De-differentiation as a result of the functional differentiation of the society in Luhmann´s theory

Abstract

Everyone knows that Luhmann’s theory of modern society is a theory of a functionally differentiated social order. To talk about modernity is to talk about fully separated communication social orders: it is meant that politics is attracted more and more by politics, that law is attracted by law, art is attracted by art, and science by science. Nevertheless, this social order is unlikely because it requires an enormous amount of assumptions which are always at stake. Due to this improbability a differentiated social order is always followed (in some regions) by de-differentiation processes. The “peripheries of modernity” are characterized by maintaining essential de-differentiated communication fields.