyers are the main human
resource for the state, and legal theory provides the most suitable
base from which to theorize on the nature of society. He explores
the concept of law in the light of a general theory of social
systems, showing the important part law plays in resolving
fundamental problems a society may face. He then goes on to discuss
in detail how modern 'positive' - as opposed to 'natural' - law
comes to fulfil this function. The work as a whole is not only a
contribution to legal sociology, but a major work in social theory.
With a revised translation, and a new introduction by Martin
Albrow.
Niklas Luhmann is recognised as a major social theorist, and his
treatise on the sociology of law is a classic text. For Luhmann,
law provides the framework of the state, lawyers are the main human
resource for the state, and legal theory provides the most suitable
base from which to theorize on the nature of society. He explores
the concept of law in the light of a general theory of social
systems, showing the important part law plays in resolving
fundamental problems a society may face. He then goes on to discuss
in detail how modern 'positive' - as opposed to 'natural' - law
comes to fulfil this function. The work as a whole is not only a
contribution to legal sociology, but a major work in social theory.
With a revised translation, and a new introduction by Martin
Albrow.
A great deal of attention has been devoted to risk research.
Sociologists in general have limited themselves to varying
recognitions of a society at risk and have traced out the paths to
disaster. The detailed research has yet to be undertaken. In Risk,
now available in paperback, Niklas Luhmann develops a theoretical
program for such research. His premise is that the concept of risk
projects essential aspects of our description of the future onto
the present. Risk is conceived as the possibility of triggering
unexpected, unlikely, and detrimental consequences by means of a
decision attributable to a decision maker.
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Law as a Social System (Hardcover)
Niklas Luhmann; Translated by Klaus A. Ziegert; Edited by Fatima Kastner, Richard Nobles, David Schiff, …
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R6,712
R5,227
Discovery Miles 52 270
Save R1,485 (22%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Modern systems theory provides a new paradigm for the analysis of
society. In this volume, Niklas Luhmann, its leading exponent,
explores its implications for our understanding of law. Luhmann
argues that current thinking about how law operates within a modern
society is seriously deficient. In this volume he lays out the
theoretical and methodological tools that, he argues, can advance
our understanding of contemporary society and, in particular, of
the identity, performance, and function of the legal system within
that society. In systems theory, society is its communications:
they are its empirical reality; the items that can be observed and
studied. Systems theory identifies how communications operate
within a physical world and how different sub-systems of
communication operate alongside each other. In this volume, Luhmann
uses systems theory to address a question central to legal theory:
what differentiates law from other parts of society? However,
unlike conventional legal theory, this volume seeks to provide an
answer in terms of a general social theory: a methodology that
answers this question in a manner applicable not only to law, but
also to all the other complex and highly differentiated systems
within modern society, such as politics, the economy, religion, the
media, and education. This truly sociological approach offers
profound insights into the relationships between law and all of
these other social systems.
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Social Systems (Paperback)
Niklas Luhmann; Translated by John Bednarz, Dirk Baecker
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R1,042
Discovery Miles 10 420
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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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.
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.
Die Gesellschaft kann nur unter den sehr beschrankten Bedingungen
ihrer eigenen Kommunikationsmoglichkeiten auf Umweltprobleme
reagieren. Das gilt auch fur Umweltprobleme, die sie selbst
ausgelost hat. Okologische Kommunikation kann sich daher nur nach
Massgabe der wichtigsten Funktionssysteme wie Politik, Recht,
Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft, Erziehung, Religion entwickeln - oder im
Protest gegen diese Systeme. In beiden Fallen besteht die doppelte
Gefahr von zu wenig und zu viel Resonanz.
Dieses Buch bietet eine kompakte (und wahrscheinlich die
verstandlichste) Zusammenfassung der Systemtheorie. Dabei wird die
Frage nach den okologischen Risiken der modernen Gesellschaft aus
Sicht Luhmanns beantwortet."
The essays in this volume by Germany's leading social theorist of
the late twentieth century formulate what he considered to be the
preconditions for an adequate theory of modern society.
The first two essays deal with the modern European philosophical
and scientific tradition, notably the ogy of Edmund Husserl. The
next four essays concern the crucial notion of observation as
defined by Luhmann. They examine the history of paradox as a
logical problem and as a historically conditioned feature of
rhetoric; deconstruct the thinking of Jacques Derrida, especially
his language-centered allegiances; discuss the usefulness of
Spencer Brown's "Laws of Form"; and assess the consequences of
observation and paradox for epistemology.
The following essays present Luhmann's theory of communication and
his articulation of the difference between thought and
communication, a difference that makes clear one of Luhmann's most
radical and controversial theses, that the individual not only does
not form the basic element of society but is excluded from it
altogether, situated instead in the environment of the social
system. The book concludes with a polemic against the critical
thought of the Frankfurt School of postwar German social thought.
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.
