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e Systeme 15

2009),

Heft

2 ,

S. 271-287

©

Lucius

Lucius,

Stuttgart

Network and Culture^

Der Aufsatz vergleicht die Theorien sozialer Systeme und sozialer

erke im Hinblick

auf

ihre jeweilige Problemstellung. Die System theorie kon zen -

auf

Probleme

der

Differenz

und

Reprodu ktion wä hrend sich

die

Netzwerk-

od e m it Problemen der Identität und Kontrolle beschäftigt. Erstere hat es mit Fragen

Kom munikation letztere mit Fragen der Handlung zu tun. Um diese unterschied-

zu

verstehen

mag es

sinnvoll sein sich da ran

zu

erinnern

die Systemtheorie ein Zeitgenosse der Erfindung des C omputers ist, während

der Einführung des Internets

Der

Aufsatz vergleicht

die

beiden

auf

Fragen

der

ma them atischen M odellierung der Kultur und

der

die interessanterweise eng m iteinander zusam me nhäng en. Der Beitrag

mit

einer Erinnerung

an

Bronislaw Malinowskis »wissenschaftliche Theode

und

macht einen Versuch diese mithilfe einer Spencer-Brow n-Gleichung

zu modellieren. M an erhält die Form der Unterscheidung von Komm u-

und

Lehen

und

damit

das

Netzwerk drei reproduktionsfähiger

ation« (White 2007, vWth respect to Luhmann s theory of social systems),



7 Dirk ae

This paper intends to consider systems theory and network theory separat

whilst seeking to understand what separates the problems they address, a

subsequently to combine them if problems in social analysis, which go beyo

the problems addressed so far, do appear and merit some kind of exchan

betw een the theories. We will try to show that ph en om en a of culture do n

correspond easily to systems theory and network theory and may possib

need investigating through a process of reformulating both of these into w

we may th en call a theory of form.

J

W hat are the problem s social systems theory and social netw ork theory add re

and ho w d o these problem s relate to the tradition of sociological theory?

I think that it is safe to say that systems theo ry parallels the adv ent of the co

puter and its introduction into society. Both systems theory and the compu

originate in thel94 0 s and b oth share an interest in knowledge and in mo deli

systems that are able to self-organize with respect to a complex environme

and an unc ertain future (Wiener 1961; von N eu m an n 1958; von Bertalan

1968; Buckley 1968). Warren McCulloch was keen to name the three proble

even mathematical geniuses like Norbert Wiener and John von Neuma

were not able to solve, given the statistical problem of insufficient data in ti

series being available for the u nd erst an din g of social problems, the problem

a coupling of non-linear oscillators, and the problem of continuous nonlin

predic tion (McGuUoch 2004; cf. Baecker 2004a; 2007a). Yet tha t does n ot m e

that the problems already addressed by cybernetics and systems theory do n

concern exactly what has always occupied sociology, namely the statics a

dynamics of social order as formulated by Auguste Comte (Comte 1995),

stabilization and reproduction, viz. distinction and indication, of the orien

tion of action in situations as conceptua lized by Talcott Parsons and reform

lated by Niklas Luhmann using terms introduced by George Spencer-Brow

(Parsons

1951;

Luhmann 1980; Spencer-Brown 1994).

In contrast to systems theory, network theory, or at least the rising interest

it, seems to accompany the appearance and introduction in the 1990s of t

Internet or the World Wide Web, which is in turn supported by compute

computer grids, and computer clouds. Network theory shares with the Int

net an interest in looking at and modeling combinations of strong ties, we

ties,

and structural holes, which may be temporary or robust or unexpected



Network and Culture 273

and discipline, style an d switch ing (Tarde 1962; 1969; W hite 1992; 2008).

including possible ones, failed network(s), and zeroblocks, prevail over

ems«. Systems are always multiple, as organic, social, m en tal, an d

ar. It m ean s structure, and structure me ans expectation (Luhm ann 1995a,

8). Expectations are again multiple, of course, yet they can only be sub-

r exp ectations. W hy it is, then, that there is only one structure?

and relations, and all are, within certain limits, interchangea ble. H owever,

es an d control emerge, and how switchings are do ne.

