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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Article
Communication and Society: Theoretical Legacy of Niklas Luhmann
Author(s)
Milorad Djurić
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DOI:10.17265/2160-6579/2023.03.005
Affiliation(s)
College of Social Work, Belgrade, Serbia
ABSTRACT
Although he does not for a moment break the connection with the fundamental category of functionalism—the social system, Luhmann articulates the basic elements of his authentic sociological position precisely with the theoretical framework within which he solves the problem of social change through the concept of communication, a problem that has marked the history of sociological theory so far. The categories of system and environment, system and purpose, and internal differentiation of the social system play a special role in that theoretical framework. Luhmann’s basic thesis is the position according to which the elementary process that constitutes society as a separate reality is the process of communication. Therefore, any change in the way communication is produced simultaneously means a change in the way society is produced; these changes are evolutionary, which means that they move from a lower to a higher degree of complexity; changes in the level of complexity also change the relationship between the system and the environment; the change in the relationship between the system and the environment affects the internal relationship between the system and the purpose, that is, the differentiation of the system and the establishment of the autonomy of subsystems, which increases the degree of flexibility of society, that is, the ability of society to respond to the challenges of its own environment. The theoretical and practical relevance of this topic is more than explicit—one of the central issues of contemporary social and political practice is the articulation of increasingly rapid changes in complex social structures, so, in our opinion, Luhmann’s approach represents a significant theoretical legacy and an effective tool for understanding complex dynamics of the modern world.
KEYWORDS
social system, communication, environment, complexity, flexibility, subsystem autonomy
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