SOCIETY AS DYNAMIC SYSTEM

Society can be conceived as consisting of interconnected subsystems that are not independent and based on one specific function they fulfill but are open, communicatively interconnected, and networked. In each of these systems the basic process of self-organization that interconnects actors and struc-tures takes place permanently. The subsystems of the model of society out-lined here are the ecological system, the technological system, the economic system, the political system, and the cultural system. Why exactly these systems? In order to survive, humans in society have to appropriate and change nature (ecology) with the help of technologies so that they can pro-duce resources that they distribute and consume (economy), which enables them to make collective decisions (polity), form values, and acquire skills (culture). The core of this model consists of three systems (economy, polity, culture). This distinction can also be found in other contemporary sociologi-cal theories: Giddens (1984: 28–34) distinguishes between economic institu-tions, political instituinstitu-tions, and symbolic orders/modes of discourse as the three types of institutions in society. Bourdieu (1986b) speaks of economic, political, and cultural capital as the three types of structures in society. Jür-gen Habermas (1981) differs between the lifeworld, the economic system, and the political system.

Each of these systems is coined by human actors and social structures that are produced by the actors and condition the actors’ practices.

Each subsystem is defined and permanently re-created by a reflexive loop that productively interconnects human actors and their practices with social structures. Figure 3.2 shows a general model of society as a dynamic, dia-lectical system that is made up of reflexive, self-referential subsystems. The dynamic loops that constitute these systems will be described subsequently.

Matter is the totality of objects that constitute reality and is itself con-stituted in space and time by an interconnected totality of bodies that react

on one another (motion), that is, they repulse and attract each other. Matter is the totality of objectively existing systems that are interconnected and accord to different physical laws. As organizational level of matter, society is part of nature, but it also possesses qualities that can’t be found in biological and physical matter. Hence, it is a higher-level system that encompasses and encapsulates parts of biological and physical nature. Those parts of nature that are appropriated by man form a specific subsystem of society, the eco-system, that constitutes the biological and physical environment of human societal activity. Society and culture are a sublation of nature; nature and society are dialectically connected. When we speak about nature we always speak about systems that are observed and changed by human beings.

Nature is part of society; for human beings there can be no observation of and encounter with nature from the outside of society. The relationship of nature and society/culture is neither exclusive nor inclusive in character, that Figure 3.2 Society as dynamic, dialectical system.

is, nature and society are neither fully different nor fully identical. Society is the realm of human activity and interaction; it forms one specific, small part of nature. But for human beings this small part of the universe forms their overall context of activity. All human activity and observation take place within society; there is no position of humans external to society. Hence, nature as physical realm of activity of human labor, production, and com-munication is itself a part of society. In transforming and observing nature in economic, technological, cultural, and scientific processes, the human being integrates nature into society. Hence, there is no relationship between nature and human beings external to society; all metabolic and observa-tional processes that establish a relationship between nature and human beings function within society. Nature has produced the human being and society, but the human being integrates (certain parts of) nature as a subsys-tem of society into its own sphere of activities. Hence, when we speak about

“nature and society” we speak about society as the total realm of activity where we focus on social interactions between human beings and about the ecosphere as the interaction processes between humans and ecology and the interaction processes between natural systems that are observed by human beings. Society is a sublation of nature; in production humans consume nat-ural forces. Hence, nature is a foundation of society and continues to exist in Table 3.1 An overview of structures in society.

Type of structure Structure Definition

Ecological structures (Natural) resources Physical matter that is extracted in labor processes from nature and that is changed by human activities.

Technological structures Tools Artifacts, means, methods, skills of action that are used by humans in order to try to achieve defined goals.

Economic structures Property Goods and resources that are produced, distributed, and used by humans for satisfying defined needs.

Political structures Power The capacity and means for influencing collective decisions according to one’s own will.

Cultural structures Definition-capacities The capacity to define and acquire values, skills, and prac-tices that shall give meaning to life and help re-create human minds and bodies.

society. Humans transform nature in such a way that use values and social relationships emerge that have a specific social function that doesn’t exist in nature as such.

The technosphere is the system of society where human beings design and apply technological tools and capabilities in order to satisfy their needs.

This is a process in which they change society and nature with the help of technologies. New technologies emerge from social processes that reflect dominant interests, power structures, and worldviews—this is the process of innovation. Technologies are applied by humans in social systems in order to achieve certain goals—technology changes society; this is the process of technization. Innovation and technization are two dynamic processes that constitute the differentiation and reproduction of the technosphere. Tech-nology can be defined as a purposeful unity of artefacts, means, methods, abilities, processes, and knowledge that are necessary in order to achieve defined goals.

