5 Functionalism, neo-functionalism and system analysis / Niklas Luhmann

Subrat Rath and Dev Pathak

1.  The Person

For Rousseau, “Man is born free yet everywhere he is in chain” (Rousseau 1970). This implies that people spend most of their time doing things that they may not want to do and try to behave appropriately, that is according to the societal norms and regulations. There is the invisible communication between norms and controls and this forms the cornerstone of Luhmann‟s System Theory. As Luhmann has put it – societies are neither a group of acting individuals nor a single corporative actor, rather a social system based on communications reinvent itself from time to time.

Niklas Luhmann was born on 8th December 1927 in Luneburg as son to a brewer named Wilhelm Luhmann. He joined the Hitler army in 1943 and at the age of 17 in 1945 was taken as a prisoner of war. After the war he studied law and earned a doctoral degree, following this he joined as a public administrator. Getting sabbatical in 1961 Luhmann joined Harvard University. Though he criticised Talcott Parsons yet Luhmann worked under his guidance for some years. In later years he developed his own theory. Returning from Harvard he worked as a researcher and professor at the University of Bielefeld till 1993. He was one of the legends in the field of system analysis.

2.  The Work 

Being influenced by the Parsonian ideas, Luhmann refined and modified the landscape of his thought as well as the insights of his capabilities to develop his own theories. There is virtually no theme or topic left that Luhmann had not touched upon. He had managed to publish as many as 50 books and 300 articles between the time span of 1963-1997. His works deals with a range of topics like ecological communication, differentiation of society, social systems, and communicative theory. However it‟s not an easy task to understand Niklas Luhmann because most of his writings are in German. The difficulty in understanding was not only due to the language, but also because of the concepts. He himself describes his theories as „labyrinth-like or nonlinear‟ and deliberately does so to prevent them from being understood too quickly which will only produce simplistic misunderstandings (Luhmann 1995).

With the publication of his final work „Theory of Society‟ which is the first volume of Die Gesellaschaft Der Gesellschaft (the Society of Society) published in German in the year 1997, a year before his death, presented Luhmann as a world famous sociologist. Luhmann began his early career as a lawyer, but there was a reason behind. He recalled that his early life was marked by the breakdown of social order – from the rise of the Third Reich to the interruption of his school days to fight, to the chaos of the German force in the twilight of the war, to the beatings he received in the marshalle work camp. He enrolled himself at Freiburg after his return to Germany from America where he served as a prisoner of war. Upon the completion of his degree he worked as a lawyer; but he found the demands of satisfying individual clients burdensome, and left the profession to become a public servant. However, after working with Talcott Parsons for a few years he learnt the way to understand the social system.

After returning from Germany he published his classic essay, „Functions and Causality‟, that critiques the Parsonian idea of functionalism. Because of this outstanding work he was called upon to serve as professor in a number of institutions before he finally took the professorship at Bielefeld University. He served there for the rest of his academic career. His other writings covered the field of love, mass-media, education, risk and so on. In 1971 Luhmann and Habermas co-jointly published a book named „Theorie Der Gesellaschaft order Sozialtechnologie: was Leister die Systemforschung (Theory of Society or Social Technology: What does System Research Accomplish?). In 1997 he published his magnum opus „The Society of Society‟ that deals with the individual function of society, such as law, science and art etc. He also deals with the individual explanations like, „science of science, economies of society, the art of society, the law of society, the politics of society, and the religion of society‟. However a combination of all these analyses were published jointly in the form of a book entitled, „The Social Systems: The Outline of the General Theory‟. It is a huge book of 674 pages and is considered as the most rewarding presentation of his theoretical core.

Apart  from the  above  he  has  also  produced  four  volumes  of semantic  studies  namely, „Societal Structure and Semantics‟ and six volumes of „Sociological Enlightenment‟. Similarly some of his other books are „Sociology of Risks‟, „Ecological Communication‟,„The Reality of the Mass Media‟, „the Political Theory of the Welfare State‟.

