, 'Fiir Niklas Luhmann: Wie
rekursiv
ist Kommunikation?
Luhmann-Niklas-the-Reality-of-the-Mass-Media
308).
3 This distinction of 'signal systems' in Raymond Williams, The Soci- ology of Culture (New York, 1982), pp. 130ff.
4 Just as the function of the economy does not lie in the creation of wealth, nor the function of politics in being in power, etc.
5 For more on this, see Niklas Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 53ff, 181ff.
6 Incidentally, we are not asserting here that there is an equal distribu- tion of observers. In the case of advertising there may be more ob- servers who think the economy dominates advertising than who think the opposite. But this only means that one has to observe the observ-
? ers if one wants to reach any conclusions regarding the question of
how society breaks the circle.
7 The distinction is emphasized in a famous essay by Clement Greenberg,
'Avant-Garde and Kitsch' (1939), in id. , Art and Culture (Boston, 1961), pp. 3-21, obviously directed against Soviet and national so- cialist attempts to discipline art politically. But there had already long been attempts from modern art to bridge the gap between 'high' and 'low' art. On this, see Victor Burgin, The End of Art Theory: Criti- cism and Postmodernity (London, 1986), pp. 2 ff.
8 A remarkable exception is the carefully planned press and television treatment of the anti-corruption campaign led by Italian state pros- ecutors and judges. Some very conscious media-political work is be- ing done here, without political responsibility being taken for the consequences arising from it.
9 Such considerations do exist for the domain of the news. But then advertising and entertainment would be left over, and one would have to add them onto other systems, such as the economic system or a (poorly identifiable) system of consumption, 'leisure'.
10 See Niklas Luhmann, Das Recht der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1993). Chapter 10 Individuals
1 An early representation of this concept of motive, following Max Weber, is C. Wright Mills, 'Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive', American Sociological Review, 5 (1940), pp. 904-13. Cf. also ibid. , 'Language, Logic and Culture', American Sociological Review, 4 (1939), pp. 670-80. Also, in more detail, Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (1945), and A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), quoted from the single-volume edition (Cleveland, 1962), and, ori- ented more to rules of attribution, Alan F. Blum and Peter McHugh, 'The Social Ascription of Motives', American Sociological Review, 36 (1971), pp. 98-109.
2 For more detail on this sense of 'interpenetration' see Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford, Calif. , 1995), pp. 213ff.
3 For the 'homo oeconomicus' of the economic system and the 'homo iuridicus' of the legal system, see Michael Hutter and Gunther Teubner, 'Der Gesellschaft fette Beute: homo iuridicus und homo oeconomicus als kommunikationserhaltende Fiktionen', in Peter Fuchs and Andreas Gobel, eds, Der Mensch - das Medium der Gesellschaft? (Frankfurt, 1994), pp. 110-45. The same is true, incidentally, for so- called 'methodological individualism' and the concept of 'rational
? choice' in the social sciences. Here too the individuality of human individuals is not concretely taken into consideration, but rather only to the extent that it is necessary for the construction of explanations which function in accordance with methodological criteria.
4 The fashion of 'portraits' or 'caracteres' of the seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries, on which Diderot made ironic commentary, was in turn a product of book printing and therefore not to be taken seri- ously. See Denis Diderot, 'Satire I, sur les Caracteres et les Mots de Caracteres, de Professions, etc. ', quoted from CEuvres (Pleiade edn; Paris, 1951), pp. 1217-29.
Chapter 11 The Construction of Reality
1 Not until the middle of the nineteenth century, however, does one find this form of argumentation being used, and the everyday world, the lifeworld, folklore etc. being proposed as scientific concepts - at the same time, in other words, as metaphysical constructions of the world were collapsing and different foundations for the observation of 'reality' were being sought.
2 See Debra E. Meyerson, 'Acknowledging and Uncovering Ambigui- ties in Cultures', in Peter J. Frost et al. , eds, Reframing Organiza- tional Culture (Newbury Park, Calif. , 1991), pp. 254-70.
3 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, 'Das Risiko der Kausalitat', MS, 1995.
4 'To cut corners to catch the criminals', as Jonathan Culler, Framing the Signs: Criticism and its Institutions (Oxford, 1988), p. 50, for- mulates it - using Oliver North and the Iran-Contra affair as an
example.
5 A good piece of research about the moral attitudes of former Yugo-
slavia, still determined along tribal lines and only covered over by the official Marxist-Titoistic ideology disseminated by the mass me- dia, is the Bielefeld dissertation by Dusan Vrban, 'Culture Change and Symbolic Legitimation: Functions and Traditional Meaning of Symbols in the Transformation of Yugoslav Ideology', MS, 1985. It was not possible to find a publisher for it at the time.
6 See several contributions in Odo Marquard, Aesthetica und Anaesthetica: Philosophische Uberlegungen (Paderborn, 1989).
7 In 'Traum eines bosen Geistes vor seinem Abfalle', quoted from Jean Pauls Werke: Auswahl in zwei Banden (Stuttgart, 1924), vol. 2, pp. 269-73 (269).
8 Cf. Rene Girard, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (Stanford, Calif. , 1987).
? 9 In sociological-social-psychological research on justice, which seems likewise to labour under this impression, this problem of distribution is foregrounded as well, and neither the old 'suum cuique\ which presupposes a class differentiation, nor the rule, which refers to the legal system, that equal cases should be decided equally and unequal ones unequally. On social science research on justice, see e. g. Elaine Walster, G. William Walster and Ellen Berscheid, Equity: Theory and Research (Boston, 1978); Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford, 1983); Volker H. Schmidt, 'Lokale Gerechtigkeit - Perspektiven soziolo- gischer Gerechtigkeitsanalyse', Zeitschrift fiir Soziologie, 21 (1992), pp. 3 - 1 5 ; Bernd Wegener, 'Gerechtigkeitsforschung und Legiti- mationsnormen', Zeitschrift fiir Soziologie, 21 (1992), pp. 269-83.
10 'Reading novels has the result, along with many other mental disor- ders, of making distraction habitual,' according to Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View ? 47 (The Hague, 1974), p. 79. According to Kant, this diversion occurs in spite of the systematicity of the representation, that is, in spite of its internal plau- sibility, by the reader being able to 'drift away' whilst reading - pre- sumably in directions which allow him or her to draw conclusions about his or her own life situation.