ther a mystery. Ne twork theory s interest in structural equivalence, which

r, certainly bears som e resem blance to system th eory s interest in func-

This com bines th e shifting of problem s an d solutions w ith

why we have to start afresh. Gom puters an d th e Interne t as systems an d

are sure to stay with us, and we are still operating w ith a sociology



274 Dirk Bae

There is firstly the p roblem of mathem afical mo deling, which W hite refers ba

to Richard Bellman s advanced eng ineerin g theory of control because it d

plays a system already consisting of »nested integrations« and even allows,

disfinguishing successive stages of the reproducfion of the system, for so

control efforts un derta ken by the actors within the system (White 2008,

358

Mathematics is an option since there is almost no better way to co-pres

variability vwthin just one equation or set of equafions, and to make evid

at a a glance that a variable is just that, an enfity with some values to it, wh

may change according to their funcfional relafion to some other variables.

is impossible to do this in ordinary langu age, all possible literary subtlety n

withstanding.

There is secondly the problem of culture, which social studies only recen

beg an to take seriously, w he n all kinds of »turns«, the herm ene utic, the lingu

tic, the interpretive, the reflexive or literary, the performative, the spatial,

postcolonial, the translafional, an d th e iconic (Bachm ann-M edick 2006), co

not be overlooked anymore (Friedland

M ohr 2004). All these turns seem

relate to the cultural one, since all of them insist on some gap between a f

and a second nature, a gap that lets the latter gain a rich, yet uncertain sem

fic relafionship to th e former. Social stud ies relate uneasily to culture, sin

they look at it as a native theory of the social, which produces an awaren

of disfincfion, contingency, and redundancy among actors that precedes, a

maybe even goes beyond , sociology s efforts to describe an d exp lain disfincfi

confingency, and redund ancy. Social systems theory only belatedly looked i

culture. It discovered a modern nofion attuned to a society, which develop

an interest in the comparison of historically and regionally different social li

worlds (Herder) and began to describe the function of this notion within

world society, tur nin g to the con cept of incomprehensibility (Schlegel s (19

Unverständlichkeit in order to facilitate and restrict communication ac

bou nda ries (Luh m ann 1995b; Baecker 2001a; 2001b).

Culture means hegemony, but hegemony restricted to, and enacted with

interpretafion and its rhetorics, as sociology is, to be sure, just one exam

of such an attempt at hegemony (White 2008, 374). Culture means an ov

flow of meaning, generated by switchings among netdomes (White God

2007), reduced to after-the-fact interpretations of the very possibility of th

switchings, interpretafions which are framed most commonly as »values«

order to account for their general, yet operafive character (Lu hm ann 199 7,340

DiMaggio 1997). Culture means comparison, but bound up within the lim

of the discovery of the incomparable - which is the gift ethnology, the c



and

Culture

75

or

profession),

or to

tell

us

that

any

further effort

is

futile

for we should

not

underesdmate

the

polemical subtext

of

cultural difference).

is

thirdly

the

problem

of

self-reference, somehow entangled with

and

somehow hoping

for the

possibility

of

envisioning gramm ar

as

by

giving

and

guaranteeing depth, that

is

vertical

and

to

context (White 2008,

xx and 368). Self-

is

also re lated

to the

question

of

how

to

deal with observations when

are

done

by

both

the

social scientist

and

their object (337),

and

this

led

to

include,

at

almost

any

price (namely

the

narrator among

the

subjects

s/he is

writing about.

I am not

e w hether

the

problem

of

self-reference

is

solved

y

W hite presenting h im-

as

playwright tha n

as

narrator (2008,12).

If

the postmodern narrator

as

to

avoid knowdng better, does

it

help that the playwright know s about kno ts

Aristotle's (1997,1456a) term)

of

beginn ing, climax,

and

ending, w hilst

no

idea about them ? Within L uhm ann's endeavor

to

formulate

of

social systems,

the

problem

of

self-reference

is at the

very center

are

conceptualized

as

self-referenfial, self-organiz ing,

and

yet

that does

not

stop readers often concluding that Luhmann

is

interested

in

staging paradox tha n

in

avoiding it.^

nd

if

all three problem s have m ore

in

comm on th an first me ets

the

eye? W hat

and

self-reference (both

in the

observer

and in

their

to be

combined

to

deal wdth their respective prob lem s?

a

stern warning

to

anybody approaching

the

realm

of

general

eral,

and

Spencer-Brown 's calculus

in

particular:

»...

both

one

away from

the

main lines

of

science

and

modeling« (White

353),

and we

should take such

a

warn ing seriously;

yet

what

if

there

is

to be

gained than lost?

