It needs to be kept in mind that not all communication can be assigned to a specific function system. This is especially true for much direct inter
action that happens in small groups of people. Luhmann did not focus on interaction but still acknowledged that those ‘small social forms’ make the ‘large forms’, like function systems, possible. Speaking metaphoric
ally, function systems surface from a sea of these small forms.³⁸ Markow
itz³⁹ turns the metaphor upside down, and talks about a ‘lifeworld surface’
(lebensweltliche Oberfläche) that allows the mental systems of people to re
late to functional communication. The complex and complicated systemic processes in the limited everyday perception of individuals appear as simple ontological facts, as long as no explanations are asked for. The paradox of the complicated production of simplicity is what makes it so difficult to communicate results of social systems analyses to a wider audience, not least because the analyst’s mental capacity also limits the understanding of systemic processes, so every analysis is necessarily incomplete.
Talking and writing about one global/international science (system) is quite common in everyday conversation, science policy making and cer
tainly the library sector, and it seems to be based on the idea that all re
search has a common basic goal of understanding nature and society; in other words, of seeking truth. After introducing this idea and discussing different positions that I see as common and related misunderstandings, I will provide some examples which describe the research system as global.
This is to show that this conceptualisation is present not only in social sys
tems theory. Actually, all science studies tend to offer their contributions as building blocks for an understanding of ‘science’ as such, even though there are, of course, overlaying local and regional structures as well (e. g.
Vanpaemel 2012). However, those studies often exclude, most often impli
38 See Luhmann 1997, p. 812, with reference to Georg Simmel: ‘Die Großformen der gesellschaftlichen Teilsysteme schwimmen auf einem Meer ständig neu gebildeter und wieder aufgelöster Kleinsysteme’.
39 In his unpublished lecture series Interaktion und Sozialisation, 14th lecture, 22 Janu
ary 2007, MartinLutherUniversität HalleWittenberg. For an example of how to analyse interactional and organisational communication in the context of economy, with this con
ceptual framework, see Kranz 2009.
citly, the SSH (for some examples, see von Gizycki 1973; Livingstone 2003;
Wagner 2009) which comprise one of the (empirical) foci of this thesis. As a general approach including all disciplines, neoinstitutionalism will serve as an example of the semantics of one global/international science system.
Selfobservations from within the SSH disciplines seem to be an important ground for grasping how their globality is perceived. Social sciences are more eager to discuss this than the humanities, but a debate is also taking place there, and the following section will give brief insight into that. Inter
national learned societies and other tools of global identity formation such as the World Social Science Report (commissioned by the UNEScO) and the World Humanities Report (Consortium of Humanities Centers and Insti
tutes) surely play an important role which cannot be analysed here.
In the remaining subsections, some aspects of the research system which are relevant for the following argumentation are highlighted, such as, for in
stance, bibliometrics. All sections somewhat relate the consequences of Eu
ropean historical colonialism for institutionalised knowledge production and reception systems with a contemporary observation of world society.
The last two sections draw the connecting line between the research system and the economy, insofar as it concerns the work of academic libraries, on the one hand, and researchers, on the other. A more indepth discussion of library is presented in Chapter 5, when this thesis finally turns to questions of selection, after Chapter 4 has made clear from what to select.
‘Indigenous knowledge’ is often set in contrast to the research system, by the research system, and therefore serves as a good example of the self
observation logic of the system. For this reason, it will turn up often throughout this chapter, but no definition that takes different systems’ per
spectives into consideration will be given; relevant here is only how the research system constructs it. ‘Indigenous knowledge’ as it, for instance, constructs itself (if it does), is beyond the scope of this thesis. The observa
tions included here contribute towards achieving the aim of this chapter:
understanding how the research system constructs itself as global.
However, it might be necessary to give a very short introduction, as the recognition of ‘indigenous knowledge’ and ‘indigenous research methods’
within world scholarly communication is a rare and recent phenomenon
(e. g. Wilson 2008 and Smith 2012). According to Agrawal (1995), in the 1950s and 1960s, ‘theorists of development saw indigenous and tradi
tional knowledge as inefficient, inferior, and an obstacle to development’.