11 For a cautionary view, cf. Jacques du Bosq, L'honneste femme (new edn, Rouen, 1639), pp. 17ff, or, more critically, Pierre Daniel Huet, Traite de I'origine des romans (Paris, 1670). These treatments do, however, refer to a literary genre which at the time was called 'ro- mance' and was considerably different from what we have known as the novel since the eighteenth century - not least in its idealization of heroes and of situations under the conditions of 'decorum' and 'veri- similitude'. The modern novel will then seem much more seductive, albeit in a more indirect way.
12 This is often portrayed with negative connotations as life at one re- move, knowledge gained through second-hand experiences. An old issue, incidentally; see e. g. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York, 1922). In addition to this, there is the indistinguishability of one's own and merely acquired experiences. But since it is not pos- sible to imagine knowledge without participation in communication, this value judgement itself requires analysis. Why are the effects of the mass media observed with precisely this distinction of non- authentic/authentic, without it being noticed that the desire to ex- perience things authentically for oneself is itself a desire suggested by this distinction?
? 13 This view is widespread nowadays. See Jean Baudrillard, Die Agonie des Realen (Berlin, 1983) or Martin Kubaczek, 'Zur Entwicklung der Imaginationsmachinen: Der Text als virtuelle Realitat', Faultline, 1 (1992), pp. 82-102.
14 Incidentally, this is an obvious paradox, which in Kant's day was capable of being hidden: the concept of se/f-reference contradicts generalizability within the perspective of a self-referential system - not, of course, as a topic for an external observer.
15 By way of comparison: in non-literate tribal societies communica- tion seems primarily to serve continual tests of solidarity, that is, to document belongingness, good will, peacefulness. The emphasis is on the self-characterization of the utterer (and this precisely because it does not become the content of utterance, does not become 'text'). Anyone who is silent draws suspicion upon himself, creates a dan- gerous impression - as if he had evil intentions he could not talk about. See also text and references in ch. 3 n. 9.
16 An expression taken from Roman Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art (Evanston, 111. , 1973), pp. 246ff.
17 As e. g. in Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London, 1936; repr. 1997).
18 Among many others, see the novel by Peter Schneider, Couplings (Chicago, 1998) - focused on the bar where the story takes place, which ensures that stories are constantly interrupted which want to tell of something which is itself interrupted, namely love.
19 For tourism see e. g. Dean MacCannell, The Tourist (New York, 1976). Cf. also id. , 'Staged Authenticity: Arrangement of Social Space in Tourist Settings', American Journal of Sociology, 79 (1973), pp. 589-603.
20 Whilst visiting the pilgrimage church of Rocamadour, I entered by a second door and had to pay the entrance fee a second time. Noticing my surprise, the doorman explained: You haven't been able to get anything free here for centuries!
Chapter 12 The Reality of Construction
1 Indeed he did this with precise regard to the distinctions used for the description: 'The Here pointed out, to which I hold fast, is similarly a this Here which, in fact, is not this Here, but a Before and Behind, an Above and Below, a Right and Left. . . . The Here, which was supposed to have been pointed out, vanishes in other Heres, but these likewise vanish' (Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller
? (Oxford, 1977), p. 64).
2 'It is', as Wlad Godzich paraphrases Paul de Man's position, 'the
resistance of language to language that grounds all other forms of resistance'. See Foreword to Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis, 1986), p. xviii. This view will need to be supplemented by the dissonance of images already mentioned (Godzich, 'Language, images', ch. 5 n. 25).
3 Cf. latterly Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion, Our Social Skin (Chicago, 2nd edn, 1993).
4 Unless one wants to allow suppositions about correlations between the data distributions (variables) of this research to succeed as 'theory'.
5 Hamlet, i. i.
6 For this specifically, see Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson, Com-
munication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry (New York, 1951, 2nd
edn, 1968), pp. 238ff.
7 Cf. Paul Watzlawick, 'Verschreiben statt Verstehen als Technik von
Problemlosungen', in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds, Materialitat der Kommunikation (Frankfurt, 1988), pp. 878- 83, for recommendations as to how to move ahead on this uncertain terrain.
8 It is known that systems theory today still speaks in this specific sense of communicative paradoxes as a consequence of the lack of distinc- tion of logical 'levels' which ought in fact to be distinguished. See Ruesch and Bateson, Communication, pp. 222ff and, following on from this, the systems-therapeutic schools of Palo Alto and Milan.
9 It seems to be generally accepted in recent sociological literature that fundamentalisms are phenomena of only the last few decades and that they do not come from 'deeply rooted' traditional sensibilities, but are rather the persuasive successes of intellectuals, whom one would as- sume to be experiencing identity-related problems in any case. Both the motive behind the idea and its success might confirm the connec- tion asserted in the text with the way the mass media work.
10 On this see e. g. Susie I. Tucker, Enthusiasm: A Study in Semantic Change (Cambridge, 1972).
Chapter 13 The Function of the Mass Media
1 I have presented the definitions summarized briefly here in more de- tail elsewhere. See Niklas Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 68ff.
2 See e. g. A. Moreno, J. Fernandez and A. Etxeberria, 'Computational
? Darwinism as a Basis for Cognition', Revue Internationale de
systematique, 6 (1992), pp. 205-21.
3 In George Spencer Brown's terminology, Laws of Form (ch. 2 n. 2),
p. 7 in conjunction with p. 5.
4 On the benefits of a digitalized, sequential way of working based on
'transmission capacity' in the face of huge amounts of information, see also W. Ross Ashby, 'Systems and their Informational Measures', in George J. Klir, ed. , Trends in General Systems Theory (New York, 1972), pp. 78-97.
5 For more detail, see Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford, Calif. , 1995), pp. 137ff.
6 Incidentally, this also applies in a quite different way to living organ- isms whose most elementary exemplars (single-celled organisms) can carry out cognition only via binary schematizations; sub-processes of the system, but not the whole system, are responsible for these and must carry out measurements for which there are no parallels in the environment.
7 See also Marcinkowski, Publizistik (ch. 2 n. 10), pp. 113ff on this.
8 See above, p. 65. See also index.
9 For living beings, cf. Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de
Lamarck, Zoological Philosophy (London, 1914), pp. 47ff.
10 See Talcott Parsons and Winston White, 'Commentary on: 'The Mass Media and the Structure of American SocietyJournal of Social Is-
sues, 16 (1960), pp. 67-77.
11 To return to what has already been said, this is why a special coding
is required in order operationally to close the system of the mass media. If we were to pay attention only to communication, the activ- ity of the mass media would appear to be only an involvement in the autopoiesis of society, i. e. only a contribution to the differentiation of the social system.