V

et

us

start with

the

observer, then bring

in the

m athematics

of

self-reference,

nd

end up

with culture.

for

inventing

the

observer

was

epistemological. The scientific

dis-

of

complex objects like

the

organism,

its

brain,

or

indeed

any

living cell

the

biology

and

neurophysiology

of

19'^

and

early 20 cen tury

was

tanta-

to

discovering th at causality

and

stafisfics was overtaxed

in

dealing wdth

se objects (Weaver 1948; M orin 1974). The concept

of

self-organization

was



276 Dirk a

introduced to picture both the way complex objects of any kind come ab

and the way a scientific observer has to organize, or »control« themself in or

to be able to use their interacdon with the subject as the, literally, empir

basis for any knowledge acquisidon (Ashby 1958; 1981).

The observer is the one who discovers the distinction they draw as the s

basis for deriving any know ledge. As that observer is a hum an being endo w

with a brain, a consciousness, and a memory and is, at the same time, forc

to attribute the observer capability to other complex ohjects as well, as th

come abou t hy self-organizadon - he they M cGulloch s pine co nes, Greg

Bateson s dolphins and schizophrenics, M argaret M ead s happ y sexua

am on g early hum an s or Jürgen Ruesch s nuclear families - a realization so

davwis that distinctions are drawn hy observers outside the hrain and the m

as well. To draw a distinction becomes a fundamental cognitive ability shar

by systems in the domains of life, consciousness, and communication. A

what is more, that specific human observer, who is doing his and her talk

and reading in the domain of language, also discovers, Karl Marx, Friedr

Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Mardn Heidegger did not write for noth

(Lawson 1985), that human observers are never alone (»seeking footing w

each other«; White 2008, xviii) and not only draw distinctions hut are dra

hy distinctions as well, which they themselves barely have a chance to acce

and then only by undertaking special reflective manoeuvers which take ti

and cost nerves,. In that way, even the human observer is firmly embedd

vwthin cognitive domains (Gotthard Günther (1979) proposes to add »volitiv

domains) that are to be conceptualized as existing outside their minds in

social, the physical, in time, and in space, as ph en om en a inextricahly entang

within themselves.

Yet, there is ano ther w arnin g in this

field s

White w arns a bou t staying clear

general system s theory an d Spencer-Brow n s calculus, He inz von Foerster,

master-mind of second-order cybernetics,

i e

the cybernetics of observing,

not just observed, systems, gives an equally stern warning about staying cl

of complexity: if somebody is so ignorant as to approach complexity, precis

defined as the overtaxing of the observer, they rightly stay that way too (v

Foerster 2002, 34, see also with respect to L uh m an n 22 5/6 ). This is alre

Ashh y s recom m end ation, w he n he says that, with complex ohjects, there

no ne ed to try to »und erstand« them , there are only ways to »control« the m

hy controlling o ne s ow n d istinctions in de term ining possible interactions w

the m (Ashhy 1958).

We are safe in heeding this warning, since it lets us keep in mind the v




2003;

see also Kauffman 1987;

1997;

Abbott 2001).

