The Anthem Companion to Niklas Luhmann

By Ralf Rogowski

The Companion contains twelve chapters written by proven experts on Luhmann’s social systems theory. Among the contributions are overviews of the development of Luhmann’s thinking, introductions to key areas of Luhmann’s theory of society and critical assessments of core concepts of his social systems theory approach. The chapters cover the main societal function systems of law, politics, the economy, science, religion and art. Among the chapters are assessments of Luhmann’s impact on debates on constitutionalism, cultural studies and critical systems theory. There are finally reflections of scholars on the way and importance of Luhmann’s thoughts for their thinking and how Luhmann’s theory has shaped their work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Feb 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781839984907

Book preview

The Anthem Companion to Niklas Luhmann

Anthem Companions to Sociology

Anthem Companions to Sociology offer authoritative and comprehensive assessments of major figures in the development of sociology from the last two centuries. Covering the major advancements in sociological thought, these companions offer critical evaluations of key figures in the American and European sociological tradition, and will provide students and scholars with an in- depth assessment of the makers of sociology and chart their relevance to modern society.

Series Editor

Bryan S. Turner – City University of New York, USA / Australian Catholic University, Australia / University of Potsdam, Germany

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The Anthem Companion to Raymond Aron

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The Anthem Companion to Robert K. Merton

The Anthem Companion to Robert Park

The Anthem Companion to Talcott Parsons

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The Anthem Companion to Niklas Luhmann

Edited by Ralf Rogowski

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

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This edition first published in UK and USA 2023

by ANTHEM PRESS

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© 2023 Ralf Rogowski editorial matter and selection;

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ISBN-13: 978-1-83998-488-4 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-83998-488-0 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.

Contents

Authors

Chapter 1.    Introduction

Ralf Rogowski

Chapter 2.   Luhmann and Constitutional Sociology: Law and Functional Differentiation Revisited

Chris Thornhill

Chapter 3.   Luhmann on Law and Legal Theory

Richard Nobles and David Schiff

Chapter 4.   Niklas Luhmann on Politics and the Economy in Twenty-First Century’s World Society

Aldo Mascareño

Chapter 5.   Epistemic Sociology: Luhmann’s Theory of Science and Knowledge

Gert Verschraegen

Chapter 6.   Niklas Luhmann on Religion and Secularisation

Raf Vanderstraeten

Chapter 7.   How is Art Possible? Luhmann’s Theory of Art

Paul Buckermann

Chapter 8.   Niklas Luhmann and his Sceptical Notion of Culture

Dirk Baecker

Chapter 9.   Niklas Luhmann and Critical Systems Theory

Kolja Möller and Jasmin Siri

Chapter 10. Luhmann, on Algorithms, in 1966

 Elena Esposito

Chapter 11. Niklas Luhmann Observed in a Luhmannian Perspective

 Klaus Dammann

Chapter 12. Three Encounters with Niklas Luhmann

 Gunther Teubner

Index

Authors

Dirk Baecker He is Senior Professor for Sociology at Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, Germany. He studied systems theory with Niklas Luhmann and received his doctorate and habilitation at the University of Bielefeld. Professor Baecker published numerous books and articles on economic sociology, sociological theory, organisation research and form calculus. He edited the volume Problems of Form (Stanford University Press, 1999) and has been active in translating Niklas Luhmann’s work into English, including Luhmann’s ‘Social Systems’.

Paul Buckermann He is postdoctoral researcher at Heidelberg University. Previously, he taught and researched at the Department of Sociology at the University of Lucerne. He uses Luhmann’s social system’s theory in analysing art in modern society with a specific focus on mechanisms of evaluating art and knowledge about the arts.

Klaus Dammann He is a Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Organisation Theory, University of Bielefeld. He previously taught at the Free University of Berlin and was for many years a a close colleague of Luhmann at Bielefeld University. Professor Dammann’s publications include numerous works on Luhmann’s theory as well as his biography; he owns one of the largest private archives on Niklas Luhmann.