12 See Heinz von Foerster, 'Objects: Tokens for (Eigen-)Behaviors' (ch. 1 n. 3), 1981, pp. 274-85. On the recursivity of communicative op- erations specifically, see also id.
, 'Fiir Niklas Luhmann: Wie rekursiv ist Kommunikation? ', Teoria Sociologica, 1/2 (1993), pp. 66-85. Von Foerster's answer to the question is: communication is recursivity - with mathematical consequences, of course.
13 On this comparison cf. Michel Serres, Genesis (Ann Arbor, Mich. , 1995), pp. 87ff, with the severely restrictive concept of 'quasi-objects'.
14 See Spencer Brown, Laws of Form, pp. 54ff.
15 This issue is already to be found in perceptive formulations from the
early Romantic period. See e. g. Novalis, 'Bliitenstaub 109' ('Pollen'):
? 'The normal present links the past and the future by way of limita- tion. Contiguity arises through paralysis, crystallization. But there is a spiritual present which identifies both through dissolution. ' Quoted from Werke, Tagebiicher und Briefe Friedrich von Hardenbergs (Darmstadt, 1987), vol. 2, p. 283. However, one would hardly want to apply this hope based on 'spirit' to the mass media.
16 As in Heinz Forster, Das Gedachtnis: Fine quantenphysikalische Untersucbung (Vienna, 1948). Cf. also Heinz von Foerster, 'What is Memory that it May Have Hindsight and Foresight as well', in Samuel Bogoch, ed. , The Future of the Brain Sciences (New York, 1969), pp. 19-64.
17 Cf. Dirk Baecker, 'Das Gedachtnis der Wirtschaft', in Baecker et al. , eds, Theorie als Passion (Frankfurt, 1987), pp. 519-46. However, it should be added here that the system of law can be used in certain cases to correct this forgetfulness that is both typical of and neces- sary to the economy.
Chapter 14 The Public
1 Dirk Baecker, 'Oszillierende Offentlichkeit', in Rudolf Maresch, ed. , Mediatisierte Offentlichkeiten (forthcoming).
2 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1988), pp. 9Iff.
3 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, 'Die Beobachtung der Beobachter im politischen System: Zur Theorie der offentlichen Meinung', in Jiirgen Wilke, ed. , Offentliche Meinung: Theorie, Methoden, Befunde. Beitrage zu Ehren von Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (Freiburg, 1992), pp. 77-86.
4 Cf. e. g. Francis Bacon, 'Of Simulation and Dissimulation', Bacon's Essays (London, 1895), pp. 12-15; Juan Pablo Matir Rizo, Norte de Principes (1626; Madrid, 1945), ch. 21, pp. 119-22. Torquato Acetto, 'Delia dissimulazione onesta' (1641), in Benedetto Croce and Santino Caramella, eds, Politici e moralisti del seicento (Bari, 1930), pp. 143- 73; Madeleine de Scuderi, Conversations sur divers sujets, vol. I (Lyons, 1680), pp. 300ff. For secondary literature see e. g. Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus, 'Uber die Verstellung und die ersten 'primores' des Heroe von Gracian', Romanische Forschungen, 91 (1979), pp. 411-30; August Buck, 'Die Kunst der Verstellung im Zeitalter des B a r o c k ' , Festschrift der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt am Main (Wiesbaden, 1981), pp. 85-113; Margot Kruse, 'Justification et critique du concept de la dissimulation dans l'ceuvre des moralistes du XVIIe siecle', in Manfred
? 5 6
1 2
Tietz and Volker Kapp, eds, La pensee religieuse dans la litterature et la civilisation du XVIIe siecle en France (Paris, 1984), pp. 147-68. What this literature clearly brings to light is that the political prob- lem of secrecy is rooted in the general moral rules of the upper classes. To this extent, the critique of arcane politics and the demand for openness is at the same time an indication of the differentiation of the political system, because of course it cannot be applied to the behaviour of those who are now deemed to be 'private persons'.
On this specifically, see Keith Michael Baker, 'Politics and Public Opinion under the Old Regime: Some Reflections', in Jack R. Censer and Jeremy D. Popkin, eds, Press and Politics in Pre-Revolutionary France (Berkeley, Calif. , 1987), pp. 204-46.
As in Mary Hesse, Models and Analogies in Science (Notre Dame, Ind. , 1966), pp. 157ff.
Chapter 15 Schema Formation
See ch. 10 on this.
For much quoted starting points of this debate, cf. Frederic C. Bartlett, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (Cam- bridge, 1932); Eduard C. Tolman, 'Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men', Psychological Review, 55 (1948), pp. 189-208; Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (New York, 1974). Cf. also Roger C. Shank and Robert P. Abelson, Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding (Hillsdale NJ, 1977), or Robert P. Abelson, 'Psychological Status of the Script Concept', American Psychologist, 36 (1981), pp. 715-29. The terminology could be simplified. We opt for schema and, in the special case of temporal order, for script.
See e. g. Dennis A. Gioia and Charles C. Manz, 'Linking Cognition and Behavior: A Script Processing Interpretation of Vicarious Learn- ing', Academy of Management Review, 10 (1985), pp. 527-39; Henry P. Sims, Jr, Dennis A. Gioia et al. , The Thinking Organization (San Francisco, 1986).
See Arthur C. Graesser et al. , 'Memory for Typical and Atypical Ac- tions in Scripted Activities', Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 6 (1980), pp. 503-15; Joseph W. Alba and Lynn Hasher, 'Is Memory Schematic? ', Psychological Bul- letin, 93 (1983), pp. 203-31.
In 'The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding', Cri- tique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (London,
3
4
5
1982), pp. 180ff.
? 6 See e. g. Gerald R. Salancik and Joseph F. Porac, 'Distilled Ideologies: Values Derived from Causal Reasoning in Complex Environment', in: Sims, Gioia et al. , Thinking Organization, pp. 75-101.
7 'Anchoring' here in the sense of a psychological theory which empha- sizes the heuristic value of anchoring, availability, topical account etc. See Amos Tversky and Danial Kahneman: 'Availability: A Heuristics forjudging Frequency and Probability', Cognitive Psychology, 5 (1973), pp. 207-32; Danial Kahneman and Amos Tversky, 'Choices, Values, and Frames', American Psychologist, 39 (1984), pp. 341-50. Cf. also Robert E. Nisbett and Lee Ross, Human Inference: Strategies and Short- comings of Social judgment (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1980).
