Sociology of the Next Society: Multiple Modernities, Glocalization and Membership Order (Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives) 3031291395, 9783031291395

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Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives

Gerhard Preyer Reuss-Markus Krausse

Sociology of the Next Society

Multiple Modernities, Glocalization and Membership Order

Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives Series Editor Ino Rossi, Saint John’s University, Great Neck, NY, USA

This series documents the range of emerging globalities in the 21st century at the national, transnational and trans-civilizational levels of analysis. “Globality” refers to a global condition where people located at any point on Earth are aware of being part of the world as a whole---the world as a single interacting entity. Social interactions occur among actors belonging to different societies, different social strata and different cultural traditions so that the condition of “globality” is experienced in many different ways. Examples of emerging globalities are social movements generated from the unfulfilled promises of neoliberalism and feelings of discrimination and marginalization of lower social strata; cultural otherization or the blaming of economic problems of certain geographical areas on a low level of cultural development; insecurities generated by technological risks, epidemics, and global terrorism; uncertainties generated by processes of transnational governance, outsourcing, unbalanced trade and massive migrations; biology-machine interfaces and impacts of non-human organisms and technologies on human consciousness and action; long-term threats of global warming, climate change and depletion of bio-diversity; increasing exploitation and marginalization of less industrialized regions. We state that globalization entails encounters and often clashes among people and nations of different civilizational traditions. Hence, one of the exploratory questions of these volumes will be the extent to which negative or problematic globalities are reactions to failed promises and unrealized ideals of civilizational and national traditions and/or perhaps attempts to revive those traditions. Our notion of civilizational tradition takes inspiration from the classical works of Spengler and Toynbee, Benjamin Nelson, Vytautas Kavolis, Roland Robertson, Johann P. Arnason, Jeremy Smith, and others; a tradition which is in sharp contrast with the civilizationism recently promoted by authoritarian leaders with hegemonic ambitions. The volumes in this series aim to extend the inter-civilizational focus of classical civilizational thinkers from the analysis of the origins and development of civilizations to the fostering of contemporary inter-civilizational dialogues; the intent is to facilitate an international rapprochement in the contemporary atmosphere of global conflicts. The volumes will reflect the diversity of theoretical perspectives and captures some of the novel thinking in social sciences, economics and humanities on intraand inter-societal processes; the attention to novel thinking will extend to emerging policy formulations in dealing with threats, risks, insecurities and inequities and to strategic thinking for a sustainable global future. The historical perspective will also be an important component of analysis together with the avoidance of West-centric perspectives. The intended readership of this series is not just an academic audience but also policy decision-makers and the public at large; accessibility of language and clarity of discourse will be a key concern in the preparation of these volumes.

Gerhard Preyer • Reuss-Markus Krausse

Sociology of the Next Society Multiple Modernities, Glocalization and Membership Order

Gerhard Preyer Institute of Sociology Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt a. M., Germany

Reuss-Markus Krausse Project Protosociology, Institute of Sociology Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt a. M., Germany

ISSN 2731-0620 ISSN 2731-0639 (electronic) Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives ISBN 978-3-031-29139-5 ISBN 978-3-031-29140-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

. . . globalization cannot be adequately defined as simply the compression (or implosion) of the world as a whole into a singular entity. (Robertson 1992, 50) Every value system emerges from irrational aspirations, and the irrational, ethically invalid, world-recording to transform into the absolutely rational, this actual and radical task of “forming”, becomes an ethical goal for every super personal value system. And every value system fails in this task. (Broch 1973, 300)