Mit diesem sechsbandigen Werk erscheint erstmals eine vollstandige
Edition der Aufsatze und Vortrage Niklas Luhmanns zum Thema
Organisation. Die Bande prasentieren schwer auffindbare Texte und
bisher unveroeffentlichte Materialien. Dieser Erganzungsband
enthalt samtliche von Niklas Luhmann verfassten Rezensionen und
Lexikonartikel, zwei Vorlesungskonzepte zur Organisationssoziologie
sowie weitere Materialien. "Burokratien lieben Burokratien oder
setzen sie in ihrer Umwelt einfach voraus. So stellen
Krankenkassen, Versicherungen oder Dezernate fur Beihilfeabrechnung
sich Arztpraxen vor als Kleinstorganisationen zur Anfertigung von
Bescheinigungen und Abrechnungsunterlagen. Auf diese Weise
expandiert Burokratie gleichsam per Osmose in ihre Umwelt." Niklas
Luhmann, 1984
"I believe that Luhmann is the only true genius in the social
sciences alive today. By this, I mean that not only is he smart,
extremely productive, and amazingly erudite, though all this is
true enough, but also that he has, in the course of an improbable
career, elaborated a theory of the social that completely reinvents
sociology and destroys its most cherished dogmas." So wrote Stephen
Fuchs in his "Contemporary Sociology" review of Luhmann's major
theoretical work, "Social Systems" (Stanford, 1995). In this
volume, Luhmann analyzes the evolution of love in Western Europe
from the seventeenth century to the present.
"Reviews"
"Luhmann's unique, monumental, theory-building effort is best
described as a consistent attempt to deploy the tools and the
inspirations of three strategies: modern information theory,
structuralism, and evolutionary theory. . . . Perhaps nothing
conveys more poignantly Luhmann's unusual blend of scientific
precision with artistic sensibility than his replacement of
Parson's 'reciprocity of perspective' with his own 'interpersonal
interpenetration.' The first is cool, calculating, cognitive, and
dispassionate; the second connotes a richness of relationship that
leaves no human faculty unmoved. . . . Luhmann's work is important
because, arguably, it comes closer than all other sociological
strategies to restoring the lost link between academically
reputable social theorizing and the subjective experience of life."
"--American Journal of Sociology"
"There is a dearth of analytical writing about the emotions and
sentiments that seem to motivate most human action, at least in
everyday discussion, although some researchers are making some
efforts to remedy this situation. Luhmann's "Love as Passion" is an
outstanding contribution to this emerging trend . . . full of novel
information and fascinating ideas." "--Contemporary Sociology"
This collection of five essays by Germany's most prominent and
influential social thinker both links Luhmann's social theory to
the question "What is modern about modernity?" and shows the
origins and context of his theory.
In the introductory essay, "Modernity in Contemporary Society,"
Luhmann develops the thesis that the modern epistemological
situation can be seen as the consequence of a radical change in
social macrostructures that he calls "social differentiation,"
thereby designating the juxtaposition of and interaction between a
growing number of social subsystems without any hierarchical
structure. "European Rationality" defines rationality as the
capacity to see the difference between systems and their
environment as a unity. Luhmann argues that, in a world
characterized by contingency, rationality tends to become
coextensive with imagination, a view that challenges their
classical binary opposition and opens up the possibility of seeing
modern rationality as a paradox.
In the third essay, "Contingency as Modern Society's Defining
Attribute," Luhmann develops a further and probably even more
important paradox: that the generalization of contingency or
cognitive uncertainty is precisely what provides stability within
modern societies. In the process, he argues that medieval and early
modern theology can be seen as a "preadaptive advance" through
which Western thinking prepared itself for the modern
epistemological situation. In "Describing the Future," Luhmann
claims that neither the traditional hope of learning from history
nor the complementary hope of cognitively anticipating the future
can be maintained, and that the classical concept of the future
should be replaced by the notion of risk, defined as juxtaposing
the expectation of realizing certain projects and the awareness
that such projects might fail. The book concludes with "The Ecology
of Ignorance," in which Luhmann outlines prospective research areas
"for sponsors who have yet to be identified."
Translated into English for the first time, Luhmann's modern
classic, Organization and Decision, explores how organizations
work; how they should be designed, steered, and controlled; and how
they order and structure society. Luhmann argues that organization
is order, yet indeterminate. In this book, he shows how this
paradox enables organizations to embed themselves within society
without losing autonomy. In developing his autopoietic perspective
on organizations, Luhmann applies his general theory of social
systems by conceptualizing organizations as self reproducing
systems of decision communications. His innovative and
interdisciplinary approach to the material (spanning organization
studies, management and sociology) is integral to any study of
organizations. This new translation, edited by one of the world's
leading experts on Luhmann, enables researchers and graduate
students across the English-speaking world to access Luhmann's
ideas more readily.
In "The Reality of the Mass Media," Luhmann extends his theory of
social systems--applied in his earlier works to the economy, the
political system, art, religion, the sciences, and law--to an
examination of the role of mass media in the construction of social
reality.
Luhmann argues that the system of mass media is a set of recursive,
self-referential programs of communication, whose functions are not
determined by the external values of truthfulness, objectivity, or
knowledge, nor by specific social interests or political
directives. Rather, he contends that the system of mass media is
regulated by the internal code information/noninformation, which
enables the system to select its information (news) from its own
environment and to communicate this information in accordance with
its own reflexive criteria.