Elena Esposito She is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bielefeld and Professor of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna. She is a leading Luhmann scholar and was a key author of ‘GLU’, the glossary on Luhmann’s Social Systems. In her research she has used Luhmann’s social system theory in studying a variety of social phenomena, including social forgetting, paradoxes in fashion and the role of futures and derivatives in modern financing. Her current project analyses social consequences of algorithmic predictions.

Aldo Mascareño He is Professor of Sociology at the School of Government, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile, senior researcher at Centro de Estudios Públicos, and general editor of the journal Estudios Públicos since 2019. His main research areas are sociological theory, sociology of law and complexity theories.

Kolja Möller He is postdoctortal researcher at the Institute of Political Sciences, Technical University Dresden. Before, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the project ‘Transnational Force of Law’ at the University of Bremen. He has been engaged for a while in developing a critical systems theory that seeks to combine Luhmann’s social system theory and critical theory developed by the Frankfurt School.

Richard Nobles He is Emeritus Professor of Law at the Queen Mary University of London. Before, he held the position of Reader in Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author (with David Schiff) of A Sociology of Jurisprudence (Hart 2006), and one of the four editors of the English Translation of Niklas Luhmann’s Law as a Social System (OUP 2004). His latest book (with David Schiff) Observing Law through Systems Theory (Hart) was published in 2013.

Ralf Rogowski He is Emeritus Professor of Law, former Director of the Law and Sociology Programme and former Co-Director of the Social Theory Centre at the University of Warwick He has applied Luhmann’s social system theory throughout his research in a variety of areas of modern law and policy. He is the author of Reflexive Labour Law in the World Society (Elgar 2015).

David Schiff He is Emeritus Professor of Law at the Queen Mary University of London. Before he held the position of reader in law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author (with Richard Nobles) of A Sociology of Jurisprudence (Hart 2006), and one of the four editors of the English Translation of Niklas Luhmann’s Law as a Social System (OUP 2004). His latest book (with Richard Nobles) Observing Law through Systems Theory (Hart) was published in 2013.

Jasmin Siri She is research assistant at the Institute for Sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. Before, she was fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study which is part of the Center of Excellence Cultural Foundations of Social Integration, at the University of Konstanz. She is engaged in research in the areas of political sociology, social theory, political parties and gender studies.

Gunther Teubner He is Emeritus Professor of Law at Goethe Universität Frankfurt. Previously he was professor of private law, University of Bremen, 1977-1981; Professor of Law, European University Institute Florence, Italy, 1981–1993; Otto Kahn Freund Professor, London School of Economics, 1993–1998; and Professor of Law, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, 1998-2013. Professor Teubner is a leading Luhmann scholar with a particular interest in applying social sytems theory in analyses of modern law; he was the first scholar to coin the con­cept of reflexive law.

Chris Thornhill He is Professor of Law and Head of the School of Law at the University of Manchester. He was educated at Cambridge University, and he has previously held professorial positions in different disciplines at Kings College London and Glasgow University. He is a member of the Academia Europaea and has held Visiting Professorships in Law, Politics and Sociology in Chile, Brazil and Germany, where he occupied the Luhmann Chair at the University of Bielefeld in 2018. He has engaged with Luhmann’s social system theory in many of his monographs and articles on the sociology of constitutional law and the sociology of democracy. His research is currently focused on processes of constitution-making in post-Imperial societies.

Raf Vanderstraeten He is Professor of Sociology at Ghent University, Department of Sociology where he is currently the Director of the Centre for Social Theory. He holds a PhD from Leuven University and a Habilitation in Sociology from the Bielefeld University. As a former student of Niklas Luhmann, he particularly draws on the tradition of systems-theoretical research. His fields of research are sociological theory, sociology of knowledge, sociology of religion and sociology of education.

