Society

From Geography

According to The Oxford Dictionary, society is ´the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community´ (2011). The definition used by Knox and Marston (2007, p.511) is more detailed: the sum of the inventions, institutions, and relationships created and reproduced by human beings across particular places and times.

In Niklas Luhmann´s systems theory, society plays an important role. A basic assumption of Luhmann is that a society can never be observed in its totality. Therefore there is a lack of overview and it is hard to direct societies in a coordinated way (Arnoldi, 2001, p. 2). The reason for this, is that the system "society" consists out of a number of subsystems (e.g. politics, economy, religion). There can be looked at these subsystems seperately, but the bigger picture that these individual components create is to extensive and complicated to see as a whole. The understanding of the loose components, however, makes it possible to understand a system such as society, without seeing it as a whole.

Luhmann distinguishes three analysis levels that are appicable on society. The highest level is only systems. The second level consists of machines, organisms, social systems, and psychic systems. The lowest level is a part of the social systems; it consists of interactions, organizations, and societies Gren & Zierhofer, 2002, p. 6).

According to Alfred Schütz (in Campbell, 1981): "Society is a construct of ideal types defined according to the functions of the abstract individuals involved" (p.210). The sum of 'they-relationships' make up the totality of society (Campbell, 1981).

References

Arnoldi, J. (2001). Niklas Luhmann. An introduction. In: Theory, Culture & Society. Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 1-13.

Campbell, T. (1981). Seven Theories of Human Society. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Chapter 9: Alfred Schütz: A phenomenological Approach. pp. 197-214.

Gren, M. & Zierhofer. W. (2002). The unity of difference. A critical appraisal of Niklas Luhmann´s theory of social systems in the context of corporeality and spatiality. Nijmegen: University of Nijmegen.

Oxford Dictionary. (2011). Definitions of society. Retrieved on 17 October 2011, on [1]

Knox, P.L & Marston, S.A. (2007). Places and regions in global context: human geography. 4th edition, Prentice Hall: New Jersey

Contributers

Created by User:BoudewijnIdema, 17 October 2011, 20:25 (UTC)

Edited by User:MichielVanRijn, 19 September 2012, 12:45 (UTC)

Edited by User:AnkeJanssen, 8 Octobre 2012

Edited by TeunVanDeVen 14:36, 24 October 2012 (CEST)