Despite its self-referential quality, Luhmann describes the mass
media as one of the key cognitive systems of modern society, by
means of which society constructs the illusion of its own reality.
The reality of mass media, he argues, allows societies to process
information without destabilizing social roles or overburdening
social actors. It forms a broad reservoir (memory) of options for
the future coordination of action, and it provides parameters for
the stabilization of political reproduction of society, as it
produces a continuous self-description of the world around which
modern society can orient itself.
In his discussion of mass media, Luhmann elaborates a theory of
communication in which communication is seen not as the act of a
particular consciousness, nor the medium of integrative social
norms, but merely the technical codes through which systemic
operations arrange and perpetuate themselves.
"A Systems Theory of Religion," still unfinished at Niklas
Luhmann's death in 1998, was first published in German two years
later thanks to the editorial work of Andre Kieserling. One of
Luhmann's most important projects, it exemplifies his later work
while redefining the subject matter of the sociology of religion.
Religion, for Luhmann, is one of the many functionally
differentiated social systems that make up modern society. All such
subsystems consist entirely of communications and all are
"autopoietic," which is to say, self-organizing and
self-generating. Here, Luhmann explains how religion provides a
code for coping with the complexity, opacity, and uncontrollability
of our world. Religion functions to make definite the indefinite,
to reconcile the immanent and the transcendent.
Synthesizing approaches as disparate as the philosophy of language,
historical linguistics, deconstruction, and formal systems
theory/cybernetics, "A Systems Theory of Religion" takes on
important topics that range from religion's meaning and evolution
to secularization, turning decades of sociological assumptions on
their head. It provides us with a fresh vocabulary and a fresh
philosophical and sociological approach to one of society's most
fundamental phenomena.
Mit diesem sechsbandigen Werk erscheint erstmals eine vollstandige
Edition der Aufsatze und Vortrage Niklas Luhmanns zum Thema
Organisation. Die Bande prasentieren schwer auffindbare Texte und
bisher unveroeffentlichte Materialien. Auch der dritte Band enthalt
Texte aus den Jahren 1970-1998. Analysiert werden
Organisationstypen in Funktionssystemen der Gesellschaft: Kirchen,
Schulen, Universitaten, Unternehmen, Parteien, Verwaltungen,
Gerichte, usw. "Viel spricht aber dafur, dass die Organisationen
autonom geworden sind in der Frage, wie sie intern uber
Abhangigkeiten und Unabhangigkeiten im Verhaltnis zur Umwelt
disponieren. Und eben das setzt sie instand, Autoritatsverluste,
die gesellschaftlich unvermeidlich geworden sind, auf eine
hochdifferenzierte, heterogene und unubersichtliche Weise zu
kompensieren." Niklas Luhmann, 1994
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.
Mit diesem sechsbandigen Werk erscheint erstmals eine vollstandige
Edition der Aufsatze und Vortrage Niklas Luhmanns zum Thema
Organisation. Die Bande prasentieren schwer auffindbare Texte und
bisher unveroeffentlichte Materialien. Dieser erste Band enthalt
die fruhen Schriften aus den Jahren 1958-1969. "Je groesser das
Potential, desto sicherer stehen jederzeit die gewunschten
Moeglichkeiten zur Verfugung, desto unabhangiger wird das
funktionale System von Zufallen und von unkontrolliertem Wechsel in
den naturlichen Gegebenheiten. Das Fraulein A ist unvergleichlich.
In ihrer Funktion als Stenotypistin ist sie jedoch durch andere
Madchen, teilweise sogar durch ein Diktiergerat zu ersetzen.
Dadurch wird sichergestellt, dass das Bedurfnis nach ihrer
Leistung, auch wenn sie erkrankt, jederzeit gleichmassig, rasch und
zufallsfrei befriedigt werden kann." Niklas Luhmann, 1958
In seiner Soziologie des Risikos entwickelt Niklas Luhmann ein
theoretisches Programm fA1/4r die soziologische Forschung und geht
davon aus, dass der Begriff des Risikos wesentliche Aspekte der
Zukunftsbeschreibung der heutigen Gesellschaft in die Gegenwart
projiziert. Risiko ist danach die MAglichkeit der AuflAsung
unerwarteter, unwahrscheinlicher schAdlicher Folgen durch eine
Entscheidung, die einem Entscheider zugerechnet werden kann. Die
Prominenz des Themas Risiko hat es daher wesentlich mit der Annahme
zu tun, dass unsere Zukunft von gegenwArtig zu treffenden
Entscheidungen abhAngt. Die einzelnen Kapitel des Buches zeigen,
wie sehr und wie verschieden die Funktionssysteme der modernen
Gesellschaft, wie Politik, Recht, Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft, auf die
ihnen zugemuteten Risikolagen reagieren und wie sich daraufhin eine
allgemeine Opposition derjenigen bildet, die an der Entscheidung
nicht beteiligt sind, aber deren etwaige Folgen zu tragen haben.
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