3.  Methodological Background 

Luhmann‟s theoretical abilities are drawn from a large number of scholars and their ideas. These include; Husserlian phenomenology, rework of it through Derrida‟s deconstruction, theories taken from Weiner‟s  Cybernetics, accounts of emergence and self organisation (autopoiesis) drawn from biology and structural functional accounts of Parsonian Social System. Being influenced by them Luhmann pointed out that „society finds itself in a profound theoretical crisis‟ (Lehmann 2013a:1). For him this crisis in sociology is a product of the followings:

(a)  Sociology fails to observe and account for its own operations. According to Luhmann a sociologist sees himself as a subject outside his topic. However for the purpose of theory of society this view is untenable. So the work on such a theory   necessarily involves self-referential operations. This can only be communicated within the system of society (Luhmann 2012).

(b)  The methods in sociology have failed to account for the complex nature of contemporary society. In his own words „there is no theoretical description of the problem that modern society has to face today. This is true for example; in the case of ecological problems concerning individuals. And it is true in the case of the entire  array of increasing therapeutic needs and many other things to boot‟ (Luhmann 2013:1).

Hence Luhmann argues for a new mode of theorizing to face the complexity of the modern social order in a globalised, networked and neo-liberal time. So for him sociology is generally characterised as post-human where the subject of analysis is society as a whole and the basic unit of society and sociological analysis is not the embodied human subject but rather instances of impersonal communication.

4.  The Social System 

While Karl Marx treats economy as more fundamental to other social systems, for Luhmann social system includes all functional systems in a modern society those are equally important and irreplaceable. He excludes a ruling class (an Oberschicht) that can govern society as a whole and denies any class relation and class identity over other social relations or collective identies. Hence, for Luhmann the social system is a system of communication and as a communicative system it is differentiated into various functional systems such as family, law, economy and science. These systems are structured and codified. For example a legal system communicates according to a legal/illegal code, art through aesthetics/unaesthetic, political system through government/opposition, and so on. Each system can only observe those its code depicts and unable to observe outside the code by the fact that it cannot observe what it cannot observe (Luhmann 1990d:53). As a result no system can control or foresee its influence on other systems and unable to communicate with them.

To overcome the above dilemma Luhmann suggests sociological analysis needs to study the structural similarities among the different autonomous systems. By doing this they will come to a general description of society. He finds that the function systems operate autopoietically and are operationally closed. In the continuing autopoietic reproduction, the system builds upon the structure generated by its previous operations. This in return leads to a state of operational closure. Hence for Luhmann the basic assumption is that system exists and is not founded upon a notion of a set of elements that are integrated into a „whole‟. Rather for Luhmann system operates via meaning (psychic and social), which operationally differs, and the mode of operation is communication. For example, for psychic meaning the mode of production is the cognition. For Luhmann the following arguments attempt to construct a coherent sense of the world we live in today by explaining the system thinking and social theories.

4.1  Autopoiesis and Operational Closure 

Before going into the analysis of what Luhmann termed as „autopoietic‟ system, let‟s recall what general system theory tells us. According to the general system theory, the systems are wholes, which can not be understood through analysis of the parts. Similarly the society is like an organism where the parts cannot be separated from one another. Based on these many sociologists like Max Weber, Durkheim, Comte had developed major theoretical approaches to analyse the world for the study of social facts, relations and actions. After World War II these early functional theories were refined and popularised by major contributors to structural functionalism such as Talcott Parsons who propagated the AGIL model that all society must fulfil. For him a social system consists of operative codes, adaptive mechanisms, integrative mechanisms and value systems.

Niklas Luhman as a student of Talcott Parson at Harvard University utilizes most of his ideologies. However he sees social system as an „organic‟ system, capable of :

(i) Self Production: Systems produce basic elements.

(ii) Self-Organisation:  Systems  create  their  own  boundaries  as  well  as  internal structure.

(iii) Self Referencing: Each elements refer to the system itself and are a closed system.

4.1.1  The Concept of ‘Autopoiesis’ 

The central point around which Luhmann develops his theory of social system has been derived from the writings of the Chilean biologists H. Maturana and F.Varela. The very word„Autopoiesis‟  is  derived  from  the Greek  root  „autos‟  means  „self‟  and  „poiein‟  means  to„produce‟, as a whole means „self-production‟ and „self-reproduction‟. Hence autopoietic systems are systems those reproduce themselves from within themselves. For Luhmann the concept of „autopoiesis‟ is not simply limited to biological systems only but can be applicable to a large number of non-biological systems too.

