While Luhmann acknowledged geopolitical differences, especially in his brief engagement with a theory of exclusion (Luhmann 2008b), he did not
29 Luhmann’s 1992b sociology of the scholarly communication system has unfortu
nately not been translated into English, nor has one of his key texts reflecting on the in
tegration of secondorder cybernetics into social systems theory, e. g. Luhmann 1990 and other chapters in the same collection; but see Brier 2008. Since the understanding of Luh
mann’s work has always been a matter of broad discussion in the community, I will do without pointtopoint reference to Luhmann’s key ideas as tackled in basically any of his work of the 1990s, in preference for more fluent writing and reading, except when I trans
late his phrasing directly. My translations of the concepts’ labels into English are consistent with the translations in Luhmann 1995b, with the exception of ‘psychic system’ which I replace with ‘mental system’, since the former has a spiritual connotation that I find less acceptable than the relation to health issues of the latter.
analyse them in depth. However, even if Luhmann was mainly concerned with observing the ‘Global North’, the detailed description of the paradoxes and contradictions found there have a critical potential that he was well aware of.³⁰ I hope to demonstrate in the following that social systems theory does not resist extending to taking geopolitics into account, and that it is, on the contrary, helpful when the goal is to unfold distinctions which seem to be grounded in colonialism. That the theory itself, more clearly than, for instance, decolonial studies, resides in the tradition of a hegemonic³¹ knowledge production system, must not be a hindrance to that project, yet this condition must be reflected upon. Naturally, concepts from other provenance come into play when they make innovative and elucidating use of the concepts that I deem necessary to accomplish my aims, or when they provide explanatory contrasts.
It is rare to work with social systems theory in LIS, as well as in decoloni
al/postcolonial studies. Social systems theory descends from the construct
ivist tradition, but, in a way, it also is constructionist: mental and social systems both process meaning, and create their own realities, but they are, like all systems, inaccessible to each other. With their own realities, all sys
tems create their own environments. This is the zone of irritation, where all kinds of things and other systems can potentially impact the respect
ive system. Mental systems are occupied with translating perception into consciousness, and are therefore left for psychology to analyse, while social systems continuously rework the line between their communicative pro
cesses and what these refer to—their environments. This bordercrossing
30 The critical potential of social systems theory has been discussed (and confirmed) a lot recently; see the contributions to Soziale Systeme 20.2, 2015, and to the edited collec
tions by Amstutz and FischerLescano 2013; Scherr 2015; Möller and Siri 2016 as well as Weißmann 2016. Although the debate cannot be reconstructed here, it will show through my reasoning.
31 ‘Hegemony’ and ‘power’ are not used as analytical concepts in this thesis. They pick up on everyday language, and designate conditions such as superiority, conflict, and resistance.
is the system; the environment is not of minor importance.³² I will return to the concept of social systems in Section 2.1.2.
2.1.1 Functional Analysis
The critique of the persistence of hegemonic social structures is not the pur
pose of social systems theory, but rather is implied in its applied method of functional analysis:³³ for whatever is analysed, the most important step is to convincingly construct a problem (Bezugsproblem) or a set of prob
lems that society appears to solve with its procedures, sense making, or facilities (all of these are based on social structures—I will return to this concept). Functional analysis then moves on to look for other ways of solv
ing the problem within the given conditions, or even for possible changes of conditions. The critical potential of the method does not primarily lie in identifying contradictions between problems and solutions, or judging the appropriateness of the solutions (for whom?), but rather in comparing those options. A high level of contradictions points to a high complexity of the system and its environment (also see Weißmann 2016). It can be seen as a normative aspect of social systems theory that it challenges society this way, inviting it to look at itself in other ways; to see and consider the risks of oversimplification.
Since a social system speaks, metaphorically, with many voices, in many languages, constructing problems from a system’s perspective (as opposed
32 According to Reckwitz 1997, the importance of these analytical distinctions goes back to the Cartesian tradition (Husserl, Durkheim) of differentiating between the inside and the outside (mental/social; system/environment), as opposed to the cultural studies tradition, which prefers to orient the theoretical work towards the distinction of knowledge structures and action (Wittgenstein, Saussure, Bourdieu, Giddens).