y gained, we m ay come across Bronislaw M alinowski s courageous

tly wh at w e would like it to do (Malinowski 1944; a reference sadly lacking

2001). Its amb ition is only ma tched subsequen tly by Talcott Parsons s

4b), Malinow^ski s formula for culture addresses

ined this or that way, so that a mecha nism is need ed, which gua ran-

s, possibilities, and the m utual adap tation am on g the values the variables

being organized, all of them , their organization, and their m utual adap -

o be eng aged w ith culture m eans

That is why cultural critiques from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to

atthew Arnold and Theodor W. Adorno were able to ask the q uestion on



278 Dirk ae

This is our idea. We propose to start the endeavor of sociological, ethnologic

and possibly even cultural theory with one single form for modeling any soc

organ izafion, wh ich is (a) a distincfion, (b) our, the observ er s, distincfion, (c)

eigen-iorm reproduced by an otherwise chaotic, non-linear, and non-trivial,

stochastic interming ling of systems g overning life, consciousness, and com m

nication, and thus (d) a self-similar structure helpful in guiding actors engag

with social action. We propose think ing of this form in term s of a symm etry

exchange b etw een the variables it entails, and an asymm etry of order, giving

dep th w ith respect to a distinction of context. We even venture to say that t

form may sh ow involution, differenfiafion, and dependen cy, tha t is style, ins

tution, and control (White 2008, 355), in what is actually a rather elementa

way.

Let us look at the following Spencer-Brown expression, which shows us fi

param eters and five indications, marked by those pa rame ters. The param ete

(and parameters there must be; see White 2000) consist in distinguishing t

variables

x y comm unication consciousness

and

life

ftom each other, the i

play of culture then consisting in finding the values for the variables which

the parameters in any one historical or local situation (Eq. 1):

= x y

life

consciousness

communication

Eq. 1

Equation 1 tells us that two variables,

x

and y, indicating social objects of a

kind, out of a set of possible further variables are to be distinguished a

contextualized within a space defined by constraints of life, consciousness, a

com mu nication. In turn, those frames are not the biological, psychological, a

sociological facts - were such things to exist anyway - able to indicate whi

values the variables

x

and

y

should assume, but are contexts, or bounda

conditions set, explored, and exploited by x and y. They refer to what system

theory is used to calling organic, mental (or psychic), and social system s. A

indeed, as

x

a nd

y

explore their con straints they come across conditions of

se

reproducfion, w hich may be attribu ted to self-referential and self-referenfia

closed systems.

Note that the integration of three systems for referencing into one Spence



ystems, Network, and Culture 279

plasticity of human

1988).

There is an interde pen dence of variables, wh ich Malinowski

ation tells us that at least) two variables, x and y, are contextualized.

x, determines the other, y, and bo th again, i.e., their interdep endence ,

life,

consciousness,

nd communication, or of the organic, the mental, and the social. All the vari-

x and y - e.g., a funeral ritual

uslim corpses Geertz 1973) - are spatially distinguished in dep th, such tha t

x and y are horizontally interdependent within one and the same

x, here standing in space Sy is

y, standing in space s .

x and y are contextualized by three other variables stan-

Sy

life,

Sj, consciousness,

and

Sj, communication TIhe

deeper the

consciousness, as Harrison C. W hite suggested at the Berlin conference in

ber 2008 and indeed William James 1922) wou ld have it though he

uld no t deny it a function) Eq. 2),

Culture

Malinowski

t

James

communication

Eq. 2

life

and

consciousness,

as most of sociology would rather prefer in

t case talking, in fact, of action rather than of communication :



280

Dirk Baec

Culture

Malinow ski Action Theory J

action

Eq.3

Biologists, and neuroscientists among them, may give

life

(shorthand, in

case,

for the neurophysiology of the brain) the shallowest space (Eq. 4),

Culture.

Ualinowski Biology

xjy

consciousness communication

life Eq.4

relegating consciousness and communication to finding out what life e

from them, all the while, nevertheless, designating life in a manner dependi

on how consciousness and communication think and talk about it (e.g., givi

it biological preeminence vwth respect to consciousness and communicado

Psychologists and, most notably, philosophers may instead opt for conscio

ness sociologists for communication (or, indeed, action to occupy the shallo

space exhibidng th e least degrees of freedom.

