1. Social Systems Theory
#1 Introduction
Takashi Iba
Associate Professor
Faculty of Policy Management
Keio University SFC Keio University

2. http://www.mt-online.de/start/letzte_meldungen_aus_der_region/4219080_Bielefeld_Universitaet_Bielefeld_erwirbt_Nachlass_von_Luhmann.html
Niklas Luhmann

4. Social Systems Theory
Studying a sociological theory, Social Systems Theory,
proposed by Niklas Luhmann
Understanding what’s happening in the information society
Learning about the media for social change

5. Social Systems Theory (2012 Spring)
#1 [Apr 9] Introduction
#2 [Apr 16] Emergence of Communication as an Event
#3 [Apr 23] Media and Code for Communication
#4 [May 1] Modern Society
#5 [May 7] Autopoiesis and Structural Coupling
#6 [May 14] Voice and Exit for Social Change
#7 [May 21] Scenario Planning: Learning by Making Stories of Future
#8 [May 28] Pattern Language, part I: Media for User Participation
#9 [Jun 4] Pattern Language, part II: Way of Organizational Change
#10 [Jun 11] Creative Collaboration:Value Creation through Communication
#11 [Jun 18] Open Collaboration, part I: Collaborative Innovation Networks
#12 [Jun 25] Open Collaboration, part II: Open-Source Software Development
#13 [Jul 2] Open Collaboration, part III: Wiki and Wikipedia
#14 [Jul 9] Exploring Philosophy of Social Change

6. Textbook
●『社会システム理論：不透明な社会を捉える知の技法【リアリティ・プラス】』
（井庭崇 編著, 宮台真司, 熊坂賢次, 公文俊平, 慶應義塾大学出版会, 2011）
●『Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas』(Mary Lynn Manns, Linda
Rising, Addison-Wesley, 2005)

7. Books you’ll read
in this course

8. “Sociology is stuck in a theory crisis. Empirical
research, though it has, on the whole, been
successful in increasing knowledge, has not been
able to produce a unified theory for the
discipline.”
N. Luhmann, Social Systems, Stanford University Press,
1996

9. “Progress is possible in these respects ... only if
one strives for a new kind of theory design. ”
“Sociology has hardly any models for this.
Therefore we will have to borrow successful
theoretical developments from other
disciplines, and for this we have chosen
the theory of self-referential,
"autopoietic" systems.”
N. Luhmann, Social Systems, Stanford University Press,
1996

10. “In contrast to the usual theoretical
representations, which at best take some few
concepts from the literature, define them in
critical discussion with existing meanings, and
then work with them in the context of these
concepts’ traditions, in the following we will try
to increase the number of the concepts
that are used and to determine them in
reference to one another. ”
N. Luhmann, Social Systems, Stanford University Press,
1996

11. 「社会システム理論は、社会の全体性を捉えたいという志向性を
もっているグランド・セオリーである。つまり、社会を、いわゆ
る学問分野（ディシプリン） — 経済学や政治学など — の枠組み
で切り刻んで捉えるのではなく、社会をまるごと理解したいとい
う野心をもっている。」
“Social systems theory is a grand theory that has been studied
for understanding the wholeness of the modern society.
It tries to grasp everything of social phenomena
without specific filters of the conventional discipline
like economy and politics.”
井庭崇 編著, 宮台真司, 熊坂賢次, 公文俊平,『社会システム理論：不透明な社
会を捉える知の技法【リアリティ・プラス】』（慶應義塾大学出版会, 2011）
T. Iba, et. al. Social Systems Theory, Keio University Press, 2011

12. 「もちろん、社会全体を完全に捉えることなどできるわけはな
い。しかしながら、断片化し多様化する現代社会において、全体
性の把握は喫緊の課題であることは確かである。「社会の全体性
を捉える」という不可能な目標に向かって、本気の探究を続け
る、そのような決意が社会システム理論にはある。」
“It is, in reality, impossible to capture the entire society as a
whole. However, deep understanding about common principles
among the different social phenomena is required for
the people living in the differentiated and diversified
society. Thus, social systems theory attempts the
impossible seriously and radically.
井庭崇 編著, 宮台真司, 熊坂賢次, 公文俊平,『社会システム理論：不透明な社
会を捉える知の技法【リアリティ・プラス】』（慶應義塾大学出版会, 2011）
T. Iba, et. al. Social Systems Theory, Keio University Press, 2011