8 For a more recent publication see e. g. Gerhard de Haan, ed. ,
Umweltbewufitsein und Massenmedien: Perspektiven okologischer Kommunikation (Berlin, 1995).
9 Salancik and Porac, 'Distilled Ideologies'.
10 Cf. e. g. Hazel Markus, 'Self-Schemata and Processing Information
about the Self', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35
(1977), pp. 63-78.
11 On the status of research, see 'Intersubjective Communication and
Ontogeny: Between Nature, Nurture and Culture. Theory Forum Sym- posium Pre-Proceedings', Oslo, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, 25-30 August 1994.
12 See Stein Braten, 'Between Dialogic Mind and Monologic Reason, Postulating the Virtual Other', in M. Campanella, ed. , Between Ra- tionality and Cognition (Turin, 1988), pp. 205-35; id. , 'The Virtual Other in Infants' Minds and Social Feelings', in A. H. Wold, ed. , The Dialogical Alternative (Oslo, 1992), pp. 77-97.
13 For this, see Raymond Williams, Sociology of Culture (ch. 9 n. 3), pp. 137ff, 145ff.
14 See Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, 'Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author' (1710), quoted from Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (2nd edn, London, 1714, repr. Farnborough, Hants, 1968), vol. 1, pp. 151ff. On the divided self after Shaftesbury, cf. Jan Hendrick van den Berg, Divided Existence and Complex Society (Pittsburgh, 1974).
15 See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, esp. the start of book I: 'I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different. ' And what is also remarkable is that Rousseau applies this self-schematization of being different to his text as well: 'I am commencing an undertaking, hitherto without pre- cedent, and which will never find an imitator' (Confessions (London
? 16
and Toronto, 1931), p. 1). When Rousseau infers the uniqueness of his text from the uniqueness of his self, is then he himself his text? Or is this confusion necessary in order to dispel the suspicion that this is a schema? On the contemporaneous critique of this point see also the note in (Euvres completes (Pleiade edn; Paris, 1951), p. 1231.
Under the motto of how one comes by an education, see also: The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (1907; New York, 1918). Incidentally, Henry Adams plays three roles in this text: as author, as narrator and as the one whose futile search for an educa- tion is being recounted. This, therefore, is also a report about an identity which is lost and cannot be found again, one that in any event is no longer determined through origins and family and the Boston of the eighteenth century.
Chapter 16 Second-order Cybernetics as Paradox
See the essay collection Observing Systems (Seaside, Calif. , 1981). On this, with reference to organizations, cf. Frederick Steier and Kenwyn K. Smith, 'Organizations and Second Order Cybernetics',
Journal of Strategic and Systemic Therapies, 44 (1985), pp. 53-65. Heinz von Foerster, 'Objects: Tokens for (Eigen-) Behaviours' (ch. 5 n. 21).
Cf. e. g. John I. Kitsuse, 'Societal Reactions to Deviant Behavior: Prob- lems of Theory and Method', Social Problems 9 (1962), pp. 247-56; Edwin M. Lemert, Human Deviance, Social Problems, and Social Control (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967).
Following Wittgenstein, Heinz von Foerster says, for example, that such an ethics must remain implicit. But does that not mean that it must remain unobservable? See Heinz von Foerster, 'Implizite Ethik', in id. , Wissen und Gewissen (ch. 5 n. 22), pp. 347-49. See also id. , 'Ethics and Second-order Cybernetics', Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 1 (1992), pp. 9-25.
Cf. Gregory Bateson, Don. D. Jackson, Jay Haley and John Weakland, 'Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia', Behavioral Science, 1 (1956), pp. 251-64 and, especially influential, Mara Selvini Palazzoli et al. , Paradox and Counterparadox: A New Model in the Therapy of the Family Schizophrenic Transaction (New York, 1990). For an over- view, see also Kurt Ludewig, Systemische Therapie: Grundlagen klinischer Theorie und Praxis (Stuttgart, 1992).
On this, see also Niklas Luhmann, 'The Paradoxy of Observing Sys- tems', Cultural Critique, 31 (1995), pp. 37-55.
1 2
3 4
5
6
7
? advertising 4 4 - 5 0 ; camouflaged
cycle with the economy 66; description of reality 80-1; economics 49-50, 72; financial independence for media 63; individuals 72; manipulation 44-6; providing taste and fashion 4 6 - 9 ; repetition 20; structural coupling with other strands 67-70; unity of information with news and entertainment 6 3 - 7 ; uses factual information 63-4
Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research 90
autonomy: relative 106 autopoiesis 91, 97, 107-8, 122
Baecker, Dirk 104 Bateson, Gregory: defines
information
18, 19
bias: monopoly 24
Braten, Stein 113
Brazil: Ricupero interview Brown, Spencer 10, 19, 101, 114
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique 42-3 cause and effect: observation of causal
relationship 110; selection 77 censorship: Gulf War 8 - 9
4 2 - 3
Index
4 6 ;
class: advertising 8 0 - 1 ; inclusion/ exclusion 62; structure and media 69-70
coding: information and non- information 17-18; internal/ external boundaries 16-17
cognition 9 2 - 3 ; adaptive capabilities 95-6; operational closure of system 117, 118; social communication 99
communication: ambivalence and misunderstanding 97; consensus and dissent 100-1; context for meaning 15; distinguishes utterance and information 96-7; example in ecology 110-11; Gestalt complexes 7 7 - 8 ; materialities and reception 4; psychiatry 93; recursivity 9 1 - 2 , 9 9 - 1 0 0 ; senders and receivers 2; similarities of experience 81; social theory 38-9, 99; technology of dissemination 2, 1 5 - 1 6
The Confidence-Mart (Melville) 57 consensus 111-12; Habermas 100 constructivism 120; cognitive systems
5-7; radical 92; second-order cybernetics 117; systemic operations 8 9 - 9 4 ; see also reality
? consumers: quantitative responses 16 crime: juveniles as news topic 30 culture: commodification 86; product
and alibi of the mass media 85 cybernetics, second-order:
constructivist theory 117; system of the mass media 118-22; who is the oberserver? 1 2 0 - 2
fashion: advertising 4 7 - 9
film: description of reality 8 1 - 2 ;
entertainment 5 8 - 9 Flaubert, Gustave: Sentimental
Education 5 7
Foerster, Heinz von 11, 117, 120 France: early printed public opinion
105
freedom: disbalanced attribution
86-7; public opinion and press
105
Freud, Sigmund 61
Girard, Rene 80
Gracian, Baltasar 39
Gulf War: censorship 8 - 9
Habermas, Jiirgen: lifeworld 100 Hartung, Uwe 33
Hegel, Georg W. F.