The ecosphere is the subsystem of society where humans use tools in order to appropriate nature in order to produce goods that satisfy their needs. In this subsystem, physical and biological systems form a life-support system of society. The technosphere is the system that mediates between sociosphere and ecosphere; that is, technologies are means that are produced and applied by humans in order to transform and appropriate nature, to satisfy human needs, and to simplify human life. Humans, with the help of technologies, appropriate nature; the results are extracted natural resources that are used in the economy for producing use values. By applying tools in order to achieve defined goals, humans transform society, that is, social relationships, but also parts of nature, that is, the material foundation of society. Human interaction permanently changes the physical state of nature in technological application processes.

The self-organization of nature (the dissipative and autopoietic produc-tion and reproducproduc-tion of dead and living material systems) and the self-or-ganization cycle of the sociosphere are mutually connected in a productive cycle where natural self-organization serves as the material foundation that enables and constrains social self-organization and human production pro-cesses transform natural structures and incorporate these very structures into society as means of production (technologies, raw materials). “The eco-nomic process of reproduction, whatever may be its specific social character, always becomes intertwined in this sphere . . . with a natural process of reproduction” (Marx 1885, 359). Nature can exist and self-organize with-out society, but society can’t exist withwith-out a natural base. The ecosphere, as the socially constructed part of nature, is shaped and transformed by society.

The economy is that part of the sociosphere where the relationship between nature and the sociosphere is established: In the economic system, nature is appropriated in the form of resources that are applied and transformed by human labor in such a way that property forms that function as use values and satisfy human needs are produced and can be distributed, circulated,

and consumed. Hence it makes sense to argue that the economy is more material and fundamental in character than polity and culture and that it forms, together with the ecosphere and the technosphere, the material foun-dation of society. In the relationship of nature and society, human actors (society) produce objective structures; they externalize and objectify their labor power in social processes that result in material objects (use values).

Hence, the process of the production of use values is a process of objectifica-tion of the subjective. Nature, as objective material being, enters society in the form of raw materials, technologies, and use values that are consumed as the foundation of production that is appropriated by nature and incor-porated into human labor practices and experiences. Hence, this process is a process of subjectification of the objective. The whole self-organization cycle that connects society and nature hence is based on the dialectic of the (inter)subjective (labor power, social relationships) and the objective (nat-ural forces, technologies, raw materials, use values), the objectification of the subjective and the subjectification of the objective. The sociosphere can be considered as the subjective or intersubjective and the ecosphere as the objective aspect of the society-nature system.

The interconnection of nature and economy is achieved in labor pro-cesses. These are special productive activities exercised by humans with defined aims in social processes so that nature is appropriated and parts of it are used as resources for the production of property so that certain human needs can be satisfied. Labor is only possible as an active shaping of nature and the world. Humans make use of existing worldly objects in order to actively create new objects in labor processes. Hence, man is objective man, a being that objectifies its labor power in property structures that shall sat-isfy certain needs.

Nature enters the economy in the form of natural and technological means of production (natural forces, technological tools, raw materials, auxiliary materials). The economic system is based on the dialectical relationship of productive forces and relations of production. Relations of production form the structural level of the economy; the term grasps the ways of social medi-ation between humans that act as agents or as (opposed or cooperating) social groups in economic processes. The productive forces are a systemic totality of living labor force and factors that influence labor. Living labor of human actors and its factors form a relationship that changes historically and is dependent on a concrete formation of society (such as capitalism).

The central aspect of the productive forces is laboring human actors. The influencing factors can be summed up as subjective ones (physical ability, qualification, knowledge, abilities, experience), objective ones (technology, science, amount and efficacy of the means of production, cooperation, means of production, forms of the division of labor, methods of organization), and natural ones. These forces can only be viewed in their relationship to living labor. The system of productive forces can’t be reduced to these forces; the system is only possible in combination with human labor. It is more than

the sum of its parts; it is an integrated whole that lies at the foundation of economic processes.

Generally speaking, one can say that human beings make use of (sub-jective, ob(sub-jective, natural) productive forces as foundation of production processes; they employ tools in order to enter a metabolism with nature that results in the change of the material state of nature. As a result, nature is appropriated, differentiated, and transformed into a social fact, that is, labor power produces economic goods and relations with the help of pro-ductive forces that enable and constrain human economic practices, that is, use values that satisfy human needs and routinized economic relations emerge (production). The production of economic resources takes places within specific social relationships/structures, that is, relations of production that have a specific historical form such as in capitalism the relationship between wage labor and capital that is a form of dependence and exploita-tion. Capital and labor are specific forms of organizing property relations;

they are social forms of determining who produces and who owns prop-erty. Produced economic goods are distributed and consumed (allocation);

thereby they enter the system of the productive forces and function as part of the foundational system of human labor. Hence, the whole process takes on the form of a productive cycle that interconnects productive forces (the system of laboring human actors) and relations of production (economic structures) in such a way that in the economic system of society we find the permanent emergence of economic property resources from human labor practices. Hence, the economic system is a dynamic system.