13. 「この社会システム理論によって、現代社会のリアリティはどのよ
うに捉えることができるのだろうか？ そして、その知見を踏まえ、
私たちはどのような未来をつくることができるのだろうか？」
“What reality can be grasped, when observing our society with
the social systems theory? Furthermore, what future will be
made based on this understanding?”
井庭崇 編著, 宮台真司, 熊坂賢次, 公文俊平,『社会システム理論：不透明な社
会を捉える知の技法【リアリティ・プラス】』（慶應義塾大学出版会, 2011）
T. Iba, et. al. Social Systems Theory, Keio University Press, 2011

14. “The theory must change its direction from the
unity of the social whole as a smaller unity
within a larger one (the world) to the difference
of the system of society and environment, i.e.
from unity to difference as the theoretical point
of departure.”
N. Luhmann, Ecological Communication, University Of
Chicago Press, 1989

15. “More exactly, the theme of sociological
investigation is not the system of society, but
instead the unity of the difference of the system of
society and its environment.”
N. Luhmann, Ecological Communication, University Of
Chicago Press, 1989

16. “The idea of system elements must be changed
from substances (individuals) to self-referential
operations that can be produced only within the
system and with the help of a network of the
same operations (autopoiesis).”
N. Luhmann, Ecological Communication, University Of
Chicago Press, 1989

17. “Self-referentially autopoietic systems are
endogenously restless and constantly
reproductive. They develop structures of their
own for the continuation of their autopoiesis.”
N. Luhmann, Ecological Communication, University Of
Chicago Press, 1989

18. “An autopoietic machine is a machine organized
(defined as a unity) as a network of processes of
production (transformation and destruction) of
components that produces the components
which: (i) through their interactions and
transformations continuously regenerate and
realize the network of processes (relations) that
produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the
machine) as a concrete unity in the space
in which they (the components) exist by
specifying the topological domain of its
realization as such a network.”
H. R. Maturana, F. J.Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition:The
Realization of the Living, Springer, 1980

19. “We had to accept that we could recognize
living systems when we encountered them, but
that we could not yet say what they are.”
“I realized that the difficulty was both
epistemological and linguistic ... one can only say
with a given language what the language
permits. ”
H. R. Maturana, F. J.Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition:The
Realization of the Living, Springer, 1980

20. “I had to stop looking at living systems as open
systems defined in an environment, and I needed
a language that would permit me to describe an
autonomous system in a manner that retained
autonomy as a feature of the system or entity
specified by the description.”
H. R. Maturana, F. J.Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition:The
Realization of the Living, Springer, 1980

21. N. Luhmann, Social Systems, Stanford University Press, 1996

22. “Collaboration drives creativity because
innovation always emerges from a series of
sparks --- never a single flash of insight.”
Keith Sawyer, Group Genius:The Creative Power of
Collaboration, Basic Books, 2008

23. “While hierarchies are not vanishing, profound
changes in the nature of technology,
demographics, and the global economy are giving
rise to powerful new models of production
based on community, collaboration, and self-
organization rather than on hierarchy and
control.”
Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How
Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Expanded ed.,
Portfolio Trade, 2010

24. “The growing accessibility of information
technologies puts the tools required to
collaborate, create value, and compete at
everybody’s fingertips. This liberates people to
participate in innovation and wealth creation
within every sector of the economy Millions of
people already join forces in self-organized
collaborations that produce dynamic new
goods and services that rival those of the
world’s largest and best-financed
enterprises.”
Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How
Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Expanded ed.,
Portfolio Trade, 2010

25. “The new art and science of wikinomics is based
on four powerful new idea: openness, peering,
sharing, and acting globally.”
Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How
Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Expanded ed.,
Portfolio Trade, 2010

26. “There’s a protocol for numbering releases. It’s
psychological. When you think a version is truly
ready to be released, you number it version 1.0.
But before that, you number the earlier versions
to indicate how much work you need to
accomplish before getting to 1.0. With that in
mind, the operating system I posted to the ftp
site was numbered version 0.01. That tells
everybody it’s not ready for much.”
Linus Torvalds, David Diamond, Just for Fun:The Story
of an Accidental Revolutionary, HarperBusiness, 2002

