Thesis Eleven

The article sketches an approach to the sociology of the stranger which is based on historical semantics, on comparative studies of social structures of premodern societies and on a reconsideration of the `classical sociology of the stranger' and of marginality (Simmel, 1908; Michels, 1929 and others; Schütz, 1944; Park, 1964). The guiding hypothesis of the article is that there is a discontinuity in the modern experience of the stranger which has not been reflected sufficiently in the classical sociology of the stranger. Whereas in premodern societies membership criteria are binary codes such as `kin' vs. `stranger', `friend' vs. `enemy', and elaborate arrangements were then necessary for institutionalizing a third status (e.g. for internal strangers) between the binary alternatives, the modern experience is wholly different. Modern society is no longer a membership organization. The third status (i.e. being neither `friend' nor `stranger') has become constitutive of our everyday experience of other persons. And this everyday experience is that of indifference as our normal attitude towards most persons living in the world. A modern sociology of the stranger has to explore the facets of indifference. Indifference can be described as an interactional achievement in situations of fleeting contact. And it can be examined in its macrostructural consequences in a modern societal order in which motivations for societal engagements and therefore any willingness to care for the other are unavoidably scarce.

The paper deals with the changes in the sense of synchronicity and simultaneity connected with the transformations in the structure of society. It examines and criticizes the modern concept of absolute chronology, understood as an objective temporal reference common to all observers. This notion is compared with the relative and flexible (but neither objective nor generalizable) forms of synchronization of different societies. The paper discusses finally the hypothesis that contemporary society is realizing a more complex and recursive form of temporality, that questions the modern ideal of synchronicity. This temporality is connected with recent developments in telematics.

The article inquires into the uneasiness of sociological systems theory about culture. Culture alternatively is called the solution to the problem of double contingency (Parsons) and removed from this solution (Luhmann). It is shown that meaning is the more basic term whose description reveals a form rule of social systems which is only patterned, yet not understood by culture. Culture is a memory and control device of society. It may be conceived of as providing the distinction of correct versus incorrect behaviour. But who decides on the correctness or incorrectness of this distinction? Sociological thinking takes off where the cultural and the social are distinguished.

As a universal theory Luhmann's systems theory of society includes art in its ambit. The Art of Society (1995) reconstructs the formal and the social-historical conditions of the functional differentiation of a system of art since the Renaissance. The methodological focus of the reconstruction - Luhmann's theory of form (perception, first and second order observation, medium and form) and of systemic differentiation (social function, self-organization, codes and programmes, evolution and self-description of art) - are analysed in the first part of the paper. The second part examines the unresolved question of the code of the art system, the hermeneutic circle integral to Luhmann's theory design, and the relation of his theory of art to the `aesthetic epoch' of art theory with special reference to Heidegger and Adorno.

In an essay on `the modernity of modern society', written after the demise of the Soviet model but against the premature triumphalism of mainstream modernization theory, Niklas Luhmann proposes to broaden the perspectives of sociological analysis by drawing on neglected or misunderstood traditions. A re-reading of Marx and a reconstruction of Romantic insights into the modern condition serve to problematize the conventional functionalist account of modernization. But at the same time, Luhmann re-defines the conceptual framework of systems theory in such a way that the unorthodox inputs can be adapted to a more flexible version of functional analysis. The emphasis on reference and coding as different but interconnected interpretive operations leads to a more radical conception of the autonomy of subsystems; the interepretive aspect is, however, confined within the limits of a closed and uniform model. A comparison with Weber casts doubt on Luhmann's claim to have given a more adequate account of differentiation; the Weberian conception of world orders, although less developed than the functionalist alternative, seems to provide a better starting-point for the understanding of ambivalence and interpretive conflict as constitutive aspects of modernity.