Cultural theory, systems theory, and the social-theoretical pattern of an inside-outside distinction

Journal/Book: Z Soz. 1997; 26: Postfach 30 03 66, D-70443 Stuttgart, Germany. Ferdinand Enke Verlag. 317.

Abstract: In Niklas Luhmann's constructivistic systems theory,on the one hand, and in the cultural theories, above all of Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens, which follow the idea of social practices based on structures of tacit knowledge, on the other hand, the ''interpretive turn'' in social theory has been taken in two theoretical frameworks which are opposed to each other. Following Descartes, Husserl, and Durkheim, Luhmann's chief distinction between psychic systems and social systems is based upon an ''inside-outside distinction'' between consciousness/mind and social world. Following Saussure and the later Wittgenstein, the cultural theories of Bourdieu and Giddens, however, situate themselves apart from the pattern of an inside-outside distinction and proceed from an analytical distinction between structures of knowledge and the praxis of action. When systems theory and cultural theories are interpreted along these lines, the tides of ordinary mutual criticism turn: The theories of culture turn out not to be ''individualist,'' but to offer support for a social holism of rules. On the other hand, Luhmann's seeming holism turns out to possess an individualist converse in his concept of a psychic system and is confronted with the culture-theoretical critique of reducing social knowledge to semantics.

Note: Article Reckwitz A, Univ Hamburg, Inst Soziol, Allendepl 1, D-20146 Hamburg, GERMANY

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