For Richard Münch

Abstract Sociology of the next society provides insight into the changing social structure of contemporary society. It shows the research programs of its analysis of sociological theory. This situation can be classified as a new “saddle time” (Koselleck). The altered state of the social structure characterizes the basic situation of all subsystems of the world social membership systems. Examples include the scientific, academic, legal, and political systems. By offering a sociology of the next society, we enable our field to better acknowledge and analyze the changes in the self-description of social communication and its social structure. The book also assesses changes and challenges of further modernization within Chinese society and its implications to the direction in which the society is moving. In the process, we subject the concept of globalization used in the field to criticism. The analysis of the sociology of membership as a new research program integrates the insights on contemporary societies of the international research group focused on multiple modernities since the 2000s. Target groups: Sociologists; Political scientists; Ethnologists; Psychologists; Historians; Evolutionary theorists; Philosophers Keywords Evaluation of globalization research
Multiple modernities and membership order
Sociology of contemporary society and beyond

Preface

The rather fast publication of an English version of Sociology of the Next Society, Multiple Modernities, Glocalization and Membership Order may be surprising but necessary. The exchanges with experts in sociological theory, globalization formation as well as members of the Multiple Modernities research group in Israel, Mexico, the USA, China, Japan, Abu Dhabi, and Brazil demanded an English language version of a book originally written in German. The analysis of the observed shifts in the regions of the world society as a society of societies will not produce fruitful insights among colleagues without a shift in sociological theory. This calls for further debates between colleagues. What is addressed in this study is a correction of the concept of globalization, the continuation of the research program of multiple modernities, and the renewal of the concept of society.1 The exchange in social communication is burdened with a problem that is difficult to handle: the absence of perfectibility within social communication. Social communication has intermissions, which it compensates for, but which it cannot eliminate. An example is the understanding of communicative acts, the accessibility of the addressee, and the success of the intended communicative act. Agreement and consent are a scarce good, which are not to be granted regardless of time. In this respect, sociology and communication science need a concept of communication that assumes that communication is possible without agreements and consent. This is part of the “sociological enlightenment” (Luhmann 1972), that is, we need the clarification as disillusionment.2 But this also means that sociological theory is a communication in the scientific system that cannot take an extramundane point of view. The observer therefore belongs to the subject area. This is actually good news,

1 An English version of membership theory and sociology is needed precisely to promote and test such ideas. It cannot replace the sketch in the first part of the introduction. Such a project is in preparation. 2 Luhmann’s six-volume collection of his articles has as its overall title “Sociological Enlightenment.” This is his research program in societal theory, including the sociology of knowledge.

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Preface

because without an orientation to others there can be no communication and therefore no sociological theory. It should be noted that the sociology of next society is not primarily or exclusively a theoretical analysis of different sociological approaches. Yet, this is necessary for academic social exchanges and research designs to gain useful orientation about research programs in sociological theory. Currently, there is no sociology for globalization or sociology of a structural changing society. We can see different approaches with individual research questions or research designs. To be clear, we do not attempt to formulate a sociology of globalization but one of the next society in the research program of multiple modernities. To this end, we present a frame of reference for observation of the next society spelled out in “Part IV: Third Research Program: Multiple Modernities, Membership and Globalization.” The main problems of the next society occur throughout the debate of different approaches and their overlap and disconnection. This can help the readers to step into academic exchanges and find adequate research design and new points of observation. The changes in contemporary society have long been reflected in the everyday lives of system members—changes that clearly proceed the advent of Covid-19 (Preyer and Krausse 2021). Examples include alterations within corporate organizations, the digitalization of social communication, new alternatives for interpersonal and “couple” relationships and the proliferation of postmodern identity designs. Such a novel landscape can be examined from different perspectives focused on education and training, changed psychology, and developments in the symbiosis between people and machine to mention just a few examples. Our interest is the sociological treatment of the structural change of contemporary societies along their membership conditions. At a fundamental level, the sociology of membership repositions the sociological observer who can exercise the very act of observing with the distinction between member and non-member as the elementary sense selection. This is a selection that the observer and the members of social systems cannot negate. We also have an explanation for the fact that the sociological observer does not take an objecttranscendent position in relation to his or her subject area: the membership systems. Membership systems are observer dependent. As social systems they make a fundamental distinction to their environment. This insight is beyond the sociological theory handed down to us, which assumed an object-transcendent point of view of the observer. To be clear, if we redefine the observer’s point of view in sociological theory, it does not imply that we cannot make objective statements about the sociological subject area. However, it goes hand in hand with the fact that we can always observe things differently and that inevitability cannot be achieved with regard to the past and future. This points to the dominance of the time dimension in the sociology of membership. Frankfurt a. M., Germany