There was research about ‘indigenous knowledge’, but it was not included in scholarly communication itself. The pioneering disciplines were eco
logy, medicine, and their neighbouring disciplines (see e. g. Simonds and Christopher 2013). Other disciplines are still far from this inclusion: for instance, Yoruba numbers and ways of calculating might add valuable in
sights to the discipline of mathematics (see Verran 2001). Lindh and Haider (2010) analysed documents from the context of international or
ganisations devoted to knowledge and development, and found that in
digenous knowledge is constructed as distant ‘to codified scientific know
ledge, be it through geographical, cultural or even temporal distance’. The project of including it into the research system is also seen as ‘neohege
monic’ (Adésínà 2006) since it would ignore that all knowledge is situated (Haraway 1988).
2.2.1 Truth and the Unity of Science
According to Luhmann (1992b, Chapter 4), truth is used as a flag in aca
demic knowledge production to make it more likely that acceptance of assertions is reached.⁴⁰ A fieldspecific language, the welldirected use of references, and a typical way of phrasing claims are examples of how to use this ‘flag’. Acceptance can be recognised when assertions are reproduced, and the communication goes on, now based on the new knowledge which has been created, being treated as truth until the community knows bet
ter.⁴¹ For all this to happen, it does not make any difference if the research results are, for instance, made up; when they are accepted, they are true.
Theories and methods set the programme for what will be accepted as truth in scholarly communication (ibid., Chapter 6.6). Theories determ
ine which method is needed and how it is built, and conversely, methods
40 Luhmann talks about ‘symbolically generalised communication’.
41 Here, ‘cognitive authority’, a concept formulated by Wilson 1983, comes into play.
determine which theories are plausible. The relation is circular and there
fore contingent. However, in order to relate theory or method to truth, in world society, these theories and methods either have to be already known by the addressed international community, or they have to connect to es
tablished theories and methods via reference. For instance, introducing what is called ‘indigenous knowledge’ into the research system might not work out when connections are too weak.
The ‘unity of science’ is a very common term in the scholarly discussion about science (Hess 1997; Trosow 2001), and in my understanding, it ba
sically refers to the conceptualisation of science as a truthdiscovering enter
prise. Truth is thereby explicitly singular, and any differentiation of science in disciplines serves as a division of labour, while everyone involved works towards the same goal of eliciting nature’s principles. This standpoint is also called the ‘exceptionalist view’ (Harding 2011). Throughout the his
tory of epistemology, there was no moment when such an objectivist (or positivist) standpoint was not contested, and with Descartes, the idea of the possibility of extracting knowledge directly from nature became more and more implausible. However, it seems like this epistemological conflict is prone to producing misunderstandings.
For instance, Frohmann (2004), one of the most renowned LIS schol
ars, rejects any unifying account of scholarly communication, and with it any important social function of ‘truth’ for the research system. From my understanding, he mixes up an epistemological position with the observa
tion of communication, disregarding the fact that communication often refers to truth and science as if there were the truth and the science. Any kind of description of this communication must account for that. Instead, Frohmann does not differentiate between ‘doing science’ and the way that society describes what science does, but rather sees an equally levelled set of ‘practices’ which include, e. g., knowledge practices. Even though those practices are not exclusively academic, somehow—and Frohmann does not explain how—research can be recognised when practices are studied. At one point, Frohmann refers to truth in a different way, but cannot embed it in his framework: the ‘possibility of the enunciation of truth through scientific statements depends upon institutionalized, disciplined routines
governing the production and circulation of journal articles’ (Frohmann 2004, p. 152)—and other formal scholarly publication formats, I would add. When levels of observation are differentiated, this ‘enunciation’ (a
‘translation’ process in Latour’s words) is necessary to become a scientific result or an epistemic alignment, and all that has gone through this pro
cess will be truth for as long as it is not disproved. Alternative truths can naturally coexist.
In themselves, reviewer decisions about acceptance or rejection for jour
nals are only noise in the research system, and rather important for a journal when observed as organisation. Many organisations, defined by member
ship, are closely coupled to the research system, but they operate on their own logic, and that is the logic of decisions, effective for the whole or
ganisation. In a nondisclosed reviewing process, the reviewer’s decision to recommend the acceptance or the rejection of a paper itself does not communicate any new knowledge within the scholarly communication system. Rather, it prepares the appearance of the new knowledge tobe
communicated. If the submission is rejected, it will likely be submitted to the next journal on the reputation ranking, and, possibly, it will never become part of the academic discussion.
