Niklas Luhmann’s sociological program and its context

Abstract

This paper reconstructs the foundations of the sociological project that the prestigious German sociologist Niklas Luhmann outlined in 1984 with the publication of Soziale Systeme (“Social systems”). This reconstruction situates historically that project in the historical, institutional and disciplinary context of the first half of 1980s and focuses on the new place that such a project attributed to communication. The article suggests that Luhmann forged the operative fundamentals of his communicative turn within the tension between tradition and discipline.