Call for papers to the Luhmann Conference 2025
Topic: Programmes. Observed with social systems theory
Venue: University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Submission deadline (abstracts): 15 May 2025
Conference dates: 09-12 September 2025
Pre-conference dinner: 08 September 2025
Supported by the European Sociological Association and the Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik
Theme
"… the differentiation of coding and programming makes the reappearance of the third value possible" (Luhmann, 1989, p. 41)
In observing programmes through the lens of social systems theory (Luhmann, 2018), we discover a centre pillar of decided orders and structural feature of organised complexity. Programmes guide decisions, establishing the conditions under which they are deemed good or bad, right or wrong, or lucrative or ruinous. Programmes constitute interfaces between organisations and the codes of the function systems (Sales et al., 2022; Roth, 2023), but may also refer to, or be understood as, forms of moral code (Laursen, 2022), including coded preferences for particular function systems. As preference resonates with precedence, programmes are also instrumental in creating rankings and other stratified orders. Moreover, programmes define what is on screen or "on line", shaping what occupies the centre, and not only the periphery, of social attention. Programmes also operate a diverse set of guiding distinctions to decide who or what is included or excluded the multifaceted segments of modern world society. In this way, programmes are compatible with the source codes of all four basic forms of social differentiation (Roth, 2025): segmentary, centre-periphery, stratified, and functional.
At the same time, the concept of programmes as architectures of code is compatible not only with the guiding distinctions of society as observed by social systems theory in the tradition of Niklas Luhmann (Roth et al., 2025), but also with the key technologies and self-descriptions of a digitally transforming society. While the notion of programmes predates the digital computer revolution, architectures and metaphors of programmes and code have become as ubiquitous today as have the computers processing them to mediate almost every aspect of organic, psychic, and social life. This pervasiveness now seems to extend even to the heartlands of analogue communication, which some argue are currently being taken over by technologies (Tække, 2022) that others view as hardly more than glorified search engines such as ChatGPT or Gemini. The possibility that this very text on programmes has been generated by a computer programme adds an intriguing layer of complexity or, at least, complication. Whether attributed to a software programme or a group of wetware computers, the existence of such opaque text in the age of AI underscores the pervasive interplay between programmes as forms of social systems and the social systems they shape …
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Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr. Steffen Roth
Full Professor of Management, Excelia Business School La Rochelle, France
Full Professor of Social Sciences, Kazimieras Simonavicius University, Lithuania
Visiting Academic, University of Cambridge, UK
URL:
http://derroth.comORCID:
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8502-601XTwitter: derrothdotcom
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https://wp.me/pvO07-22xRecent articles
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https://wp.me/pvO07-1kH------------------------------