Frohmann actually presumes some kind of unifying feature when he phrases his own research programme: ‘What is the role of documentation in scientific culture?’ (ibid., p. 115). He does not grant that the research sys
tem is referred to as one in its selfreflection and in communication about it, which he himself performs. With this, Frohmann is an example of similar approaches on all kinds of topics where the messiness and inextricableness of communication is stated. These tend to propose tautologic definitions like: ‘The field of practices is the total nexus of interconnected human practices’ (ibid., p. 2). These approaches are close to their objects of study, and never step back to observe how communication reflects upon itself on several levels, affecting each other.
Contrary to this, social systems theory observes society along the seman
tics that it reproduces: as long as there is talk about this one scholarly communication system, referring to current events, then there is one schol
arly communication system. Social systems theory aims to explain how it
comes about that there can be a debate about what scholarly communic
ation or research is. Even though there might be disagreement when it comes to details, a debate can only take place when understandings some
what overlap. Asking how international academic knowledge production and reception work leads me to analyse how this specific communicative complex produces its unity, which is based on inclusion criteria. Whatever is excluded was treated by that same system before; otherwise it would not be excluded, but entirely irrelevant. Something that has been excluded can become noticeable again when it appears to irritate what is happening in
side. Those irritating events are usually rejected by contributions that come from the inside of the system, from a position that is usually not questioned as such. However, through debate and events such as the communicative success of contributions that were irritating at first, but then referred to positively inside of the system, a structural change is possible. An example of such an event is the interest of single established researchers in what is called ‘indigenous knowledge’. To take it in, it is released from anything that is strictly differentiated from research, e. g. transcendental procedures.
Salvation must not be entangled with academic knowledge. To state blur
ring lines as Frohmann does, is to take insufficient notice of this type of structural change.
Decolonial thinking is wary of any kind of universalism, but It is not necessary, however, to reject the whole idea of totality [… because o]utside the ‘West’, […] all systematic production of knowledge is associ
ated with a perspective of totality. [… It] includes the acknowledgement of the heterogeneity of all reality; of the irreducible, contradictory charac
ter of the latter […] and therefore, of the social. [… D]ifferences are not necessarily the basis of domination [… but serve] as the basis of another rationality (Quijano 2007).
Using the ‘unity of science’ for pointing to its internal contradictions will not add to any universalism; on the contrary, it becomes possible to see and analyse those contradictions.
Many strategies of scholarly communication, specifically on higher lev
els of selfobservation, have the function of strengthening the unity of sci
ence. An example that is also relevant for the methodology of this thesis is
the distinction between basic/pure and applied science. According to Kal
dewey (2013), the dichotomy can be traced back to the 18th century, at least. Additionally, around the Second World War, it has been increasingly replaced by a linear model that prescribes the path from basic research to innovation and industrial development from which economic progress and societal prosperity arise. Since the 1990s, both models have been contested by researchers as oversimplified, without being replaced by an alternative, and both the dichotomy and the linear model are still crucial for decisions in research administration and funding.
Kaldewey suggests analysing both models as narratives which serve the creation and performance of the unity of science that is rapidly missed when the heterogeneous research in different fields is assessed. Research administration and funding agencies need to rely on some kind of unifying selfdescription of academia to establish unified procedures, and to justify the spending of public money to society at large. Research itself relies on this kind of identity construction for many reasons, amongst these the pos
sibility of interdisciplinary research, the maintenance of the researcher’s role in society, and the boundary work required to retain scientific free
dom. At the same time, the ongoing integration of ‘indigenous knowledge’
and similar boundary appearances foster the problemsolving competence of academia and deliver a strong argument for funding and status: ‘new’
topics and increased ‘diversity’ sell. Of course, the narrative of basic and applied research is only a small, but important part of the research system’s selfdescription that has to be rather complex to be convincing.