3 This distinction of 'signal systems' in Raymond Williams, The Soci- ology of Culture (New York, 1982), pp. 130ff.
4 Just as the function of the economy does not lie in the creation of wealth, nor the function of politics in being in power, etc.
5 For more on this, see Niklas Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 53ff, 181ff.
6 Incidentally, we are not asserting here that there is an equal distribu- tion of observers. In the case of advertising there may be more ob- servers who think the economy dominates advertising than who think the opposite. But this only means that one has to observe the observ-
? ers if one wants to reach any conclusions regarding the question of
how society breaks the circle.
7 The distinction is emphasized in a famous essay by Clement Greenberg,
'Avant-Garde and Kitsch' (1939), in id. , Art and Culture (Boston, 1961), pp. 3-21, obviously directed against Soviet and national so- cialist attempts to discipline art politically. But there had already long been attempts from modern art to bridge the gap between 'high' and 'low' art. On this, see Victor Burgin, The End of Art Theory: Criti- cism and Postmodernity (London, 1986), pp. 2 ff.
8 A remarkable exception is the carefully planned press and television treatment of the anti-corruption campaign led by Italian state pros- ecutors and judges. Some very conscious media-political work is be- ing done here, without political responsibility being taken for the consequences arising from it.
9 Such considerations do exist for the domain of the news. But then advertising and entertainment would be left over, and one would have to add them onto other systems, such as the economic system or a (poorly identifiable) system of consumption, 'leisure'.
10 See Niklas Luhmann, Das Recht der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1993). Chapter 10 Individuals
1 An early representation of this concept of motive, following Max Weber, is C. Wright Mills, 'Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive', American Sociological Review, 5 (1940), pp. 904-13. Cf. also ibid. , 'Language, Logic and Culture', American Sociological Review, 4 (1939), pp. 670-80. Also, in more detail, Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (1945), and A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), quoted from the single-volume edition (Cleveland, 1962), and, ori- ented more to rules of attribution, Alan F. Blum and Peter McHugh, 'The Social Ascription of Motives', American Sociological Review, 36 (1971), pp. 98-109.
2 For more detail on this sense of 'interpenetration' see Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford, Calif. , 1995), pp. 213ff.
3 For the 'homo oeconomicus' of the economic system and the 'homo iuridicus' of the legal system, see Michael Hutter and Gunther Teubner, 'Der Gesellschaft fette Beute: homo iuridicus und homo oeconomicus als kommunikationserhaltende Fiktionen', in Peter Fuchs and Andreas Gobel, eds, Der Mensch - das Medium der Gesellschaft? (Frankfurt, 1994), pp. 110-45. The same is true, incidentally, for so- called 'methodological individualism' and the concept of 'rational
? choice' in the social sciences. Here too the individuality of human individuals is not concretely taken into consideration, but rather only to the extent that it is necessary for the construction of explanations which function in accordance with methodological criteria.
4 The fashion of 'portraits' or 'caracteres' of the seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries, on which Diderot made ironic commentary, was in turn a product of book printing and therefore not to be taken seri- ously. See Denis Diderot, 'Satire I, sur les Caracteres et les Mots de Caracteres, de Professions, etc. ', quoted from CEuvres (Pleiade edn; Paris, 1951), pp. 1217-29.
Chapter 11 The Construction of Reality
1 Not until the middle of the nineteenth century, however, does one find this form of argumentation being used, and the everyday world, the lifeworld, folklore etc. being proposed as scientific concepts - at the same time, in other words, as metaphysical constructions of the world were collapsing and different foundations for the observation of 'reality' were being sought.
2 See Debra E. Meyerson, 'Acknowledging and Uncovering Ambigui- ties in Cultures', in Peter J. Frost et al. , eds, Reframing Organiza- tional Culture (Newbury Park, Calif. , 1991), pp. 254-70.
3 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, 'Das Risiko der Kausalitat', MS, 1995.
4 'To cut corners to catch the criminals', as Jonathan Culler, Framing the Signs: Criticism and its Institutions (Oxford, 1988), p. 50, for- mulates it - using Oliver North and the Iran-Contra affair as an
example.
5 A good piece of research about the moral attitudes of former Yugo-
slavia, still determined along tribal lines and only covered over by the official Marxist-Titoistic ideology disseminated by the mass me- dia, is the Bielefeld dissertation by Dusan Vrban, 'Culture Change and Symbolic Legitimation: Functions and Traditional Meaning of Symbols in the Transformation of Yugoslav Ideology', MS, 1985. It was not possible to find a publisher for it at the time.
6 See several contributions in Odo Marquard, Aesthetica und Anaesthetica: Philosophische Uberlegungen (Paderborn, 1989).
7 In 'Traum eines bosen Geistes vor seinem Abfalle', quoted from Jean Pauls Werke: Auswahl in zwei Banden (Stuttgart, 1924), vol. 2, pp. 269-73 (269).
8 Cf. Rene Girard, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (Stanford, Calif. , 1987).
? 9 In sociological-social-psychological research on justice, which seems likewise to labour under this impression, this problem of distribution is foregrounded as well, and neither the old 'suum cuique\ which presupposes a class differentiation, nor the rule, which refers to the legal system, that equal cases should be decided equally and unequal ones unequally. On social science research on justice, see e. g. Elaine Walster, G. William Walster and Ellen Berscheid, Equity: Theory and Research (Boston, 1978); Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford, 1983); Volker H. Schmidt, 'Lokale Gerechtigkeit - Perspektiven soziolo- gischer Gerechtigkeitsanalyse', Zeitschrift fiir Soziologie, 21 (1992), pp. 3 - 1 5 ; Bernd Wegener, 'Gerechtigkeitsforschung und Legiti- mationsnormen', Zeitschrift fiir Soziologie, 21 (1992), pp. 269-83.
10 'Reading novels has the result, along with many other mental disor- ders, of making distraction habitual,' according to Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View ? 47 (The Hague, 1974), p. 79. According to Kant, this diversion occurs in spite of the systematicity of the representation, that is, in spite of its internal plau- sibility, by the reader being able to 'drift away' whilst reading - pre- sumably in directions which allow him or her to draw conclusions about his or her own life situation.