The political system deals with collective decisions concerning the way life conditions are set (including how economic resources are used and how they are distributed). Power is a political structure; it can be defined as the dispo-sition over means required to influence collective processes and decisions in one’s own interest. Domination is a specific form of power; it refers to the disposition over the means of coercion required to influence others, collec-tive processes, and decisions. Power is a social force in the sense that it can be considered as a materialization of the relationships of political groups. In modern society, power structures are, for example, collective decisions (such as laws), political institutions (such as government, parliament, councils, ministries, bureaucracy, courts, public offices, and departments), political positions (member of government, chancellor, etc.). Such structures reflect existing power relationships and the existing distribution of power. Political actors are either individuals or groups that have certain interests that they want to achieve in the political process by political actions. They want to determine political decisions in their interest, enter relations with each other, form groups, and enter certain (more cooperative or more competitive) rela-tions with other interest groups. On the actor level of the political system we find citizens and political groups with certain political practices. As a result, political relationships/structures are formed. These relations determine how power is constituted, distributed, allocated, and disposed. Political structures

are both the foundation of political actors’ practices and are differentiated and developed by political practices.

Political practices result in the emergence of new and the reproduction of already existing power structures. These structures enable and constrain the actions of the human beings in a society and result in new political activities that set themselves goals of changing or maintaining existing rules and dis-positions of power. In the political system we find a mutual relationship of political practices and political structures: The active relationships between political groups (governmental parties, opposition parties, nonparliamen-tary opposition, and support groups) result in the emergence of new power structures (decisions, laws, rules, political institutions, allocation of offices, appointment of civil servants, etc.) (deciding). These forces enable and con-strain the life and behavior of citizens as well as political actions of political groups (executing). Further political commitments, new goals, ideas, and so on, emerge at the actor level. The political system is a dynamic system that is based on the continual reproduction and emergence of power structures by political practices.

Culture is a social process that produces common meanings that signify certain social entities. This process is based on a mutual productive rela-tionship between the subjective culture of human beings (ideas, norms, val-ues, beliefs) and objective cultural structures (meaningful cultural artifacts with symbolic content, and collective norms, ideas, values, rules, traditions, worldviews, morals). Culture is about defining one’s own life and that of the social systems and the society one lives in. It is about the question who con-trols these definition capacities and about ways of life that practically realize such definitions. Culture is not only “high culture”; it is lived in everyday life. It is, as Raymond Williams has pointed out, ordinary and a whole way of life: “We use the word culture in these two senses: to mean a whole way of life—the common meanings; to mean the arts and learning—the special processes of discovery and creative effort. . . . Culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind” (Williams 2001, 11).

In cultural systems, human actors, based on their subjective ideas, norms, values, and beliefs, enter social relationships in which they produce and reproduce collective meaningful artifacts (such as pieces of music, books, films, artworks, etc.) and social-value structures (collective cultural values).

This process is termed invention because it is based on human creativity.

Cultural structures enable and constrain human thinking (enculturation), what we think, how we live and act, how we define ourselves (identity) and our role in society; which values we have is conditioned by existing collec-tive values and definitions that we are confronted with in the social systems that we live in. We don’t necessarily share dominant values, although many of us frequently do, but we have to form opinions concerning these values and decide in how far we let them shape our behavior and thinking and in how far we form differing individual values. Collective definitions condi-tion further social practices that produce and reproduce further collective

cultural structures, which again enable and constrain our individual values and ideas, and so on. Culture hence is a dynamic process in which indi-vidual values and collective values are interconnected so that meanings, identities, and lifestyles emerge. The totality of individual and collective values and the ways of life based on it forms the cultural system, which signifies a certain “structure of feelings” (Williams 1961, 48; 1977, 131sq.) of a period in societal development, that is, the historically distinct lived experiences of groups, organizations, and societies. A structure of feelings is not homogenous but is made up of different cultural definitions (that can based on the overall societal character and be more or less competitive or harmonized).

Raymond Williams has, as early as 1973, in his paper “Base and Superstructure”—one of the foundational texts of Cultural Materialism—

coined the terms emergent meaning and emergent culture. “By ‘emergent’ I mean, first, that new meanings and values, new practices, new significances and experiences are continually being created” (Williams 2001,170sq.).

Emergent meaning is the permanent discontinuity and novelty through which culture can reproduce and organize itself. Williams notes that domi-nant culture is alert “to anything that can be seen as emergent” (ibid., 171).

Williams didn’t connect this notion of cultural emergence to the sciences of complexity, which were just about to emerge full-scale in the 1970s, but he intuitively anticipated the idea that self-organization in the sense of the self-reproduction of a system requires the permanent constitution of new qualities of a system.

The economic, the political, and the cultural systems of society don’t

The economic, the political, and the cultural systems of society don’t