talk
12/09/2024
Inter-University Centre (IUC), Dubrovnik, Croatia
The concept of “guiding distinctions” refers to distinctions – such as economy/society, bourgeoisie/proletariat, nature/culture, system/environment, structure/agency, theory of society/social technology, or, most recently, analogue/digital – that have instructed theory-building, framed research, sparked controversies, or dominated discourses in the social sciences and humanities.
Whereas the classics in these fields primarily seemed to offer singular and dichotomic categorizations, subsequent generations of scholars have started to recognise the interrelated nature of these categories, along with their usefulness as generative tools rather than passive descriptors. The concept of intersectionality, for instance, was designed to explore how race, class, and gender converge to produce and sustain complex social observations.
Grounded in seminal work by Spencer Brown (1979), von Foerster (1979), and Maturana and Varela (1980), for social systems theory in the tradition of Niklas Luhmann (1995a) distinction is the mode of operation of all organic, psychic, and social systems, including Luhmann’s own theory: “a system is the difference between system and environment” (Luhmann, 2016, p. 44). This “paradoxy of observing systems” (Luhmann, 1995b) is further complicated by the circumstance that systems need to draw distinctions not only to maintain themselves, but also to observe other systems.
A subsystem of society as the compassing social system, science is defined and demarcated by the distinction between truth and untruth. Science, including social science and the humanities, employs countless theories and methods to apply this distinction to all other distinctions that make up life in its organic, psychic, and social environments.
Whereas social systems theory does not claim a monopoly on truth, its claim is nonetheless universal insofar as there is no domain this theory cannot be applied to. The theory is, therefore, sufficiently self-confident to accept the challenge to not only identify, but also parallel process the most relevant guiding distinctions of the social sciences and humanities.
A systems-theoretical focus on these guiding distinctions is, first, of general relevance as a mode of sceptical reflection on past, present, and future trends in our fields. Second, such a focus is required to meet the challenges of the ongoing digital transformation of society and the academic disciplines charged with illuminating the latter.
ICT and the increasing availability of digital data are dramatically changing the processes of research and knowledge production in social science and the humanities. While the pace, scale, and scope of methodological innovation in digital humanities and the computational social sciences are impressive, theory development is much less dynamic in our fields (Ossewaarde 2019; Roth 2019). This mismatch is problematic as digital methods do not only provide ever-larger datasets for the testing of established theories, but also allow and even call for new forms of digital theorising (Kitchin 2014). New forms of theorising might even imply the translation of analogue guiding distinctions into digital ones (Roth, 2023; Watson, 2023).
Against this backdrop, contributions to the Luhmann Conference 2024 might discuss what have been the most influential guiding distinctions in the history of theorising in the social sciences and humanities. Contributions might also identify distinctions that appear particularly influential today, or venture into explorations of emerging or yet-unknown guiding distinctions that might influence the future of our fields. We would also be keen to read submissions devoted to the historical context, the evolution, or trends of one or several guiding distinctions. A focus on interplays or interactions of guiding distinction would also be intriguing, as would be one on the opportunities and challenges of their integration into universalist theory architectures based on binary distinctions. Yet other contributions might discuss the performance or functionality of selected guiding distinction(s) for specific other systems or for society as a whole. Most welcome are furthermore papers that discuss whether extant guiding distinctions are still useful in a digital transformation context, as are contributions that defend selected (sets of) guiding distinctions regardless of their compatibility with digital theorising in the social sciences and humanities.