11 For a cautionary view, cf. Jacques du Bosq, L'honneste femme (new edn, Rouen, 1639), pp. 17ff, or, more critically, Pierre Daniel Huet, Traite de I'origine des romans (Paris, 1670). These treatments do, however, refer to a literary genre which at the time was called 'ro- mance' and was considerably different from what we have known as the novel since the eighteenth century - not least in its idealization of heroes and of situations under the conditions of 'decorum' and 'veri- similitude'. The modern novel will then seem much more seductive, albeit in a more indirect way.
12 This is often portrayed with negative connotations as life at one re- move, knowledge gained through second-hand experiences. An old issue, incidentally; see e. g. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York, 1922). In addition to this, there is the indistinguishability of one's own and merely acquired experiences. But since it is not pos- sible to imagine knowledge without participation in communication, this value judgement itself requires analysis. Why are the effects of the mass media observed with precisely this distinction of non- authentic/authentic, without it being noticed that the desire to ex- perience things authentically for oneself is itself a desire suggested by this distinction?
? 13 This view is widespread nowadays. See Jean Baudrillard, Die Agonie des Realen (Berlin, 1983) or Martin Kubaczek, 'Zur Entwicklung der Imaginationsmachinen: Der Text als virtuelle Realitat', Faultline, 1 (1992), pp. 82-102.
14 Incidentally, this is an obvious paradox, which in Kant's day was capable of being hidden: the concept of se/f-reference contradicts generalizability within the perspective of a self-referential system - not, of course, as a topic for an external observer.
15 By way of comparison: in non-literate tribal societies communica- tion seems primarily to serve continual tests of solidarity, that is, to document belongingness, good will, peacefulness. The emphasis is on the self-characterization of the utterer (and this precisely because it does not become the content of utterance, does not become 'text'). Anyone who is silent draws suspicion upon himself, creates a dan- gerous impression - as if he had evil intentions he could not talk about. See also text and references in ch. 3 n. 9.
16 An expression taken from Roman Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art (Evanston, 111. , 1973), pp. 246ff.
17 As e. g. in Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London, 1936; repr. 1997).
18 Among many others, see the novel by Peter Schneider, Couplings (Chicago, 1998) - focused on the bar where the story takes place, which ensures that stories are constantly interrupted which want to tell of something which is itself interrupted, namely love.
19 For tourism see e. g. Dean MacCannell, The Tourist (New York, 1976). Cf. also id. , 'Staged Authenticity: Arrangement of Social Space in Tourist Settings', American Journal of Sociology, 79 (1973), pp. 589-603.
20 Whilst visiting the pilgrimage church of Rocamadour, I entered by a second door and had to pay the entrance fee a second time. Noticing my surprise, the doorman explained: You haven't been able to get anything free here for centuries!
Chapter 12 The Reality of Construction
1 Indeed he did this with precise regard to the distinctions used for the description: 'The Here pointed out, to which I hold fast, is similarly a this Here which, in fact, is not this Here, but a Before and Behind, an Above and Below, a Right and Left. . . . The Here, which was supposed to have been pointed out, vanishes in other Heres, but these likewise vanish' (Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller
? (Oxford, 1977), p. 64).
2 'It is', as Wlad Godzich paraphrases Paul de Man's position, 'the
resistance of language to language that grounds all other forms of resistance'. See Foreword to Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis, 1986), p. xviii. This view will need to be supplemented by the dissonance of images already mentioned (Godzich, 'Language, images', ch. 5 n. 25).
3 Cf. latterly Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion, Our Social Skin (Chicago, 2nd edn, 1993).
4 Unless one wants to allow suppositions about correlations between the data distributions (variables) of this research to succeed as 'theory'.
5 Hamlet, i. i.
6 For this specifically, see Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson, Com-
munication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry (New York, 1951, 2nd
edn, 1968), pp. 238ff.
7 Cf. Paul Watzlawick, 'Verschreiben statt Verstehen als Technik von
Problemlosungen', in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds, Materialitat der Kommunikation (Frankfurt, 1988), pp. 878- 83, for recommendations as to how to move ahead on this uncertain terrain.
8 It is known that systems theory today still speaks in this specific sense of communicative paradoxes as a consequence of the lack of distinc- tion of logical 'levels' which ought in fact to be distinguished. See Ruesch and Bateson, Communication, pp. 222ff and, following on from this, the systems-therapeutic schools of Palo Alto and Milan.
9 It seems to be generally accepted in recent sociological literature that fundamentalisms are phenomena of only the last few decades and that they do not come from 'deeply rooted' traditional sensibilities, but are rather the persuasive successes of intellectuals, whom one would as- sume to be experiencing identity-related problems in any case. Both the motive behind the idea and its success might confirm the connec- tion asserted in the text with the way the mass media work.
10 On this see e. g. Susie I. Tucker, Enthusiasm: A Study in Semantic Change (Cambridge, 1972).
Chapter 13 The Function of the Mass Media
1 I have presented the definitions summarized briefly here in more de- tail elsewhere. See Niklas Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 68ff.
2 See e. g. A. Moreno, J. Fernandez and A. Etxeberria, 'Computational
? Darwinism as a Basis for Cognition', Revue Internationale de
systematique, 6 (1992), pp. 205-21.
3 In George Spencer Brown's terminology, Laws of Form (ch. 2 n. 2),
p. 7 in conjunction with p. 5.
4 On the benefits of a digitalized, sequential way of working based on
'transmission capacity' in the face of huge amounts of information, see also W. Ross Ashby, 'Systems and their Informational Measures', in George J. Klir, ed. , Trends in General Systems Theory (New York, 1972), pp. 78-97.
5 For more detail, see Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford, Calif. , 1995), pp. 137ff.
6 Incidentally, this also applies in a quite different way to living organ- isms whose most elementary exemplars (single-celled organisms) can carry out cognition only via binary schematizations; sub-processes of the system, but not the whole system, are responsible for these and must carry out measurements for which there are no parallels in the environment.
7 See also Marcinkowski, Publizistik (ch. 2 n. 10), pp. 113ff on this.
8 See above, p. 65. See also index.
9 For living beings, cf. Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de
Lamarck, Zoological Philosophy (London, 1914), pp. 47ff.
10 See Talcott Parsons and Winston White, 'Commentary on: 'The Mass Media and the Structure of American SocietyJournal of Social Is-
sues, 16 (1960), pp. 67-77.
11 To return to what has already been said, this is why a special coding
is required in order operationally to close the system of the mass media. If we were to pay attention only to communication, the activ- ity of the mass media would appear to be only an involvement in the autopoiesis of society, i. e. only a contribution to the differentiation of the social system.
