Abstract
This article aims to formulate the relation between culture and society from the perspective of Niklas Luhmann’s theory of self-referential social systems. Traditional sociological theories, such as those proposed by Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schutz, consider the social to be based on a common culture among people. This idea posits that a society must be defined as a society of culture because it is a product of culture. Conversely, the theory of self-referential social systems does not presuppose such a common basis for the social. Even without a shared culture, a social system always emerges based on mutual intransparency (i. e., double contingency among people) and subsequently begins to control itself by remembering and forgetting the memory of its own operations. This memory is called culture, and it results from self-referential system operations. Therefore, as a product of the social system, culture can be described as a culture of a social system. This formulation is also applicable to the de-nationalized and de-territorialized world society. The world culture, or the culture of society, means contingency. As the eigenvalue of the world society, contingency gives the orientation of the further system-differentiation to the world society. Consequently, by placing the social before the cultural, a theoretical framework can be established for describing and analyzing the current world situation, in which cultures are being differentiated with many associated issues.
Article note
This article is a modified, English version of Tada (2011), which was previously published in Japanese in Shakaigaku hyōron (Japanese Sociological Review). However, the original Japanese text was later substantially revised and enlarged and became Chapter 8 of the author’s book (Tada 2013). Thus, in preparing this English version, the author, aside from minor corrections and changes of expressions for readability, made additions, to the extent that space permits, with reference to the book chapter version (note that the revision does not reflect the development of the research in this field since the publication of the book). This English version is being submitted with the permission of both journals, Shakaigaku hyōron and Soziale Systeme. The preparation of the English version of this article was financially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 19H01564.
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