27. “I did learn fairly early that the best and most
effective way to lead is by letting people do
things because they want to them, not because
you want them to.”
Linus Torvalds, David Diamond, Just for Fun:The Story
of an Accidental Revolutionary, HarperBusiness, 2002

28. “This swarm-based innovation process happens in
four steps:
STEP 1 The creator comes up with the cool idea.
STEP 2 The creator recruits additional members to
form a Collaborative Innovation Network (COIN).
STEP 3 The COIN grows into a Collaborative
Learning Network (CLN) by adding friends and
family.
STEP 4 Outsiders join, forming a
Collaborative Interest Network (CIN).”
Peter Gloor, Coolfarming:Turn Your Great Idea into the
Next Big Thing, AMACOM, 2010

29. COIN CLN CIN
Creator Collaboratove Collaboratove Collaboratove
Innovation Learning Interest
Network
どt Network Network
Peter Gloor, Coolfarming:Turn Your Great Idea into the
Next Big Thing, AMACOM, 2010

30. “voice and exit”
Albert O. Hirschman, Exit,Voice, and Loyalty: Responses
to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, Harvard
University Press, 1970

31. “Scenarios are not predictions.”
“Rather, scenarios are vehicles for
helping people learn.”
“It can be used as a building block for
designing strategic conversations ---
conversations that, in themselves, lead to
continuous organizational learning about
key decisions and priorities.”
Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View: Planning for
the Future in an Uncertain World, Crown Business, 1996

32. “Scenarios are not about predicting the
future, rather they are about perceiving
futures in the present.”
“Scenarios deal with two worlds. The
world of facts and the world of
perceptions.” (Pierre Wack)
“Scenarios are stories that give
meaning to events.”
Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View: Planning for
the Future in an Uncertain World, Crown Business, 1996

33. “Having spent the last ten years of my
professional career in the field of organizational
learning, my most important insight has been
that there are two different sources of learning:
learning from the experiences of the past and
learning from the future as it emerges.”
C. Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as
It Emerges:The Social Technology of Presencing, Berrett-
Koehler Pub, 2009

34. “When I started realizing that the most
impressive leaders and master practitioners
seem to operate from a different core process,
one that pulls them into future possibilities, I
asked myself: How can we learn to better
sense and connect with a future possibility that
is seeking to emerge?”
C. Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as
It Emerges:The Social Technology of Presencing, Berrett-
Koehler Pub, 2009

35. “The key to “seeing from the whole” is
developing the capacity not only to suspend our
assumptions but to “redirect” our awareness
toward the generative processes that lies behind
what we see.”
Peter M. Senge, et. al., Presence: Human Purpose and the
Field of the Future, Reprint ed., Crown Business, 2008

36. “Present systems of production are
organized in such away that most
decisions are made very much “at arm’s
length.” Decisions are made by people
remote from the consequences of the
dicisions.”
C. Alexander, The Production of Houses, Oxford
University Press, 1985

37. “We replace the idea of standardized
housing units with the idea of houses (or
apartments) designed by the families
who are to live in them, each one
designed entirely according to the
family’s own unique needs and character,
so that as a matter of feeling, each house
becomes a genuine life base, a place for
the heart, a place in which the family, as a
unique being in society, may be anchored
and nourished.”
C. Alexander, The Production of Houses, Oxford
University Press, 1985

38. “Fundamental to the process of production
--- perhaps most fundamental of all --- is the
principle that families lay out their houses
for themselves.”
“In order to make this possible, there must
be some system of rules, some pattern
language or some other similar. flexible
instrument which makes it possible for
families to do this in a competent way.”
C. Alexander, The Production of Houses, Oxford
University Press, 1985

39. “The backbone of the process of production
we envisage is a new kind of professional
who takes responsibility for the functions
which we now attribute to the architect, and
also, for the functions which we now
attribute to the contractor.”
“The architect-builder”
C. Alexander, The Production of Houses, Oxford
University Press, 1985

40. Mary Lynn Manns, Linda Rising, Fearless Change: Patterns
for Introducing New Ideas, Addison-Wesley, 2005

41. Contact Us
● Staff Mailing List (TA/SA and Iba）
socsys2012-staff@sfc.keio.ac.jp
Course Video Archive
● SFC-GC (Global Campus) Course Page
http://gc.sfc.keio.ac.jp/cgi/class/class_top.cgi?2012_25075