As explained earlier, the selfreferential communication that circulates in a function system can be irritated by communication happening in its environment. For this to happen, environmental communication usually interferes with the function of the system. For instance, the research sys
tem will be irritated when reputation is acquired monetarily. In this case, the economic system, which operates by selling and buying, irritates the research system. When that happens, this tends to be subject to critique, and academic freedom is found to be at risk. These borderline cases usually stabilise the unity, closure and autonomy of the system. In the mentioned case, it is likely that institutional measures will be taken in order to prevent
such interference in the future, as a ‘service’ of organisations in the close environment of the research system.
2.2.2 The Globality of Social Sciences & Humanities
Deviating from social systems theory, the neoinstitutional approach to the research system is based on the analytical distinction between scientific communities on the one hand, and an institutionalised system on the other hand, codified by institutions such as the UNEScO or national funding agen
cies, ‘kept sharply distinct from nonWestern, premodern, or indigenous knowledge systems’ (Drori 2003, pp. 5 sq.). The function of the institu
tionalised system for world society is identified by providing authority for the knowledge that is produced by scientific communities. In other words:
the system procures a framework that helps identify the knowledge that society should consider. The apparent worldwide isomorphism of science organisations and practices is due to world polity models which ‘direct policy prescriptions that influence nationstates to be more rationalistic and progressive [sic!], and to be organized around and oriented toward universalistic perspectives’ (Schöpfer and McEneaney 2003). Science, the
‘conceptual axis of modernity’ (Drori 2012), is seen as a main driver for developmentalism (see the critique in the introduction to this thesis).
Turning to semantics of a global system in the case of the humanities, it becomes apparent that the discussion there is less interested in global institutional frameworks, but more in the epistemological foundations of the disciplines. In their introduction to the collection The Humanities be
tween Global Integration and Cultural Diversity, Mersmann and Kippenberg (2016) trace the trajectory of ‘global humanities’ back to their introduction by Dilthey in 1883. By putting the humanities on empirical feet, they were supposed to produce knowledge with the same reliability as the natural sci
ences. ‘The totalizing world system of the natural sciences is built into the human sciences in order to secure the equivalence of the humanities with the natural sciences and force their independence’ (ibid.). During the Cold War, however, the authors argue, it became increasingly appar
ent that the knowledge produced by this type of independence was of little
use for society. For that reason, the more open concept of cultural studies was introduced, which allowed for exchange and cooperation with social, technical, and natural sciences. This ‘reunion’ is interpreted as a ‘reorient
ation phase directed towards global humanities’ (ibid.). For Mersmann and Kippenberg, it seems to be clear that those new partners have been
‘global’ for a long time, and together with the event of technology for in
stant global communication and English as the common lingua franca in all disciplines, the time has come for the humanities to identify as global as well. This view is supported by other authors contributing to the same collection of articles.
Analysing the debate about ‘global humanities’ much further would go beyond the scope of this thesis. However, another argument is crucial in exactly this context: the impact of postcolonial studies on ‘glocal’ thinking in the humanities. Kola (2013), for instance, suggests taking comparative literature studies as a starting point for truly global humanities as such:
moving beyond binaries of ‘Western/NonWestern’, which means, to my mind, to be open to unexpected understandings of the subject, e. g. looking for neighbouring concepts to ‘literature’, ‘music’, or ‘spirituality’, which exist outside of typical ‘Global North’ frameworks, with no need to include them in the actual study. For humanities scholars educated inside those frameworks, they are unavoidable orientation points, but it certainly is possible to think beyond them. While this approach might still be rare, the mere fact that it is discussed proves that there is movement in the self
understanding of the humanities, and a lack of globality in the disciplines is perceived, as well as a longing for knowledge production and reception that no longer follows the ‘Global North’ tradition of setting its own traditional understanding as solid point of reference, but instead listening in on the world. This would also include making the canon much more flexible, and ceasing to expect specific references.⁴²
As mentioned before, the social sciences are more clearly concerned with their own globality. It seems like the debate started very slowly (Gareau
42 A comparable unlearning request addressed to a whole discipline is the edited volume Globalizing International Relations: Scholarship Amidst Divides and Diversity, Peters and WemheuerVogelaar 2016.