12 See Heinz von Foerster, 'Objects: Tokens for (Eigen-)Behaviors' (ch. 1 n. 3), 1981, pp. 274-85. On the recursivity of communicative op- erations specifically, see also id.
, 'Fiir Niklas Luhmann: Wie rekursiv ist Kommunikation? ', Teoria Sociologica, 1/2 (1993), pp. 66-85. Von Foerster's answer to the question is: communication is recursivity - with mathematical consequences, of course.
13 On this comparison cf. Michel Serres, Genesis (Ann Arbor, Mich. , 1995), pp. 87ff, with the severely restrictive concept of 'quasi-objects'.
14 See Spencer Brown, Laws of Form, pp. 54ff.
15 This issue is already to be found in perceptive formulations from the
early Romantic period. See e. g. Novalis, 'Bliitenstaub 109' ('Pollen'):
? 'The normal present links the past and the future by way of limita- tion. Contiguity arises through paralysis, crystallization. But there is a spiritual present which identifies both through dissolution. ' Quoted from Werke, Tagebiicher und Briefe Friedrich von Hardenbergs (Darmstadt, 1987), vol. 2, p. 283. However, one would hardly want to apply this hope based on 'spirit' to the mass media.
16 As in Heinz Forster, Das Gedachtnis: Fine quantenphysikalische Untersucbung (Vienna, 1948). Cf. also Heinz von Foerster, 'What is Memory that it May Have Hindsight and Foresight as well', in Samuel Bogoch, ed. , The Future of the Brain Sciences (New York, 1969), pp. 19-64.
17 Cf. Dirk Baecker, 'Das Gedachtnis der Wirtschaft', in Baecker et al. , eds, Theorie als Passion (Frankfurt, 1987), pp. 519-46. However, it should be added here that the system of law can be used in certain cases to correct this forgetfulness that is both typical of and neces- sary to the economy.
Chapter 14 The Public
1 Dirk Baecker, 'Oszillierende Offentlichkeit', in Rudolf Maresch, ed. , Mediatisierte Offentlichkeiten (forthcoming).
2 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1988), pp. 9Iff.
3 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, 'Die Beobachtung der Beobachter im politischen System: Zur Theorie der offentlichen Meinung', in Jiirgen Wilke, ed. , Offentliche Meinung: Theorie, Methoden, Befunde. Beitrage zu Ehren von Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (Freiburg, 1992), pp. 77-86.
4 Cf. e. g. Francis Bacon, 'Of Simulation and Dissimulation', Bacon's Essays (London, 1895), pp. 12-15; Juan Pablo Matir Rizo, Norte de Principes (1626; Madrid, 1945), ch. 21, pp. 119-22. Torquato Acetto, 'Delia dissimulazione onesta' (1641), in Benedetto Croce and Santino Caramella, eds, Politici e moralisti del seicento (Bari, 1930), pp. 143- 73; Madeleine de Scuderi, Conversations sur divers sujets, vol. I (Lyons, 1680), pp. 300ff. For secondary literature see e. g. Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus, 'Uber die Verstellung und die ersten 'primores' des Heroe von Gracian', Romanische Forschungen, 91 (1979), pp. 411-30; August Buck, 'Die Kunst der Verstellung im Zeitalter des B a r o c k ' , Festschrift der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt am Main (Wiesbaden, 1981), pp. 85-113; Margot Kruse, 'Justification et critique du concept de la dissimulation dans l'ceuvre des moralistes du XVIIe siecle', in Manfred
? 5 6
1 2
Tietz and Volker Kapp, eds, La pensee religieuse dans la litterature et la civilisation du XVIIe siecle en France (Paris, 1984), pp. 147-68. What this literature clearly brings to light is that the political prob- lem of secrecy is rooted in the general moral rules of the upper classes. To this extent, the critique of arcane politics and the demand for openness is at the same time an indication of the differentiation of the political system, because of course it cannot be applied to the behaviour of those who are now deemed to be 'private persons'.
On this specifically, see Keith Michael Baker, 'Politics and Public Opinion under the Old Regime: Some Reflections', in Jack R. Censer and Jeremy D. Popkin, eds, Press and Politics in Pre-Revolutionary France (Berkeley, Calif. , 1987), pp. 204-46.
As in Mary Hesse, Models and Analogies in Science (Notre Dame, Ind. , 1966), pp. 157ff.
Chapter 15 Schema Formation
See ch. 10 on this.
For much quoted starting points of this debate, cf. Frederic C. Bartlett, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (Cam- bridge, 1932); Eduard C. Tolman, 'Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men', Psychological Review, 55 (1948), pp. 189-208; Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (New York, 1974). Cf. also Roger C. Shank and Robert P. Abelson, Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding (Hillsdale NJ, 1977), or Robert P. Abelson, 'Psychological Status of the Script Concept', American Psychologist, 36 (1981), pp. 715-29. The terminology could be simplified. We opt for schema and, in the special case of temporal order, for script.
See e. g. Dennis A. Gioia and Charles C. Manz, 'Linking Cognition and Behavior: A Script Processing Interpretation of Vicarious Learn- ing', Academy of Management Review, 10 (1985), pp. 527-39; Henry P. Sims, Jr, Dennis A. Gioia et al. , The Thinking Organization (San Francisco, 1986).
See Arthur C. Graesser et al. , 'Memory for Typical and Atypical Ac- tions in Scripted Activities', Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 6 (1980), pp. 503-15; Joseph W. Alba and Lynn Hasher, 'Is Memory Schematic? ', Psychological Bul- letin, 93 (1983), pp. 203-31.
In 'The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding', Cri- tique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (London,
3
4
5
1982), pp. 180ff.
? 6 See e. g. Gerald R. Salancik and Joseph F. Porac, 'Distilled Ideologies: Values Derived from Causal Reasoning in Complex Environment', in: Sims, Gioia et al. , Thinking Organization, pp. 75-101.
7 'Anchoring' here in the sense of a psychological theory which empha- sizes the heuristic value of anchoring, availability, topical account etc. See Amos Tversky and Danial Kahneman: 'Availability: A Heuristics forjudging Frequency and Probability', Cognitive Psychology, 5 (1973), pp. 207-32; Danial Kahneman and Amos Tversky, 'Choices, Values, and Frames', American Psychologist, 39 (1984), pp. 341-50. Cf. also Robert E. Nisbett and Lee Ross, Human Inference: Strategies and Short- comings of Social judgment (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1980).
8 For a more recent publication see e. g. Gerhard de Haan, ed. ,
Umweltbewufitsein und Massenmedien: Perspektiven okologischer Kommunikation (Berlin, 1995).
