Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The most complete statement of one of the most renowned postwar German social theorists, Luhmann's book offers an important alternative to much social theory. Rather than returning to and reinterpreting the classics of the field, Luhmann steps outside of sociology to modern systems theory. In doing so, he challenges more conventional theories of action, meaning, and the subject. His systems theory is based on four principles that are developed in labyrinthine detail. First, every system establishes its difference from a larger environment without which it cannot exist. Second, the difference between system and environment, the permeable boundary between the two, is established through a process of self-reproduction and, hence, is relativistic. Third, system differentiation--the repetition of system formation within systems--involves elements that are in a continual process of relational adjustment. Psyche and society are not viewed as part/whole or microcosm/macrocosm relationships, but as separate systems adjusting to one another. Fourth, system formation has a strong temporal element; system production is a process of adjustment over time. Through this extremely sophisticated delineation, Luhmann avoids the mechanistic aspects often identified with social systems theory. Graduate, faculty. C. T. Loader University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Niklas Luhman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Bielefeld. Several of his books have appeared in English, most recently Essays in Self-Reference