Papers by Markus Heidingsfelder
Systems Research and Behavioral Science
The current scholarly analysis of pop continues to operate within the framework of a power theory... more The current scholarly analysis of pop continues to operate within the framework of a power theory that ascribes the subject of investigation a political function. This text seeks an alternative explanation of the phenomenon by assigning pop its own (exclusive) social function. Pop is understood as a self‐substitutive unit, which qualifies it for the status of a function system. The basic structures typical for systems can be demonstrated: function, medium, code, various programmes, the specific communicative operation as well as its reflexive function, and so forth. The present text examines four additional structural elements which Luhmann designates as characteristic of function systems—secondary code, side code, contingency formula and zero methodology—to further refine the concept. Findings: Pop has many features that are characteristic of function systems. It is anything but a sphere of disorder, but has a definite infrastructure.
Das Medium Sinn ist in der Moderne der Gesellschaft diabolisch geworden – im genauen Verständnis ... more Das Medium Sinn ist in der Moderne der Gesellschaft diabolisch geworden – im genauen Verständnis dieses Wortes: als ein Durcheinanderwerfen aller Gültigkeiten. Ein Befund dieser Art führt zwangsläufig in die Diskussion um die Form von Sinn, Unsinn, Nicht-Sinn. Im Zentrum von Peter Fuchs’ jüngsten Arbeiten steht in diesem Zusammenhang die (paradoxe) Frage nach einer Phänomenologie des Nicht-Sinns. Die Chance zum Ausloten möglicher Antworten bot sich aber nicht theoretisch an, sie stieß ihm zu – als neun Monate währendes postoperatives Delir. Fünf davon war er bewusstlos, vier verbrachte er in einem Pflegeheim, geschüttelt von Halluzinationen. Jede empirische Belastbarkeit der Realität von Sinn ist während dieser zweiten Phase getilgt worden. Das Gespräch mit Markus Heidingsfelder ist der Versuch, das perplexe Erleben des Wahns zu verarbeiten.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliograf... more Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature 2020 Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung, die nicht ausdrücklich vom Urheberrechtsgesetz zugelassen ist, bedarf der vorherigen Zustimmung des Verlags. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Bearbeitungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Die Wiedergabe von allgemein beschreibenden Bezeichnungen, Marken, Unternehmensnamen etc. in diesem Werk bedeutet nicht, dass diese frei durch jedermann benutzt werden dürfen. Die Berechtigung zur Benutzung unterliegt, auch ohne gesonderten Hinweis hierzu, den Regeln des Markenrechts. Die Rechte des jeweiligen Zeicheninhabers sind zu beachten. Der Verlag, die Autoren und die Herausgeber gehen davon aus, dass die Angaben und Informationen in diesem Werk zum Zeitpunkt der Veröffentlichung vollständig und korrekt sind. Weder der Verlag, noch die Autoren oder die Herausgeber übernehmen, ausdrücklich oder implizit, Gewähr für den Inhalt des Werkes, etwaige Fehler oder Äußerungen. Der Verlag bleibt im Hinblick auf geografische Zuordnungen und Gebietsbezeichnungen in veröffentlichten Karten und Institutionsadressen neutral.
Journal of European Studies, 2019
Our daily lives are dominated by a profusion of organizations. This paper examines the impact of ... more Our daily lives are dominated by a profusion of organizations. This paper examines the impact of these ‘inescapabilities’ on our psyche from a sociological perspective. It first constructs a problem to which organizations can be interpreted as a solution, in order to then take a closer look at the construction of that solution. The central thesis is that the modern psyche cannot be understood without reference to this type of social system.
Kybernetes, 2021
Prologue At the beginning of the 1970s, the German public was introduced to a debate over the cor... more Prologue At the beginning of the 1970s, the German public was introduced to a debate over the correct contemporary theoretical understanding of society. The circumstances leading up to it make it seem almost entirely coincidental. When Luhmann gave a lecture on the sociology of love in Frankfurt, his apparent coldness with regard to the topichis professional scientific attitude, in other wordswas met with a similarly cold reception amongst the politically engaged students there, as a result of which they asked Habermas for a statement. Habermas, who was Adorno's assistant at the time, invited Luhmann to one of his own seminars, with their discussion eventually culminating in the book Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie (Theory of Society or Social Technology, Habermas and Luhmann, 1971). This "Theorie-Diskussion" (as the subtitle of the book clarified) had all of the elements for mass media consumption on a national stage: it met the demands for conflict, and it allowed for the personalization of said conflict in the form of a duel between two great German master thinkers. On the one side was Jürgen Habermas, who demanded that sociology consist in a critique of societyi.e. he considered it a moral obligation to uncover suboptimal social conditions, and identify the means by which to improve them. Taking aim at his antagonist prior to the discussion, he had criticized Luhmann's view of society for being too conservative and for lacking any vision of social utopia, while Luhmann insisted that morality, judgement and social criticism require a theory, whereby he placed particular emphasis on an adequate description of social reality, which Habermas did not provide because he parroted utopias instead of actually pursuing a contemporary sociology, and clung to centuriesold ideals instead of daring to come up with something new. If one subtracted all details, what remained wasaccording to Lyotarda rivalry between two models: that of society as a functional whole, and that of the bipartite society (Lyotard, 1986, p. 42). An interesting aspect of the debate was the fact that truth, from a systems-theoretical perspective: the medium of science, fell precisely at its center; a characteristic it shared with another scientific meta debate of the time, the one between Karl Popper and T.S. Kuhn (Lakatos and Musgrave, 1970). For Luhmann, truth takes on the function of making methodologically sound statements generally acceptable. It is not much more than a label attached to the knowledge gained according to scientific standards in order to guarantee its binding nature. Habermas, on the other hand, understands truth as a claim of validity that is raised by particular actors in communicative action. And although both parties acted rationally over the course of the debate, no consensus between them could be reached. In Habermas' terminology, the ideal to which the claims to validityas asserted in his theory-Interview with
Journal of European Studies, 2018
The main thesis of this text is that politics has lost its claim to make gener-ally valid decisio... more The main thesis of this text is that politics has lost its claim to make gener-ally valid decisions for the whole of society. It interprets both Donald Trump and the ‘Alternative fur Deutschland’ (AfD) as solutions to that problem. By understanding the votes of their supporters not so much as votes for a per-son or a party, but as votes against the political system itself, it tries to avoid the usual demonization of populist politics and persons and, instead, focuses on social functions and structures.