Gert Verschraegen He is Professor of Sociology at the University of Antwerp. His research is concerned with numerical governance, Europeanisation, science and society, (social) innovation, cultural diversity in cities and the sociology of human rights and asylum. Before joining the University of Antwerp, Verschraegen was a postdoctoral fellow at the universities of Leuven and Luxemburg. He also held visiting positions at Harvard University and at the University of Alberta.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Ralf Rogowski

The Introduction consists of four parts. It starts with short remarks on the biographical details of Niklas Luhmann. The second part outlines the development of Luhmann’s social theory in three stages and highlights a number of tenets of his social theory. In the third part, the Introduction offers concise summaries of the contributions contained in the Companion. And the last part provides a list of core monographs of Niklas Luhmann in English.

Brief Biographical Facts on Niklas Luhmann

Niklas Luhmann was born on 8 December 1927 in Lüneburg (in the North of Germany) and died 6 November 1998, in Oerlinghausen, near Bielefeld where he was Professor of Sociology for 30 years. He gained a worldwide reputation as a sociologist, philosopher of social science, and a prominent thinker in systems theory, who can be considered as one of the most important social theorists of the twentieth century.

Rather unusually for an academic sociologist, he worked during the first period of his adult life as a lawyer.¹ He gained his legal education in Freiburg in the late 1940s (first state exam in law), followed by an obligatory period of legal training at the appellate administrative court in Lüneburg (second state exam in law). From 1956 to 1962 he was a civil servant in the Ministry of Culture in Lower Saxony, Germany. During this time, he was able to be seconded to spend a year (1960–1961) at Harvard University where he encountered and studied with the leading U.S. sociologist and social system theorist Talcott Parsons.

In 1962 he gained a research position at the College (since 1997 University) of Administrative Sciences in Speyer and moved in 1965 to a social science research institute located in Dortmund. This research institute was associated with the University of Münster where he was awarded in 1966 within one year the obligatory two doctorates for an academic career (Ph.D. and Habilitation). Further details and analyses of Luhmann’s early career can be found in Klaus Dammann’s contribution to this Companion which also reflects on how to write a Luhmann biography.

In 1968, Luhmann became Professor of Sociology in the newly founded University of Bielefeld. In large part due to his writings, the new department in Bielefeld became the leading department in sociology in post-war West Germany and gained a worldwide reputation as the centre of a new beginning in sociology and, in particular, a new understanding of modern society based on ideas borrowed from general systems theory and other scientific traditions outside social sciences. Luhmann became emeritus professor in Bielefeld when reaching the official age limit for retirement in 1993.

The Development and Core Tenets of Niklas Luhmann’s Social Theory²

Once Niklas Luhmann became a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Bielefeld, he saw it as his main task to work on a new systems theory that would revolutionise the sociological understanding of modern society. For this reason, he developed his own version of a theory of social systems that claims nothing less than to offer sociology a new universal theory for the discipline as a whole.³ One of the major concerns guiding his approximately 700 publications⁴ was to counter the trends, as he perceived them, of abandoning general sociological theory, confining sociological theory to exegeses of the classics, and dispersion of sociological research and thinking into sub-disciplines. In countering these trends, he devoted his energy to introducing a new general sociological theory that is able to provide an adequate understanding of the real challenges to modern society. He called his alternative approach autopoietic social systems theory. It borrows insights from general sciences, in particular general systems theory, epistemological constructivism, mathematical logic and the theory of communication.⁵