33 For a discussion of the method and a timeline, see e. g. Schneider 2009, Jetzkow
itz and Stark 2003 as well as Knudsen 2010. For a respective example, see Stinchcombe 2001. I mostly refer to Luhmann’s work, e. g. 2009a,b; 2010. This excludes a huge debate about functionalism that took place from the 1950s to the 1970s which did not include a constructivist option. Merton 1957 is a prominent representative of functionalism.
to from an actor’s perspective)³⁴ is a very difficult and complex task. Fur
thermore, specific social structures can hardly be analysed in isolation. Soci
ety is messy: there will not be a single social problem with a single solution.
The broadness of the approach also leads to difficulties in grounding the research empirically. This is why the empirical studies of this thesis are small, but many, and why they are supplemented by the results of other re
searchers’ empirical work. However, this thesis cannot be a full functional analysis of social structures arranged around the globality/locality of schol
arly communication in the SSH, but instead serves as a preparation for such a functional analysis.
Any research methodology struggles with the limitations of time and space, and functional analysis is no exception: leads need to be cut, and suspected relations ignored. While all research has to cope with this issue, it appears to be especially paradoxical in functional analysis because this methodology is all about unfolding the social structures’ complexity. Ne
cessary simplification is society’s feature, and functional analysis tries to backtrack it. Yet since research itself is based on social structures, it also relies on simplifications. Social systems theory always accepts that research takes place in society and that even sociology cannot step back and do the
‘God trick’ (Haraway 1988).
Once a problem, which society is most likely trying to solve with a cer
tain structure, is constructed—and social systems theory is supposed to assist with this task—functional analysis asks how plausible surfacing ex
planations, found in social utterances, or constructed from them, are: why are things done this way, and not any other way? What are the conditions of the possibility of doing things this way? Any answers to those questions have to take into consideration that systems are nontransparent to them
selves, just like they are to any other observer (except God, hypothetically).
However, those ‘answers’ can be informative, for the system described, for the research system, for any system for which they make a difference.³⁵
34 From a social systems theory perspective, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ can be found in each act.
Contrarily, a particular actor, who has more or less clear interests and preferences, is biased;
also see Luhmann 2008a.
35 See Luhmann 1997, pp. 885 sq. The concept of information will be discussed below.
Instead of being loyal towards society and the solutions it found, func
tional analysis is only loyal to the problems it constructed itself (Weiß
mann 2016). Being the focal point of the analysis, everything else is up for critique, while the constructed problems themselves are negotiated in scholarly disputation.
2.1.2 Social Systems
A social system includes everything that communication refers to; not the things, people, et cetera as such, but their correlates which are constructed communicatively as references in the environment of the system, which is part of the system. Depending on the observer of this communication, those correlates can take very different forms.³⁶ The theory therefore turns down individualistic or cognitive explanations of social action. An actor can never know exactly what the other understood from what has been said and done in a certain social situation, but according to the other’s reaction, there is a certain realm of an expected understanding. Since this realm is created communicatively, we can speak of social expectations, or as Luhmann likes to call it: Erwartungserwartungen, expected expectations.
(Mostly) unnoticed by the actors, a layer in every communication is built of the expectations about what the other might expect, in endless rebound.
Information plays a crucial role in any communicative process as the first of the socalled three selections of communication (see Luhmann 1995b, Chapter 4; Luhmann 1996). The other two are: utterance, and, as proced
ural distinction between information and utterance: understanding. The concept of understanding resides on a very low level; it only means that a communicative approach has been realised, that it did not drown in the ocean of noise. Once again: communication relies on expectations: e. g., what kind of audience is expected to understand the communicative ap
proach, based on what social constructions of groups of people? Expecta
tions are social structures, reproduced through communication. They are subject to evolution; they change.
36 Luhmann’s observation theory is based on secondordner cybernetics, see pp. 48 sqq.
Like the earlier cultural studies tradition, social systems theory has a strong interest in structures, while these are seen as being constantly con
tested by operations: on the one hand, structure makes operation possible, but on the other, operation impacts structure. Structures can, to some extent, be experienced in the form of (disappointed) expectations.
Luhmann’s huge opus mostly dealt with the description of how different kinds of social structures are actualised in communication. He built most of his theory on the empirical, essayistic or art work of others, and therefore observed how others observed society.