In the line with the general systems tradition Luhmann tries to abstract from the original biological concept of autopoiesis into a trans-disciplinary concept of autopoiesis. For him this concept is very much applicable when the elements of a system are reproduced by the elements of the system such as living, psychic and the social. For example when the living system reproduce themselves on the basis of life, social system reproduces itself on the basis of communication and psychic systems reproduced on the basis of consciousness or thoughts which are not physical substances but elements of meaning. So to say, for Luhmann the fundamental feature that characterizes living system is „autonomy‟.

4.1.2  Self Production, Organization, Reference 

As stated earlier autopoiesis refers to the autonomy of systems to produce and reproduce themselves. A living system is characterised as a network of processes of production of components that is continuously, recursively generated and realised as a concrete entity in the physical space, by the interaction of the same components that it produces as a network. Despite Parsons‟ influence for Luhmann social systems are not systems of action but of communication and they make sense of their environment. Hence Luhmann turned away from action towards communication. On the one hand Parsons through his AGIL paradigm views action as external to the actors. On the other hand Luhmann also remained external to actors by challenging the earlier structural functionalism. For him social systems are no longer primarily systems of actions but sense making systems through observation. To put is in his own words, „a social system is a communicative process that makes sense of its environment in a way rather similar to the way the world is made sense of in a conscious process (Luhmann 1995).

Luhmann through his autopoietic social system analysis tries to link sociology with other social sciences. He links the concept of self-reference to autopoiesis. For him human beings constitute parts of the environment of the social system. The elements of this system are not the individual acts or social role but communication and communication is simply not an exchange of messages but also include the very act of existing and living. Communication is possible through utterance, which is not permanent, but as an autopoietic system it continuously reproduces itself. The types of autopoietic social system can be represented in a graphical manner as below:

(Source: Seidl, David. 2004. Luhmann’s Theory of Autopoietic Social System, p.5)

4.1.3  Elements of Social System 

According to Luhmann the main elements of Social systems are the followings

(A) Communication: The earlier theorists usually treat communication as an asymmetrical process of transferring meaning or information from a sender to a receiver. Adopting the speech theory of Karl Buhler, Luhmann stated communication as a combination of following three components (Seidl 2004):

(i) Information: it states that communication selects what is being communicated from everything that could have been communicated.

(ii) Utterance: It is through utterance that information can be collected or communicated. That means „how and why something is being said‟. It can be said that utterance is the selection of a particular form and reason from all possible forms and reasons.

(iii) Understanding: For Luhmann a communication to be understood the information has to be distinguished from the utterance. Thus, what is being communicated must be distinguished from how and why it is communicated.

Earlier theorists gave prime importance on information and utterance for understanding communication as a concept; but it is Luhmann who gave „understanding‟ the most importance. For him the meaning of a communication is ultimately determined through the understanding. In Luhmann‟s own words, “communication is made possible, so to speak, from behind, contrary to the temporal course of the process”, which is called the„principle of hermeneutics. (Luhmann 1995a:143).

(iv)  Acceptance / Rejection: For Luhmann if the system is not discontinued a fourth type of selection will take place in the meaning of communication. He argued that one should keep in mind that acceptance does not simply come from understanding but one can also reject the total communication. So for him communicative structure does not always refer to acceptance. Rather there arise rejections too. This distinction between understanding and the selection of acceptance or rejection adds a dynamic element which bridges the gap from one communicative event to the next. This leads to a very important point pertaining to reproduction of communication.