Luhmann’s approach developed in three stages. In his early work, he formed his ideas in discussion with the systems-theoretical approach as expounded by Talcott Parsons, whom he encountered during his stay at Harvard University. He criticised Parsons for operating with a one-dimensional concept of functionalism that is preoccupied with system maintenance and proposed to replace causal relationships between structure and function with a notion of functional equivalence of structural solutions adopted by social systems. He elaborated this approach in numerous studies, including path-breaking analyses of formal organisations and administrations. In the second phase, Luhmann advanced his theoretical base by integrating the theory of autopoiesis into the study of social systems. The major publication of this period was his Social Systems. ⁶ The theoretical focus shifted from concerns with functions and structure to an analysis of self-reproduction of elements. The structure and the unity of a developed social system are seen as directly linked to operationally closed self-reproductive processes. In his late work, Luhmann used autopoietic systems theory to create a general theory of the modern society and its major function systems. He presented this theory in eight voluminous monographs, which include a general Theory of Society, published in 1997, a year before his death, and seven studies of major societal function systems covering the economy, science, law, art, politics, religion, and education, of which four were published between 1989 and 1995 and the last three posthumously.⁷

Five aspects can be highlighted in characterising Luhmann’s theoretical approach.

First, Luhmann combines the three concepts of function, differentiation and evolution in order to analyse the development and dynamics of modern society. He distinguishes between three levels of analysis of autopoietic systems: general systems theory, the theory of social systems (as opposed to psychic systems, organisms and machines) and the level of concrete analysis of social systems. Similar to Parsons, Luhmann considers the development of social systems as a process of differentiation and evolution. However, in Luhmann’s concept, the Parsonian ordering of society with just four primary subsystems is replaced by a polycentric view. Modern society replaces vertical stratification with horizontal functional differentiation as primary mode of social integration and thereby loses its centre.

The key concept in Luhmann’s theory of society is functional differentiation.⁸ Modern society consists of a number of function systems that operate next to each other. Major function systems of modern society are the economy, law, science, politics, religion, art and education. However, the list is not exhaustive and there is no fixed number of function systems.

Modern society is plural and there is no ranking of functions or function systems. For analytical purposes, Luhmann distinguishes between society and function systems. He considers society as a first-order social system, whereas function systems like the economic and the legal system are viewed as second-order social systems or societal subsystems. Society as a first-order social system differs from second-order social systems insofar as it has no other social system as an environment; society’s environment consists only of natural and psychic systems (human beings).

In Luhmann’s theory, functions are not derived from a fixed set of pattern variables (like in Parsons’s approach), but are ultimately defined by the social systems themselves. Functions are represented by binary codes specific to each function subsystem of society. Binary codes are achievements of evolution and necessary requirements of a function system in order to define its boundary and select its elements, that is its specific communications. In applying the binary code, the function subsystems can distinguish between societal communications that belong to the system or the environment of the system. Examples of binary codes are true/false in the case of the science system, legal/illegal in the case of the legal system, and payment/non-payment in the case of the economic system. However, these codes do not guide the behaviour of the participants directly. They require programmes (like methods, statutes or invoices) that translate them into behavioural directives.

The second feature of Luhmann’s theory concerns his understanding of elements and structures as key components of a system. Autopoietic systems theory develops a new understanding of structure and its relation to elements. Luhmann insists that it is not sufficient to define structure as relations of elements. In the general autopoietic conception of systems, structures result from the fact that only certain relations of elements are selected and held constant over time. Structure is thus defined as the limitation of possible combinations of elements within the system. In this sense Luhmann is not a structuralist but rather a post-structuralist.

The function of structures is not to translate environmental needs into the system, but to secure the autonomy of the system’s self-reproduction, which is conceived as an operationally closed process. Structures of the system emerge both from self-reproduction of the elements and from selection of relationships. The system acquires properties in the evolutionary process that cannot be explained by the properties of its elements. The system instrumentalises the self-reproduction of the elements for its own self-reproduction, upon which in turn the self-reproduction of the elements becomes dependent. The structure of the system evolves in this process as a product of both the self-reproduction of the elements and the system itself. Furthermore, the system derives its complexity from its elements and their innumerable relations. System complexity is defined by a combination of selectivity, contingency and self-constitution of the system through specific selections. Complexity is the result of the relationship between the set of all possible relations between elements (contingency) and the selectivity achieved by the self-constituted structure of a system.