2.1.3 Knowledge
Both mental and social systems process meaning, and builtup memory, but for clarity of notions, mental systems deal with experience, and social systems with knowledge. Neither can be made explicit, although for dif
ferent reasons. From the phenomenological tradition (Husserl) stems the idea that experience can only take place before a background of intuitions that do not become conscious, that are currently not actualised. To be able to perceive consciously, there must be the basic assurance that the world will remain there even if the curtains are closed at night. Otherwise, the processing of perception to consciousness, this crossing of the line, would result in overload, and experiences can hardly be transformed to contrib
ute to the future background of intuitions, potentialities of something that could be expected to be experienced again, or experienced in a slightly dif
ferent way. The mental system is this crossing of the line from perception to consciousness, and memories are, as building blocks of the individual horizon of what can possibly be perceived, the prerequisite for this sys
temic process (also see Luhmann 1995a, Chapter 1). When something is experienced for the first time, depending on similarity to what has been experienced before, irritation takes place. Irritation is the driving force be
hind the construction of the horizon of potentialities, but also of its de
and reconstruction. It also is the mental fundament of learning.³⁷
37 For this concept of irritation, also see Luhmann 1995b, pp. 285 sqq. Luhmann 1999a mentions the similarity of this with the first part of the process that Piaget denotes
Social systems are differentiated into a broad range of varieties: intimate relationships develop their very own dynamics, which are entirely different from, say, those which organisations develop. Still, social systems have a lot in common, but the level of abstraction needs to be very high to get to these similarities. If we already are on such a high level of abstraction, seeing similarities and differences in how the basic processes run in mental systems helps to understand what knowledge is and why it has to be distinguished from experience as a mental process.
Knowledge is (re)produced in communication, in social systems, as a certain form of social expectation. As with the horizon of potentialities which make experience possible, knowledge always has to refer to existing knowledge to be accepted as such. This is why I consistently talk about knowledge production and reception, so the reader will not forget about this meaning. Without reception, whatever someone might see as know
ledge, privately, is socially pointless, nonexistent. If reference points are too weak, it will just be disposed as nonsense—just imagine the charac
ter of the mad scientist. The academic system of knowledge production and reception institutionalised this requirement, and I will go deeper into that in the following section. However, references to knowledge previ
ously widely accepted are also required for other forms of knowing, e. g. for knowledge about how to manage a household; the younger generation learns how this is done by observing the older generation, people meet and talk about how they do things, new ideas and technologies find their way into ‘how it is done’, but it is very unlikely that someone would adapt a body of knowledge about household management which stems from a remote community and which has few connecting points of reference. A body of knowledge—especially if it is expert knowledge, such as house
hold management—is relatively hermetic in its delimitation, but highly interconnected internally. Other bundles of social structures do not take the same form.
as accommodation. The German term Irritation does not have the predominantly negative connotation it has in English.
2.1.4 Semantics of ‘Research’
By concentrating on common features of research (equivalent to ‘doing sci
ence’ when focusing on STEM), no matter in which field, instead of singling out some of the countless differences, social systems theory gains the op
portunity to explain convincingly what people could mean when they talk about research. By using the term, people need to assume that the other assigns a similar principal meaning to it (also see Section 2.2.1). Again, expectations, and hence social structures, are the prerequisites for success
ful communication. Communication refers to semantics, e. g. semantics of ‘research’, which itself refers to social structures. Communication is the operative level of society, while semantics is the set of concrete forms of language, performance, and visuality that social structures take. When se
mantics is made use of by different authors, and usages are compared, then a mediated, indirect, and somewhat obscured observation of social struc
tures is possible. Semantics is the observable surface of social structures, though not as absolute forms of those structures, but rather as always rel
ative to the observer.
To conclude this introduction, I argue that social systems theory is help
ful in assembling single observations into insights about society in general.
Naturally, sociology does not deal much with LIS’ research problems. How
ever, LIS could enrich its research by incorporating the understanding of society as offered by social systems theory. In order to analyse a certain section of worldwide scholarly communication, I deem it first necessary to understand how it is possible to talk about ‘worldwide scholarly commu
nication’. ‘Dismissing meta narratives in postmodernism and postcoloni
alism, in disguising the systemic nature of power, also makes it impossible to confront power systematically’ (Bahl and Dirlik 2000, p. 10). Undeni
ably, there are risks involved with the grand social theory approach, like sweeping aside differences and ignoring the local. My aim is to integrate and balance various perspectives.