Niklas Luhmann Reading Group: Session 4

Date: 14th of March 2025. Time: 14:00-17:00 GMT
Venue: University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Rd, Cambridge CB2 8PQ, United Kingdom

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This session’s topic: Action

Society is often imagined as a collective of acting and interacting individuals. Social order, in this view, emerges from the coordinated actions of human beings. Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory inverts this intuition. In his framework, society is the encompassing system of communication—and nothing but communication. Persons, accordingly, are not the source but the products of communication, while action is the attribution of communication to these very products of communication.

Introductory talks by Associate Professor Steve Watson (Faculty of Education and Wolfson College, University of Cambridge) and Professor Steffen Roth (Excelia Business School La Rochelle and Wolfson College, University of Cambridge), followed by intensive discussions, will illuminate this highly cryptic, counterintuitive, and instructive view of the social world.

Through our reading group, we aim to deepen our understanding of Luhmann’s ideas and explore their relevance to contemporary social issues. Whether you are already familiar with Luhmann’s work or simply curious to learn more, we warmly invite you to join us.

Recommended background reading: Luhmann, N. (1995). Social Systems. Stanford University Press. (Chapter: Communication and Action, pp. 137-175).