One may also avoid such difficult choices and opt without further ado f

»mind« as a catch-all phrase for life as conscious communication, as Dilthe

hermeneudcs or Bateson's epistemology would have had it (Dilthey 198

Bateson200ü) (Eq. 5):

^ ' ^ ^ ' ' ^ M a l i n o w s k i D i l t h e y ~ ^ lY

mind Eq.5

Dilthey's nodon of mind gave a reading almost materialisdc, and at lea

historical, of Hegel's philosophy of mind, the dialectics of which, in their tu

went a long way to help Kant's philosophy of pure reason out of the dea

lock inherent in the self-referendality of transcendental categories. Bateson

nodon thinks about mind as being the domain (or medium?) of a possible d



Sys t ems Ne t wo r k and Cu l t ure 281

W hatever your choice of both variable and the place of it, the only know ledg e-

claim ad herin g to the Spencer-Brown expression of Malinow ski s concept of

culture is that there is an interdependence between the respective variahles

as far as determining the values of

x

and

y goes.

There is no know ledge-claim

with respect to how the system s of life, consciousness, and com mu nication may

work and reproduce, or to how they actually may interfere with each o ther. By

con trast, Malino wsk i s claim is as far-reaching as it is m odest: th e values of

x

and

y

are determined by the values of the variables of life, consciousness, and

communication, hut to that extent we do not know just how they are deter-

m ined. The com plexity of the system s involved precludes that kind of kn ow -

ledge. We do our ex periments, som e of them deliberate, some less so. And we

have our experiences, some recounted, some forgotten. But both experiments

and experience go only so far.^

Note that there is a space s^, which, as the outside of the form, is unmarked

and wh ich m ay well invite ob servers to m ark it hy inserting intelligent design,

evolution, or som e entity like G aia. This is up to th e observer, w ho is thereby

revealing both themself and their preferences and, of course, producing a new

unmarked state just off the edge of the form the observer evoking.

In addition, our form ventures a hypothesis about culture whilst providing an

equation indicating and distinguishing an observer, who is indeed observing

in this

way.

There is no need to avoid the self-imbrication of the observer into

the form they are advancing, since this is anyway the only way to deal w ith,

i.

e.

to control, such a complex object as culture. Yet, it is absolutely necessary to he

explicit about our choices. Since we are dealing with systems for referencing

as being abstractions within network synthesis, we really have to monitor the

scope of these abstracdons in order to be able to maintain a sane perspective

on that synthesis (Korzybski 1994).

N ote tha t our Spencer-Brown expression for M alinowski s concept of culture

attem pts to solve old riddles about th e distinction b etw een culture and society,

or between culture and social system. We reject the truce between Harvard

anthrop ology and Harvard sociology, aimed at telling culture an d society apart

hy saying that the latter refers to all »relational« aspects of interacdon among

individuals and groups, and the former to »symbols«, which somehow gene-

rate meaning creatively and then transmit it ftom generation to generation

(Parsons/K roeber 1958). The cultural turns q uoted above, m ost notably their

5 This is not to disclaim any possible know ledge about life, consciousness, and society as objects

of all kinds of research. Yet, wh en doing sociology, and even do ing cu ltural theory, we d o

have to account for native theories developed by social domains in dealing with their own



8 Dirk

ae

performative and interpretive versions, did put an end to distinctions like t

one between symbol and relation, since symbols relate, and relations symb

lize.

We propose instead to stick with the nofion that culture ind eed specifi

distinct relafions within society (Parsons 1973; Rehberg 1986), and that

distincfion indeed stems from its references to life and consciousness, or to t

corporeal and th e m ental (Kroeber 1952). W here the se references are dealt w

in such a way that the social, the mental, and the organic become once aga

facts of CO-evolufion, then not only binary, but ternary and quaternary opp

sitions become the focus of social research by constituting patterns of cultu

that combine different levels in depth (Kroeber/Kluckhohn 1963, 325-34).

W hite s and Frédéric C. G oda rt s remark that percep tions are gene rated fro

the process of switching ftom netdom to netdom, which they put forward

their introduction to a discussion of the concept of culture, then becomes a

the more revealing (White Go dart 2007, 3). Those n etd om s are in no w

restricted to pure ly social contex ts. N etd om s, like W ittgenste in s »life form

perhaps (Cavell 1989), encompass control efforts embedded within intera

fions among several domains. If »cats« are social ones (White 2008b), »net

certainly exist among all kinds of domains capable of self-organizafion. Th

brings us back full circle to the question why we are so interested in netwo

theory in the first place. If indeed »netdom«, just like Lu hm ann s »com mu n

cafion«, »presupposes the mixture of relation and topic, plus understanding

(White 2008a, 7),^ we m ay end u p with m ore complex units tha n just h um a

parficipating within both relations and understanding (Latour 1993), so th

maybe it is only the topics that are truly ours.

