Boundary of social system

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Revision as of 12:31, 22 October 2010

According to the German social scientist Niklas Luhman, social systems are systems of communication. They have no fixed delimitations. Every individual is a system in its own because every individual has his own meaning en perspective.

This would cause a enormous complexity of all kinds of meaning, communication and an infinite number of individual systems. To reduce that complexity a system is formed by a group of actors who use a certain set of communication forms and perspectives.

The system selects her own specific types of communication. A system is therefore a boundary in itself, created in relation to other systems. The boundaries are related to perspectives, observations and situations.

A system can always be found in some form of relation to its environment. Difference is created cause the system exists in an environment, and its boundaries make it different from other systems. For a research question an observation to a specific system, the boundaries and differences are use full to study. This way for observing is valid to a certain extend because boundaries and meaning can change over time.

Sources

Vermeer, H.(2006) Luhmann’s “social systems” theorie: preliminary fragments for a theorie of translation.

Gren, M. & Zierhofer, W. (2003) The unity of difference: a critical appraisal of Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems in the context of corporeality and spatiality. In: Environment and Planning A. Vol. 35, pp. 615-630.

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