Abstract
This article explores various engagements of system theory with Germany and Japan, looking in particular at the theories of Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann. Talcott Parsons based his sociological theory on the idea of a system of the values of a given society. Niklas Luhmann’s extended version was based on the idea of self-reproduction (or “autopoiesis”) of social systems within all modernized societies. Two studies have recently re-examined system theory on basis of its engagement with Japan: Günther Distelrath has subjected Parsonian theory on Japanese modernity to a structural revisioning in Die japanische Produktionsweise (1996); and Peter Fuchs has reconciled what he calls the “dividualism” of the Japanese psyche with the Luhmannian theory of functional differentiation in Kommunikation — Japanisch (1995). Distelrath critiques the Parsonian school of thought for giving Japan the status of a backward “follower” of the West. Fuchs, in contrast, endorses the universalist premise of Luhmann’s concept of society and makes Japanese “dividualism” the paradigm of effective modernization. Following on from Fuchs, I argue that system theory has the potential to overcome cultural limitations and become a global sociology. Its theoretical agenda in the twenty-first century includes the refinement of its concepts of the psychical system, the revision of its notion of the public and the mass media, as well as a systematic contribution to environmental protection and ecological communication in a functionally differentiated world society.
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Notes
The most prominent example is Ruth Benedict’s ethnographic study of Japanese culture and society The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), which was based on interviews she conducted with Japanese Americans interned by the U.S. administration during World War II.
This discussion had already taken place for the English version of Weber’s texts and terms, e.g. “Herrschaft” (regime) and “Autorität” (authority), which again attracted the attention of Japanese sociology (Takagi 2003: 122). The translation of Luhmannian terms into Japanese posed even greater problems, e.g. “complexity” (fukuzatsusei), “self-reference” (jikojunkyo) and “autopoiesis” (rendered in katakana).
Fuchs was not the first in fact to use the term “dividual”. The ethnosociologists Marriott and Inden (1977) have done so previously.
Hijiya-Kirschnereit points out that literature scientist Dōke Tadamichi had observed this lack of public discussion in Japan in 1953: “Dōke’s explanation for the Japanese ‘fondness of gossip’ is extremely interesting: he sees it against the background of a specific understanding of what is public which cannot be defined as the opposite of the private sphere, as in the West, but instead is limited to the ‘official’ (official, kanteki). In this view, many areas of life have reverted to the private sphere from the public, so that ‘public’ life for the average Japanese consists solely of contact with the (dreaded) authorities. According to Dōke, the ‘privatization’ of life has led to a fixation on the purely personal, which he considers to be an important basis of shishōshetsu. It seems to me that this provides an important starting point for an examination of the concept of what is public, similar to, for example, Habermas’s Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, which would supply literary studies, and shishōsetsu research in particular, with new initiative.” (Hijiya-Kirschnereit 1996: 286) The same argument applies to Richard Sennett’s more recent study of narcissism and public decline, The Fall of Public Man (1974).
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Heinze, U. System Theory as Global Sociology-Japanese Ramifications of Parsonian and Luhmannian Thought. Am Soc 44, 54–75 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-012-9168-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-012-9168-z