Culture, then, becomes a notion, which describes the human involveme

and enga gem ent with the bound aries of society. Those boundaries m ean ne

work, if we follow Athanas ios KarafiUidis prop osition abou t netw ork s n

having boundaries but being them instead (KarafiUidis 2009), while the noti

of systems refers to recursive operafions of self-organizafion restricted with

bou nda ries to certain d om ains, the living, the m ental, the social, and the arfi

cial am on g them . The nofion of society describes features of self-organizafio

discovered within the dom ain of the social, yet there may indee d b e no need

then restrict the discoveries to that exact domain (Baecker 2007b).

Let me add in concluding that this simple Spencer-Brown expression f



Systems Network and Culture 283

e - and if we understand

hy form a

self-referential

eigen value

of a recursive

eigen-value

can only be produced and reproduced

e are here dealing with a culture, which is deem ed an

eigen-iorm

eigen-

to two o ther kinds of self-referenfial system s, living system s

m ental systems, while sim ultaneously referring to itself as the condifion of

s reproduction. Self-reference, here as elsewh ere, is non-trivial since it enc ap -

, that, nevertheless, has to be rebuilt for the form to be ack now -

epen denc e of the variables values is only to be guaran teed

network, which pro duce s its own synthesis, relying on structural and func-

Values,

and culture with

m (Lu hm ann 1997, 340-4, and 408-11), may well turn out to be a subject of

2000).

Yet, to do this w e have

s, network, a nd culture. The »topics« White is interested in,

7).

They constitute the

eigen-iorms

we may

n try to bring into sociological an d cultural theory s focus.

also no te, in concluding, tha t Malinowsk i s formula for culture -



284 Dirk ae

Values in their necessary plurality are the outcome and basis for an explorafi

and exploitation of that interplay (see also Luhmann 1997a, 408/9), and inte

pretafion is our way to fix and also to untangle its stories, disciplines, style

and regimes. As H arrison C. W hite suggests, stories, disciplines, styles, a

regimes m ay be disfinguished by closures adde d as we move from loosely to

and loosely coupled stories to disciplines adopting valuation for purposes

framing quality, purity, and prestige (White 1992, 16/7), to styles syncopati

complexity into idenfity (White 2008, chap. 4), and eventually to regimes, a

even to a hegem ony, co mb ining styles arou nd insfitutions (White 1992, 226)

Structural sociology would eventually merge with cultural sociology, as sugge

ted also by Step han Fuchs (2001), because there is no structure, which does n

emerge out of, and insist on, certain valuafions being reproduced both with

and outside their frame of interpretafion.

s

soon as one is able to observe q u

lity as an eigen-value which is produced non-linearly and reproduced with

a recursive funcfion capturing the stochasfic nature of social process, Nade

paradox (DiMaggio 1992) is dissolved into a differentiation of the memo

of the social, on one hand, from its oscillation, on the other (for »memory

an d »oscillation«; see Luh m ann 1997b). This wou ld b ring us one step furth

towards the a ttempts by theory of both systems and of network to un dersta n

a calculus applied to trade-offs in the uncertainty marking the disfincfion

ambage

irom

ambiguity (White 1992,17-19).

Friedrich Nietzsche urged us to keep clear of causality and to adopt aesth

tic terms to account for the differentiation of the organic, the mental, and t

social, with a view just to understanding the dance each individual sphere

staging and all of them are staging togethe r (Nietzsche

2006). s

systems ena

closure so that they can oscillate and memorize, and as the network synth

sizes by drawing on both ambage and ambiguity, culture is the way to inve

the ensuing dances with identities, which last as long as they succeed in mai

taining control am ong themselves.

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Kn ow ing5, 2 , 5 -41.

Aristotle (1997): Poetics, transi. Malcolm H ea th. Lo ndo n: Pe nguin Classics.

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