9 Salancik and Porac, 'Distilled Ideologies'.
10 Cf. e. g. Hazel Markus, 'Self-Schemata and Processing Information
about the Self', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35
(1977), pp. 63-78.
11 On the status of research, see 'Intersubjective Communication and
Ontogeny: Between Nature, Nurture and Culture. Theory Forum Sym- posium Pre-Proceedings', Oslo, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, 25-30 August 1994.
12 See Stein Braten, 'Between Dialogic Mind and Monologic Reason, Postulating the Virtual Other', in M. Campanella, ed. , Between Ra- tionality and Cognition (Turin, 1988), pp. 205-35; id. , 'The Virtual Other in Infants' Minds and Social Feelings', in A. H. Wold, ed. , The Dialogical Alternative (Oslo, 1992), pp. 77-97.
13 For this, see Raymond Williams, Sociology of Culture (ch. 9 n. 3), pp. 137ff, 145ff.
14 See Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, 'Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author' (1710), quoted from Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (2nd edn, London, 1714, repr. Farnborough, Hants, 1968), vol. 1, pp. 151ff. On the divided self after Shaftesbury, cf. Jan Hendrick van den Berg, Divided Existence and Complex Society (Pittsburgh, 1974).
15 See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, esp. the start of book I: 'I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different. ' And what is also remarkable is that Rousseau applies this self-schematization of being different to his text as well: 'I am commencing an undertaking, hitherto without pre- cedent, and which will never find an imitator' (Confessions (London
? 16
and Toronto, 1931), p. 1). When Rousseau infers the uniqueness of his text from the uniqueness of his self, is then he himself his text? Or is this confusion necessary in order to dispel the suspicion that this is a schema? On the contemporaneous critique of this point see also the note in (Euvres completes (Pleiade edn; Paris, 1951), p. 1231.
Under the motto of how one comes by an education, see also: The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (1907; New York, 1918). Incidentally, Henry Adams plays three roles in this text: as author, as narrator and as the one whose futile search for an educa- tion is being recounted. This, therefore, is also a report about an identity which is lost and cannot be found again, one that in any event is no longer determined through origins and family and the Boston of the eighteenth century.
Chapter 16 Second-order Cybernetics as Paradox
See the essay collection Observing Systems (Seaside, Calif. , 1981). On this, with reference to organizations, cf. Frederick Steier and Kenwyn K. Smith, 'Organizations and Second Order Cybernetics',
Journal of Strategic and Systemic Therapies, 44 (1985), pp. 53-65. Heinz von Foerster, 'Objects: Tokens for (Eigen-) Behaviours' (ch. 5 n. 21).
Cf. e. g. John I. Kitsuse, 'Societal Reactions to Deviant Behavior: Prob- lems of Theory and Method', Social Problems 9 (1962), pp. 247-56; Edwin M. Lemert, Human Deviance, Social Problems, and Social Control (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967).
Following Wittgenstein, Heinz von Foerster says, for example, that such an ethics must remain implicit. But does that not mean that it must remain unobservable? See Heinz von Foerster, 'Implizite Ethik', in id. , Wissen und Gewissen (ch. 5 n. 22), pp. 347-49. See also id. , 'Ethics and Second-order Cybernetics', Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 1 (1992), pp. 9-25.
Cf. Gregory Bateson, Don. D. Jackson, Jay Haley and John Weakland, 'Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia', Behavioral Science, 1 (1956), pp. 251-64 and, especially influential, Mara Selvini Palazzoli et al. , Paradox and Counterparadox: A New Model in the Therapy of the Family Schizophrenic Transaction (New York, 1990). For an over- view, see also Kurt Ludewig, Systemische Therapie: Grundlagen klinischer Theorie und Praxis (Stuttgart, 1992).
On this, see also Niklas Luhmann, 'The Paradoxy of Observing Sys- tems', Cultural Critique, 31 (1995), pp. 37-55.
1 2
3 4
5
6
7
? advertising 4 4 - 5 0 ; camouflaged
cycle with the economy 66; description of reality 80-1; economics 49-50, 72; financial independence for media 63; individuals 72; manipulation 44-6; providing taste and fashion 4 6 - 9 ; repetition 20; structural coupling with other strands 67-70; unity of information with news and entertainment 6 3 - 7 ; uses factual information 63-4
Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research 90
autonomy: relative 106 autopoiesis 91, 97, 107-8, 122
Baecker, Dirk 104 Bateson, Gregory: defines
information
18, 19
bias: monopoly 24
Braten, Stein 113
Brazil: Ricupero interview Brown, Spencer 10, 19, 101, 114
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique 42-3 cause and effect: observation of causal
relationship 110; selection 77 censorship: Gulf War 8 - 9
4 2 - 3
Index
4 6 ;
class: advertising 8 0 - 1 ; inclusion/ exclusion 62; structure and media 69-70
coding: information and non- information 17-18; internal/ external boundaries 16-17
cognition 9 2 - 3 ; adaptive capabilities 95-6; operational closure of system 117, 118; social communication 99
communication: ambivalence and misunderstanding 97; consensus and dissent 100-1; context for meaning 15; distinguishes utterance and information 96-7; example in ecology 110-11; Gestalt complexes 7 7 - 8 ; materialities and reception 4; psychiatry 93; recursivity 9 1 - 2 , 9 9 - 1 0 0 ; senders and receivers 2; similarities of experience 81; social theory 38-9, 99; technology of dissemination 2, 1 5 - 1 6
The Confidence-Mart (Melville) 57 consensus 111-12; Habermas 100 constructivism 120; cognitive systems
5-7; radical 92; second-order cybernetics 117; systemic operations 8 9 - 9 4 ; see also reality
? consumers: quantitative responses 16 crime: juveniles as news topic 30 culture: commodification 86; product
and alibi of the mass media 85 cybernetics, second-order:
constructivist theory 117; system of the mass media 118-22; who is the oberserver? 1 2 0 - 2
fashion: advertising 4 7 - 9
film: description of reality 8 1 - 2 ;
entertainment 5 8 - 9 Flaubert, Gustave: Sentimental
Education 5 7
Foerster, Heinz von 11, 117, 120 France: early printed public opinion
105
freedom: disbalanced attribution
86-7; public opinion and press
105
Freud, Sigmund 61
Girard, Rene 80
Gracian, Baltasar 39
Gulf War: censorship 8 - 9
Habermas, Jiirgen: lifeworld 100 Hartung, Uwe 33
Hegel, Georg W. F.
