Luhmann, Niklas (1927—98)
German sociologist and systems theorist. Luhmann is renowned for his attempt to develop a sociological model capable of accounting for every aspect of contemporary society. His work is enormously influential, particularly in Germany, where it rivals Habermas, Jürgen’s dominance of the social sciences. But unlike his peers, such as Adorno, Theodor, he did not engage with either Marxism or critical theory. Luhmann was born in Lüneberg. In 1943, when he was only 16, he was conscripted to serve in the Luftwaffenhelfer (as were Günter Grass, Pope Benedict XVI, and Habermas). He was captured by the Americans in 1945 but soon released. After the war he studied law and had a career in the law and public service (one of his duties was to deal with disgraced professors who had lost their jobs because of their Nazi sympathies). In 1961 he was granted a sabbatical leave from his administrative job, which he used to go to Harvard, where he met and studied with the great American sociologist Talcott Parsons. He then completed postgraduate qualifications in the School for Administration in Speyer, after which he moved to the University of Münster to complete his habilitation. In 1970 he was appointed professor of sociology at the University of Bielefeld, where he spent the remainder of his career, retiring in 1993. As the title of his best known work, the monumental Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie (1984), translated as Social Systems (1995), makes apparent, Luhmann was primarily interested in the way society functions. Luhmann adapted the notion of social systems from Parsons, but contrary to Parsons Luhmann was more interested in the functions of social structures---how they worked---rather than their identity. Social systems are distinguished from biological systems, physiochemical systems, and machines on the basis of their capacity to produce meaning. He drew on Husserl, Edmund to theorize the meaning-producing function of social systems, particularly their psychic variants. Communication is the foundational element of Luhmann’s social systems. They consist of communication---communicative acts---and there is no communication outside of the social system. Very far from being a rigid structuralism, as the notion of systems theory might seem to imply, Luhmann was particularly concerned to understand the way society adapts, the way it deals with risk and cataclysm. Luhmann was, in part, inspired by the work of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, particularly their groundbreaking book, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (1972), which introduces the idea of autopoiesis, or the self-creating system. Further Reading: C. Borch Niklas Luhmann (2010).