(B)  Interpretation: Social vs. Psychic: For Luhmann, the human being is not conceptualised as forming a systematic unity but a conglomeration of organic and psychic system. The former (organismic) consists of biological while the latter (psychic) of thoughts. Though they are contrary to each other at operational level yet are structurally coupled or taken together. So Luhmann considered society as a first order social system that differs from economic and legal system. This is because the latter has no other social system like environment. On the other hand society‟s environment consists of natural and psychic system, but all are coupled for the smooth functioning of social system. For Luhmann differentiation is a system‟s way of dealing with complexity of and changes in the environment. If a system has to cope with complexity, it must be complex and allow for alternations, possibilities of variation and internal conflict. It should be flexible enough to deal with changes in its environment. So for Luhmann though human being does not constitute a systematic unity, the social system treats it as „a person‟. So the human being in conglomeration with organic and psychic system constitutes the social system. For the autopoiesis of the social system, the autopoiesis of psychic system is also necessary. Because of their structural coupling social system can expect their communication to cause irritation in the psychic system and also to receive irritation from the psychic system when necessary. So for him system theory begins with the unity of the difference between system and environment. The environment is a constitutive feature of this difference, thus no less important for the system than the system itself. (Luhmann,1995a,p.212)

(C)  Communication and Action: Though Luhman gives importance on communication, he never neglects the idea of action. For him action is needed for the reproduction of the system. While Habermas treats communication as some types of action, for Luhmann communication is a synthesis of a threefold selection of utterance, information and understanding as explained earlier. However action by itself cannot account for all three selections, leaving aside„understanding‟. Hence Luhmann argues that by simply treating communication as action means neglecting the concept of communication itself.

5.  Society, Interaction and Organisation 

According to Luhmann there exists three most important types of social systems- the society, face to face interactions and organisation. On the basis of communication these three reproduce themselves. As they produce different kinds of communications they are treated as different systems. Let us analyse them:

(i) Society: It is the system that creates and recreates all communication. Hence no communication is possible outside the society. Society exists as a singular i.e „world society‟. It is the autopoietic system par excellence. All communications are the product by the own elements/communication within the society where the borders of society are borders of communication. It is the society that encompasses the rest of the two social systems such as interaction and organisation within. For Luhmann in the course of evolution, society has to under go the following structural changes;

(a) Segmentation: an archaic society with a division between various tribes and others.

(b) Core/Periphery: the differentiation between a central concentration of power and a less privileged periphery

(c) Stratification: differentiated into socially immobile strata

(d) Functional differentiated: differentiated into function systems.

As Luhmann argues between 17th and 18th century a transition took place from stratified to functionally differentiated society. This differentiation refers to the differentiation into function, specific system, each operating autonomously through their own binary codes. The function systems are economy, politics, law, art, religion, science, education, family, mass media and health etc. Functional differentiation is a result of communicating system that observes through a basic semantic difference that determines what the system „reacts‟ to as information and what is left out as novice (Luhmann 1986a: 85). The functionally differentiated society combines extreme inclusiveness with extreme exclusiveness. They constitute environment for each other, but they cannot exchange their communication.

(ii) Interaction: Face to face interactions are the systems which reproduce themselves on the basis of communication, which are in other words based on the perception of the physical presence of their participants. Every communication refers to the fact that all participants perceive each other as present. However one thing that needs to be kept in mind that every interactional communication must be considered on the basis of what to be considered as present or absent. This distinction makes the communication interactional. Like the functional systems, interactional systems are operatively closed insofar as only the communications carrying the code „presence/absence‟ take part in the reproduction of the interaction system. Communication in an interaction can only connect to other communications that are treated as present.

(iii) Organisation: Luhmann treated organisations as social systems which reproduce themselves on the basis of decisions, „they are systems those consist of decisions and that themselves produce the decisions of which they consist through the decisions of which they consist‟ (Luhmann1992: 166). He rejects the general idea about decision as a choice or choice among alternatives. Modifying this he suggests decisions are a specific form of communication produced by the social systems, the organisation. He used the term „compact communication‟ which communicates their own contingency that is recreation of communication itself. A decision is communicated both implicitly as well as explicitly. Hence communications are always paradoxical in nature. The more they communicate there will be real alternatives to the one that has been selected. As a social system every decision in organisation is the product of earlier decisions and gives rise to ensuring decisions. Luhmann makes this decision making linked with each other with the concept of uncertainty absorption. For a decision to be made information needs the basis of which one alternative can be chosen over the other. Hence the uncertainty arises of „being chosen‟. He argues this uncertainty is absorbed by the decision, by comparing all given information. All uncertainty is transferred into selection of one alternative over the other ones. Decisions informs here about the selected and excluded alternatives.

