Suchergebnisse

De geschiedenis van de discipline heeft niet alleen een nationale, maar ook een linguïstische context. Deze bijdrage belicht beknopt de geschiedenis van de Nederlandstalige sociologie in Vlaanderen.

AbstractLudwig von Bertalanffy built his hopes for system theory on the growing visibility of systems in the world. The first introductory section of the 1968 edition of General System Theory is titled "Systems Everywhere." Half a century later, system theory has fallen into disrepute in several fields of study. It is targeted for its technocratic and governmental ambitions; it is depicted as an attempt to understand and reshape the world according to the system image of the world. This paper sketches how the social world has been analysed as a system—with a focus on hierarchy, predictability, and control. It proceeds to show how Von Bertalanffy's emphasis on the distinction between system and environment allows for the analysis of heterogeneity, indeterminacy, and uncontrollability. This paper thus makes a plea for a reflexive theory that focuses on problems that emerge despite the fact that our society imagines itself as a system.

In his late work on Christianity, Talcott Parsons obviously built upon the writings of both Durkheim and Weber. While he departed from the idea that increasing differentiation of the system of action did not have to threaten the unity of the system as a whole, his emphasis on structural differentiation was also complemented by one on value integration. He believed that, especially in the New World, religion (i.e. Christianity) has gradually become able to impose its definition of the situation in highly different, highly heterogeneous contexts of action. In this paper, I reconstruct Parsons' historical-sociological analyses of the relation between Christianity and modern society. I discuss how Parsons appropriated the writings of Durkheim and Weber – in ways which did not fully exploit the potential of some of these writings. I suggest some alternatives, which rely less on a concern with value integration (Durkheim) but more on one with the differentiation of meaning systems (Weber).

During the last ten or fifteen years of his life, Talcott Parsons (1902–79) discussed religion and secularization in a number of papers and essays. This work was left unfinished; in the last book that he saw into print, Parsons depicted these papers and essays as work-in-progress. This article focuses on Parsons' approach to secularization in this late work. Building upon his AGIL-scheme, Parsons analyzed the relation between processes of inclusion and increasing differentiation, on the one hand, and secularization at the value-oriented level, on the other. This article presents a reconstruction and an immanent critique of Parsons' approach, which highlights both its possibilities and its limitations in order to contribute to the development of a contemporary social theory of secularization and religious change.

This paper analyzes the causes and motives for the transition to a communication‐based theory of social systems in the late work of Niklas Luhmann. In the first part of this paper, I present a brief sketch of advances in the field of cybernetics and systems research. I give special attention to some basic concepts introduced by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela: autopoiesis, organizational closure and enaction. In the second part, I discuss how these ideas may contribute to a 'conceptual revolution' in the social and behavioral sciences. In the late work of Niklas Luhmann, attempts to incorporate the idea of autopoiesis in his own social theory resulted in the preference for a communication‐based, instead of an action‐based, theory of social systems. Moreover, given the current transition to the information age or the knowledge society, it can also be argued that structural changes in society nowadays favor the rise of a communication‐based theory of social systems. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The rise of disciplines is connected with the formation of groups or networks of specialists. It is connected with the emergence of "scientific communities," theorized about since Thomas Kuhn and Robert Merton. But how is such a community of specialists brought together; how are common orientations among members of a scientific community upheld? In this article it is argued that scholarly journals play a key role in the modern scientific disciplines. Journals both secure the shared values of a scientific community and endorse what that community takes to be certified knowledge. Publications in scholarly journals have become the basic units of scientific communication in a discipline. Against this theoretical background, I analyze in this article the evolution of the leading scholarly journal in the field of education in the Dutch-language community,Paedagogische Studiën (Studies in Education). The analyses illuminate a number of historical evolutions in this journal in the period 1920–75: the increase in coauthorship and the concomitant standardization of publication formats; the changing role of the editorial board, especially in its function of gatekeeper of scientific communication; and the increase and the shifting "global" nature of cited work in the journal. Because of the close relationship between journal and discipline, this analysis highlights basic characteristics of the patterns of communication and the constitution of disciplinary identity in Dutch-language educational science.

The rise of scientific specializations and disciplines depends on the formation of specialized scientific communities. The establishment of specialized scholarly journals facilitates the formation of such communities or networks. Publications, especially articles in specialized journals, have become institutionalized as the 'ultimate' form of scientific communication. Specialized journals fulfil a key role in the scientific disciplines. They both secure the shared values of a scientific community and endorse what that community takes to be certified knowledge. This article first elaborates on the evolution of communication within scientific disciplines. Afterwards, it presents an analysis of publication practices in the main generalist sociology journals in the Low Countries. Because of the close relationship between journals and discipline, this sociological analysis addresses the evolution of sociology itself.

Permanent individual gravemarkers were established as social norm for large populations in the nineteenth century. These markers typically display a range of matters-of-fact about the dead: name, age or dates of birth and death, family status, social position, profession, religion, etc. They also include symbolic figurations, which communicate in a more implicit way how the survivors remember their dead. Against this background, this paper analyses gravemarkers and graveyards as material witnesses of changing social and cultural sensibilities. It explores the kinds of changes which took place in European regions with a predominantly Catholic population.