Constructing a Sociology of Translation.pdf

Theo Hermansand made sense of selectively. In this way communication generates communication.The system continually recycles and modifies its own elements. It isself-reproducing or “autopoietic” in this sense.2. By doing this recursively and self-referentially over a period of time, and byselectively remembering and forgetting, a certain stabilization comes about inthat networks and structures are built up that make certain communicationsmore likely and therefore more predictable than others. The structures of asocial system are structures of expectation. We need expectations to counterthe double contingency that rules all things interpersonal and that consistsin our inability to read each other’s intentions or to fully predict each other’sbehaviour. As specific structures and expectations begin to cluster aroundcertain kinds of communication, individual systems differentiate themselvesfrom what is around them.3. Luhmann thinks of modern society as consisting of a large number of functionallydifferentiated social systems. Whereas in earlier periods of historythe dominant forms of social organisation were segmentation (as in clansystems) and hierarchical stratification (as in feudal societies), the form ofsociety in the industrial and postindustrial world is characterized by systemswhich specialize, so to speak, in performing certain socially necessary functions,such as producing collectively binding decisions (politics), the managementof scarce resources (the economy), or maintaining social order throughthe distinction between permissible legal and punishable illegal acts.4. The various function systems of modern society that Luhmann has describedin detail (the economy, politics, law, education, religion, art, the sciences,the mass media, organisations, but also social and protest movements) areperhaps best thought of as discourse networks. Each concentrates on certainkinds of communication and will process communications in its own way.There is however no superordinate system to keep the various function systemsin check. Society as a whole, as the conglomerate of these function systems,manages without a centre, without a common direction and without anoverarching purpose.5. Each function system is organized around an embedded matrix, a guidingdifference or schema – Luhmann speaks of a “code” – that provides a basicorientation for its operations. For instance, the system of science is guidedby a schema that distinguishes what it sees as “true”, and therefore tenable,from false, and therefore untenable. Everything that happens in the sciencesis meant ultimately to revolve around the pursuit of true rather than falsestatements about the world.6. Programmes flesh out a system’s code and render it operational. In the sciences,for example, they endow truth with a positive value and furnish cri-