A third characteristic of Luhmann’s approach refers to the processes of communication, self-reference and autopoiesis that constitute social systems. Probably the most radical departure from the Parsonian social system theory and, indeed, from conventional sociology, is Luhmann’s assumption that the ultimate, non-decomposable elements of an autopoietic social system are communications and not human beings. For Luhmann, human beings constitute part of the environment of the social system and he views the individuality of human beings and their consciousness as separate, highly complex psychic systems. Furthermore, in Luhmann’s theory, communications replace actions or interactions as the main elements of a social system. Communication consists of three components: information, utterance and understanding. Each component is described as a selection, and communication is accordingly characterised as the coordination of three selections. The important feature of communications is that they are related in self-referential processes. Thus, without linkage to other communications, no communication can happen.

Luhmann’s theory of communication incorporates logical and mathematical approaches. In this respect, it has been elaborated by Dirk Baecker⁹ into a general systems theory of communication. Baecker, in accordance with Luhmann, emphasises that communications as such cannot be observed but require specific forms in which they appear.¹⁰ This is crucial for a social system because survival depends on its ability to observe and describe itself, which is a precondition for self-reference and autopoiesis. This requirement to become observable both for external observers and for self-observation is the main reason why, according to Luhmann and Baecker, a communication system generally ascribes itself as an action system.

Luhmann has demonstrated such ascription in his analysis of the emergence of structures in interaction systems. Structures reduce uncertainty and create trust relations.¹¹ In face-to-face interactions, the mutuality of expectations binds the actors through double contingency and thus becomes a self-referential circle. Luhmann merges the theory of self-reference and double contingency and thereby arrives at a concept of action and interaction without a subject.¹²

Interaction conceived as a self-referential circle is unstable and can cease to exist from one moment to the next. In order to survive, it needs a system which treats the self-referential circle as an element of its self-reproduction. Self-reference of the system means, in this respect, that the system produces and delimits the operative unity of its elements through the operation of its elements. It is precisely this process that Luhmann calls the autopoietic process, which lends its own unity to the system.¹³

Pre-autopoietic systems theory defined systems as open systems which are characterised by their exchange relations with the environment. Autopoietic systems theory conceives systems instead as closed systems which reproduce themselves not by variation of structure but by constant recombination of their elements. Recursive closure of the system, with respect to its elements, guarantees self-reproduction or autopoiesis. Luhmann constructs a theory of an operationally closed social system which is not dependent on other social systems or its environment for its core activity (i.e., autopoiesis). Only if autopoiesis is guaranteed can the system be open and relate to the innumerable events and conditions in its environment.

Fourth, a particularly pertinent problem for a theory of autopoietic social systems is the conceptualisation of the relationship of the system with its environment and with itself. A social system can logically develop three kinds of relationships. It can relate to society, it can relate to another social system or societal subsystem and it can relate to itself. Luhmann calls the relationship to society function, to another social system performance and to itself reflexion.¹⁴

In debates within systems theory, a number of concepts are used for the analysis of intersystem relationships. Originally, Parsons adopted the notion of interpenetration as the main concept in studying exchange relations between systems. However, Luhmann uses this concept only in a limited sense and reserves interpenetration, at least in his theory of social systems, for an analysis of the relationship between social systems and psychic systems.¹⁵ The central concept that he uses in theorising relations between social systems is structural coupling. Luhmann adopted this concept from general systems theory and biological evolution theory in order to explain the emergence of mechanisms of coupling in co-evolutionary processes of social systems. Prominent examples of mechanisms of structural coupling in society are for Luhmann the semantic concepts of the constitution, contract and property that emerge in links between law, politics and the economy. Coupled systems increase the chances of structural variation of systems. However, they cannot determine structural changes. Structural coupling increases the chances of reciprocal irritation or perturbation of the coupled systems, to which each system can only respond with internal means