Niklas Luhmann was a German sociologist, philosopher of social science, and a prominent thinker in systems theory.
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or artificial. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structure, function and role, and expressed through its relations with other systems. A system is "more than the sum of its parts" when it expresses synergy or emergent behavior.
Talcott Parsons was an American sociologist of the classical tradition, best known for his social action theory and structural functionalism. Parsons is considered one of the most influential figures in sociology in the 20th century. After earning a PhD in economics, he served on the faculty at Harvard University from 1927 to 1973. In 1930, he was among the first professors in its new sociology department. Later, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Department of Social Relations at Harvard.
A role is a set of connected behaviors, rights, obligations, beliefs, and norms as conceptualized by people in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behavior and may have a given individual social status or social position. It is vital to both functionalist and interactionist understandings of society. Social role theory posits the following about social behavior:
- The division of labour in society takes the form of the interaction among heterogeneous specialized positions, we call roles.
- Social roles included appropriate and permitted forms of behavior and actions that recur in a group, guided by social norms, which are commonly known and hence determine the expectations for appropriate behavior in these roles, which further explains the position of a person in the society.
- Roles are occupied by individuals, who are called actors.
- When individuals approve of a social role, they will incur costs to conform to role norms, and will also incur costs to punish those who violate role norms.
- Changed conditions can render a social role outdated or illegitimate, in which case social pressures are likely to lead to role change.
- The anticipation of rewards and punishments, as well as the satisfaction of behaving pro-socially, account for why agents conform to role requirements.
An open system is a system that has external interactions. Such interactions can take the form of information, energy, or material transfers into or out of the system boundary, depending on the discipline which defines the concept. An open system is contrasted with the concept of an isolated system which exchanges neither energy, matter, nor information with its environment. An open system is also known as a flow system.
The term autopoiesis refers to a system capable of producing and maintaining itself by creating its own parts. The term was introduced in the 1972 publication Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells.
Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is "a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability".
In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings, or purposes. Examples of social structure include family, religion, law, economy, and class. It contrasts with "social system", which refers to the parent structure in which these various structures are embedded. Thus, social structures significantly influence larger systems, such as economic systems, legal systems, political systems, cultural systems, etc. Social structure can also be said to be the framework upon which a society is established. It determines the norms and patterns of relations between the various institutions of the society.
Role theory is a concept in sociology and in social psychology that considers most of everyday activity to be the acting-out of socially defined categories. Each role is a set of rights, duties, expectations, norms, and behaviors that a person has to face and fulfill. The model is based on the observation that people behave in a predictable way, and that an individual's behavior is context specific, based on social position and other factors. Research conducted on role theory mainly centers around the concepts of consensus, role conflict, role taking, and conformity. The theatre is a metaphor often used to describe role theory.
Sociocybernetics is an interdisciplinary science between sociology and general systems theory and cybernetics. The International Sociological Association has a specialist research committee in the area – RC51 – which publishes the (electronic) Journal of Sociocybernetics.
In sociology, social complexity is a conceptual framework used in the analysis of society. In the sciences, contemporary definitions of complexity are found in systems theory, wherein the phenomenon being studied has many parts and many possible arrangements of the parts; simultaneously, what is complex and what is simple are relative and change in time.
Sociological abstraction refers to the varying levels at which theoretical concepts can be understood. It is a tool for objectifying and simplifying sociological concepts. This idea is very similar to the philosophical understanding of abstraction. There are two basic levels of sociological abstraction: sociological concepts and operationalized sociological concepts.
Neofunctionalism is the perspective that all integration is the result of past integration. The term may also be used to literally describe a social theory that is "post" traditional structural functionalism. Whereas theorists such as Jeffrey C. Alexander openly appropriated the term, others, such as the post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault, have been categorized as contemporary functionalists by their critics.
The AGIL paradigm is a sociological scheme created by American sociologist Talcott Parsons in the 1950s. It is a systematic depiction of certain societal functions, which every society must meet to be able to maintain stable social life. The AGIL paradigm is part of Parsons's larger action theory, outlined in his notable book The Structure of Social Action, in The Social System and in later works, which aims to construct a unified map of all action systems, and ultimately "living systems". Indeed, the actual AGIL system only appeared in its first elaborate form in 1956, and Parsons extended the system in various layers of complexity during the rest of his intellectual life. Towards the end of his life, he added a new dimension to the action system, which he called the paradigm of the human condition; within that paradigm, the action system occupied the integral dimension.
In sociology, social psychology studies the relationship between the individual and society. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field of psychology, sociological social psychology places relatively more emphasis on the influence of social structure and culture on individual outcomes, such as personality, behavior, and one's position in social hierarchies. Researchers broadly focus on higher levels of analysis, directing attention mainly to groups and the arrangement of relationships among people. This subfield of sociology is broadly recognized as having three major perspectives: Symbolic interactionism, social structure and personality, and structural social psychology.
The sociology of law, legal sociology, or law and society is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies. Some see sociology of law as belonging "necessarily" to the field of sociology, but others tend to consider it a field of research caught up between the disciplines of law and sociology. Still others regard it as neither a subdiscipline of sociology nor a branch of legal studies but as a field of research on its own right within the broader social science tradition. Accordingly, it may be described without reference to mainstream sociology as "the systematic, theoretically grounded, empirical study of law as a set of social practices or as an aspect or field of social experience". It has been seen as treating law and justice as fundamental institutions of the basic structure of society mediating "between political and economic interests, between culture and the normative order of society, establishing and maintaining interdependence, and constituting themselves as sources of consensus, coercion and social control".
Sociology of terrorism is a field of sociology that seeks to understand terrorism as a social phenomenon. The field defines terrorism, studies why it occurs and evaluates its impacts on society. The sociology of terrorism draws from the fields of political science, history, economics and psychology. The sociology of terrorism differs from critical terrorism studies, emphasizing the social conditions that enable terrorism. It also studies how individuals as well as states respond to such events.
In system theory, differentiation is the increase of subsystems in a modern society to increase the complexity of that society. Each subsystem can make different connections with other subsystems, and this leads to more variation within the system in order to respond to variation in the environment.
Steffen Roth is an academic and author on management, economics, and sociology. He is currently Full Professor of Management at the La Rochelle Business School and Full Professor of Social Science as well as President of the Senate of Kazimieras Simonavičius University.
Medical sociology is the sociological analysis of health, Illness, differential access to medical resources, the social organization of medicine, Health Care Delivery, the production of medical knowledge, selection of methods, the study of actions and interactions of healthcare professionals, and the social or cultural effects of medical practice. The field commonly interacts with the sociology of knowledge, science and technology studies, and social epistemology. Medical sociologists are also interested in the qualitative experiences of patients, doctors, and medical education; often working at the boundaries of public health, social work, demography and gerontology to explore phenomena at the intersection of the social and clinical sciences. Health disparities commonly relate to typical categories such as class, race, ethnicity, immigration, gender, sexuality, and age. Objective sociological research findings quickly become a normative and political issue.
