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"Luhmann, Niklas, 1927-1998, author"
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Theory of Society, Volume 1
This first volume of Niklas Luhmann's two-part final work was initially published in German in 1997. The culmination of his thirty-year theoretical project to reconceptualize sociology, it offers a comprehensive description of modern society on a scale not attempted since Talcott Parsons. 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. An investigation into the ways in which social systems produce and reproduce themselves, 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 trigger potentially far-reaching processes of restructuring, receive 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 A concluding chapter on the semantics of modern society's self-description bids farewell to the outdated theoretical approaches of \"old Europe,\" that is, to ontological, holistic, ethical, and critical interpretations of society, and argues that concepts such as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.
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Organization and decision
\"Organizations deserve more attention than they have hitherto found-above all, a different sort of attention. This may seem a bold assertion given the many ways in which organizations are discussed in everyday communication and in the relevant scientific disciplines. But this is the very reason to concentrate our attention more strongly not on organizations as countable entities but on organization as a process. This is relevant from a theoretical perspective, given that inquiry into the essence of organization seems to have become unproductive (which is typical of questions of essence, indeed of what- questions per se). But a different understanding of organization could prove important for the purposes of practical policy. Precisely because organizations (again in the plural) have become crucial, indispensable to modern life, it could be important to have a better grasp of their \"intrinsic logic.\" Especially if heteronomy-be it subjection to owners or other \"masters,\" to liberal or socialist ideologies, or to representatives of interests that are themselves organized-is increasingly called into question, it could be important to give organizations a conception of themselves that enables them to answer for themselves\"-- Provided by publisher.
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