Society and Culture in South Asia, Dec 10, 2017
This interview with network theorist Emily Erikson took place in March 2017 when she visited Habi... more This interview with network theorist Emily Erikson took place in March 2017 when she visited Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan, for a lecture on the English East India Company. She talks about the advantages of network theory, the challenges of Twitter research and the reasons for the success of the English East India Company, which-according to Erikson-cannot be successfully explained by using a European cultures versus South Asian cultures framework. It also touches upon the critique of corporations in general and the possible links between globalisation and the rise of populism in the United States.
Journal of Business Ethics, 2018
In this article, we draw on established views of CSR dysfunctionalities to show how and why CSR i... more In this article, we draw on established views of CSR dysfunctionalities to show how and why CSR is regularly observed to be both shaped by and supportive of capitalism. We proceed to show that these dysfunctionalities are maintained by both the pro-and anticapitalist approaches to CSR, both of which imply an ill-defined separation of the economy and society as well an overly strong problem or solution focus on political and economic issues. Finally, we present a post-capitalist approach to CSR that overcomes (1) the ill-defined separation of the economy and society, (2) the capitalist bias towards economic rationalities, and (3) the overidentification of society with its political system; this approach thus helps to manage the abovementioned CSR dysfunctionalities.
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2017
If the global brain is a suitable model of the future information society, then one future of res... more If the global brain is a suitable model of the future information society, then one future of research in this global brain will be in its past, which is its distributed memory. In this paper, we draw on Francis Heylighen, Marta Lenartowicz, and Niklas Luhmann to show that future research in this global brain will have to reclaim classical theories of social differentiation in general and theories of functional differentiation in particular to develop higher resolution images of this brain's function and sub-functions. This claim is corroborated by a brain wave measurement of a considerable section of the global brain. We used the Google Ngram Viewer, an online graphing tool which charts annual counts of words or sentences as found in the largest available corpus of digitalized books, to analyse word frequency time-series plots of key concepts of social differentiation in the English as well as in the Spanish, French, German, Russian, and Italian sub-corpora between 1800 and 2000. The results of this socioencephalography suggest that the global brain's memory recalls distinct and not yet fully conscious biases to particular sub-functions, which are furthermore not in line with popular trend statements and self-descriptions of modern societies. We speculate that an increasingly intelligent global brain will start to critically reflect upon these biases and learn how to anticipate or even design its own desired futures.
Umschrift. Grenzgänge der Systemtheorie, 2015
Kommunikation im Populären
Society and Culture in South Asia, 2016
The present investigation examines the hypothesis that contemporary pop music has caught ‘retroma... more The present investigation examines the hypothesis that contemporary pop music has caught ‘retromania’: infected by its own past, it will bring about its own downfall. It identifies this observation as retrology: a specific school of thought within pop history. The article first looks at the major premises on which retrology is founded. It then asks why these assumptions have been so widely accepted. Next, it offers a sociological approach to look at pop music’s increasing interest in the past without recourse to moralistic divisions. Pop is seen as a social system, and not as an opaque accumulation of individual activities. Reproducing itself by a specific form of communication—the concatenation of songs—its main goal is simply to continue; it therefore desires neither ‘advancement’ nor ‘retro-gression’. The conclusion is that retro does not indicate a crisis; rather the opposite—it allows pop to carry on.
George Spencer Brown's “Design with the NOR”: With Related Essays, 2021
Soziale Systeme, 2004
ZusammenfassungDie heuristische Idee, die in diesem Aufsatz verfolgt wird, ist es, das Unschärfe-... more ZusammenfassungDie heuristische Idee, die in diesem Aufsatz verfolgt wird, ist es, das Unschärfe-Phänomen ›Pop‹ als eigentümliches, weltgesellschaftlich operierendes Funktionssystem aufzufassen. Als Sozialsystem reproduziert es eine spezifische (kommunikative) Differenz, die sich dem Medium des ›Songs‹ einschreibt, das Wahrnehmungen auf raffinierte Weise in den Kommunikationszusammenhang des Systems einbettet. Angenommen wird, daß nach preadaptive advances, die bis in die Renaissance zurückreichen, das System in den Fünfziger Jahren startet mit der spezifischen Operation der ›Provokation-im-Medium des Songs‹ und sich strukturell entlang prozessiert an Formen der Provokation und Gegenprovokation: Rock’n’Roll, Beat, Garage, Psychedelic, Heavy Metal, Hip Hop, Rave, Techno... Geprüft wird unter anderem, ob sich eine Funktion des Systems konstruieren läßt, ob das System über einen Leitcode verfügt (These: Hit/Flop), über ein Medium (Songs), über Formen organisatorischer Sicherheit (Label...
Uploads
Papers by Markus Heidingsfelder