Taking the idea of and criticising the idea itself of Herbert Simon, Luhmann gives another idea that is of decision premises. For him a decision takes previous decision as decision premise. It both creates and restricts the decision situation. For example if decision premise defines a decision situation as a choice between alternative A and B, one can not decide between X and Y. The concept of decision premises becomes particularly interesting when the concept of decision and decision premises are taken recursively to each other. The crucial point of this is that a decision can decide on decision premises which are not only binding for immediately succeeding decisions, but for a multitude of later decisions. They serve a sort of anticipated, generalised uncertainty absorption. In this way decisions can influence other decisions that take place much later in the decision process.

6.  Summary 

A few important points learnt in this chapter are summarised as follows :

• Being influenced by the Parsonian ideas, Luhmann refined and modified the landscape of his thought as well as the insights of his capabilities to develop his own theories.
• With the publication of his work „Theory of Society‟ Luhmann became a world-renowned sociologist.
• Luhmann‟s theoretical abilities are drawn from a large number of scholars and their ideas.
• These include: Husserlian phenomenology, rework of it through Derrida‟s deconstruction, theories taken from Weiner‟s Cybernetics, accounts of emergence and self organization (autopoiesis) drawn from biology and structural functional accounts of Parsonian Social System.
• For Luhmann the social system is a system of communication and as a communicative system it is differentiated into various functional systems such as family, law, economy and science. These systems are structured and codified.
• The central point around which Luhmann develops his theory of social system has been derived from the writings of the Chilean biologists H. Maturana and F.Varela. He spoke analysed autopoietic systems which are those systems which reproduce themselves from within themselves.
• The elements of Social System are: a)  Communication which is the combination of following three components: Information, Utterance, Understanding and Acceptance/Rejection; b) Interpretation: Social vs. Psychic and c) Communication and Action
• According to Luhmann there exists three most important types of social systems- the society, face to face interactions and organization.

7. References 

• Ducros, Louis.(1967) Jean Jacques Rousseau. New York: B. Franklin
• Luhmann, (2000) Organisation und Entscheidung. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Luhmann, N. (1986) “The Autopoiesis of Social Systems.” Pp. 172-92 in Sociocybernetic
• Paradoxes: Observation, Control and Evolution of Self-Steering Systems, eds. F. Geyer and  J. Van d. Zeuwen. London: Sage.
• Luhmann, N. (1992b). “Organisation.” Pp. 165-85 in Rationalitdt, Macht Und Spiele in Organisationen, eds. W. Kupper and G. Ortmann. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
• Luhmann, N. (1993a). Soziologische Aufkldrung 3: Soziales System. Gesellschaft, Organisation. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. (Quoted from David Seidl,Munich school of management)
• Luhmann, N. (1993b). Soziologische Aufkldrung 5: Konstruktivistische Perspektiven. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. (Quoted from David Seidl,Munich school of management)
• Luhmann, N. (1993c). “Die Paradoxie des Entscheidens.” Verwaltungs-Archiv: Zeitschriftfiir Verwaltungslehre, Verwaltungsrecht und Verwaltungspolitik 84:287-310. (Quoted from David Seidl,Munich school of management)
• Luhmann, N. (1995a) Social Systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Luhmann, N. (1995b). Soziologische Aufkldrung 6: Die Soziologie Und Der Mensch.
• Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Luhmann, N. (2003)  “Organization”.  In Bakken, T./Hernes, T. (eds.) Autopoietic Organization Theory Drawing on Niklas Luhmann’s Social Systems Perspective. Copenhagen et a1.: Copenhagen Business School Press, pp. 31-52
• Luhmann, N. (1997). Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt a.M. : Suhrkamp. Luhmann,  N.  (2003)  “Organization”.  In Bakken,  T.  Hernes,  T.  (eds.)  Autopoietic Organization   Theory   Drawing   on   Niklas   Luhmann’s   Social   Systems Perspective.    Copenhagen et.al: Copenhagen Business School Press, pp. 31-52.
  • — (2013). Introduction to Systems Theory, trans. P. Gilgen. Cambridge: Polity Press.