Gerhard Preyer Reuss-Markus Krausse

Introduction: Theoretical View and Structure Of Investigation

Abstract of the Introduction: The theoretical approach of the study and its research background is outlined. The problem reference of social ontology and epistemology with which it is to be dealt with is introduced. Addressed is thus the selection of the membership decision of social systems, which determines the expectation of expectations of their members. For the sociological theory the concept of research programs is introduced. The research program of multiple modernities agrees in that there is no “master key” for the study of societies of societies in the structural evolution of membership orders. Keywords: Sociology of membership; Sociological theory; Globalization research and state of research; Theoretical approaches; Continuous transitions; Structure of the study

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Acknowledgments

The English version of the book is somewhat supplemented and we thank all of those who shared comments as well as the independent reviewer who contributed to the improvement of the final monograph. We would also like to thank Sergio Mukherjee for helping to give the English text its final shape.

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Contents

1

Background Presuppositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Ontology, Placing the Observer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theoretical View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Globalization Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 1 3 4

2

Systematization of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Continuous Transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other Basic Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Short Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7 7 12 13 14

Part I 3

4

Inventory of Sociological Theory

Update of Sociological Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sociology of Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Membership Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morphogenesis of Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Evolutionary Survival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inclusions–Exclusions Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Membership Order of the Next Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Differentiation of Membership Order Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Systematization of Globalization Research and the Theoretical Accounts in Sociological Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . State of Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theoretical Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

19 19 19 20 20 21 22 24 25

The Many Faces of Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Homogenizers, Heterogenizers, and Glocalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Homogenizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

29 29 29

25 25 27

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Contents

Heterogenizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Glocalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hybridization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Symbiotic Syncretism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Being in Between . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Creolization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Criticism of Humanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methodological Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multiple Modernities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Criticism of the Validity of the Western Model of Modernization . . . Robertson–Axford Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Network Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Changed Observation of Interaction Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Network and Social Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Network and Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

30 31 32 32 33 33 33 34 35 35 36 38 38 39 39

5

Transitional Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Consensus and Dissent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Misleading Term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reference Problem of the Globalization Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Replacing the Concept of Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multidimensional Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Redefining Globalization Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Redeployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Changed Initial Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41 41 41 43 44 44 44 45 46

6

Outlook: Difference in Membership Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Strengthening the Condition of Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Difference from Early Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Confrontations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

47 47 48 48

7

Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Organizational Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Concept of Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Western Modernizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Classification in Western Social History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53 53 53 55 55

8

First Modernity and Modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Structural Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Individualistic Professional Ethics and Damage Limitation . . . . . . . . . .

57 57 58

9

Second Modernity and Modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Keynesian Membership Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Compromise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Limit of the Welfare Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

59 59 60 60

Part II

Retrospective View: Western Modernizations

Contents

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10

Third Modernity and Modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Basic Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Correction of a Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63 63 63

11

Redeployment of Solidarity Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Problem-Related Structural Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Change of the Functional Subsystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Limits of Societal Control, Claims of Human Capital and Humanist Elites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Change of Zones of Interpenetration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Placement of the Sociological Observer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Restructuring of the Zones of Interpenetration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multi-level Model and Global Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Structural Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Restructuring of Political Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

65 65 65 66 66 66 67 70 70 70

Outlook: The End of Western Modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paradoxes of Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deconstruction–Reconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73 73 74 75

12

Part III

Global Studies

13

Motive Force and Research Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Structural Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Resystematization of Sociological Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multicentric World Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . .

79 79 79 80 81

14

Renewal of the Concept of Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frame of Reference for the Theory of Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Different Society as Mixed Formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hybridized, Glocalized Modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

83 83 84 84

15

Dimensions of Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Placement of the Observer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Structural Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

87 87 88

16

Outlook: Permanent Irritation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Initial Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Restructuring of Membership Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

89 89 90 90

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Part IV

Third Research Program: Multiple Modernities, Membership and Globalization

17

Reference Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sociology of Regional Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theoretical Initial Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Changed Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

95 95 96 97

18

Culture: Correction of the Fundamentals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Restructuring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cultural Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sense Constructions (Sinngebilde) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cultural Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Syncretism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Segmentary Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Demarcation Struggles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

99 99 99 100 100 101 101 102 103

19

Working Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Social Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Reference Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

20

Integration Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Concept of Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reference Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Loss of Plausibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Structural Problem of Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Problem-Related Social Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Does Membership Integration Mean? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Negative and Positive Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some Surprising Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stratification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Control of the Flow of Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Basic Elites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Old Stratification of Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . European Stratification Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Stratification Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hegemonic Liberalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

107 107 107 108 110 111 111 114 116 121 121 122 122 124 125 126

21

Research Foci of Membership Orders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Initial Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Placement of the Observer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Structural Change in Functional Systems and Their Institutions . . . . . . . From the Present to the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Political System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Economic System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

131 131 131 131 132 132 133 136

Contents

22

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Legal System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Structural Change of Communication Systems by Social Networking and the Modern Communication Technology . . . . . . . . . . . Intermediate Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Digitalization of Communication Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Collective Identities, Social Structure, and New Social Movements . . . . Membership Order and the Structure of Social Integration . . . . . . . . Collective Identities and Political System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

140 140 141 142 142 143

Outlook: Changed Basic Situation, Self-Irritation, and Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Time Dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Regulatory Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Self-Irritation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Redeployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

145 145 145 146 146

Part V

138

Membership Order of Chinese Society Without Solidarity Integration

23

China’s Modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Redeployment of the Social Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Triggering Modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Next Step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Political Center as a Pacemaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modernization and Integration Through Internal Stabilization . . . . . . China’s Economy and the Global Economic System . . . . . . . . . . . . China’s Institutionalization of Conflict Distinctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . Collective Integration Through the Myth of a Success Story . . . . . . . . . Political Center and Economic Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

153 153 153 154 154 154 155 156 157 157 158

24

Stabilization in Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Welfare Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Political Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Non-Controllability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Protest Without Disintegration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Integration Without Solidarity Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Symbiosis of Business and Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In the Typhoon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Integration Without Prosperity for all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Difference Instead of Consensus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No welfare Program of Damage Limitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Current Cultural and Political Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Current Political Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Self-Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

161 161 161 161 162 163 163 163 165 165 165 166 166 166

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xxii

Contents

25

Modernization without “Harmony”: Main Conflicts as Immune Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Main Conflict: Triggering Immune Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

26

Outlook: Further Modernization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Political Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Typical Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Part VI

Sociology of the Next Society: Redeployment of Sociological Theory

27

Postmodernism, Differentiation of Institutions, and Structural Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Research Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Social Order and Social Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

28

Functional Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Political System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Individualistic Inclusion Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Control Regime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Welfare Regime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Economic System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Labor Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Center-Periphery Constellation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Legal System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Law as a Medium of Conflict Propagation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Differentiation of Legal Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Decision-Making Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Formal and Informal Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Weighing Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Decision, Values, and Legal Interests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Localization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

181 181 181 181 182 183 183 183 184 184 185 185 186 186 187 187 188 189 190

29

An Observation: Flood of Scandals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Function of Scandals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Value Fundamentalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sense of the Scandal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Failure of the Cleansing Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

193 193 194 195 196

30

Populism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Problem Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Emancipation of Populism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

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Structural Performance Limits of the Political System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 Simplified Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 31

Transition to the Next Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Next Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Glocalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Constitutive Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Transitional Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Function of Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

205 205 205 206 206 208

32

Globalization Research and Socio-Structural Semantics . . . . . . . . . Reorientation of Globalization Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Media and Self-Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Change of Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

209 209 210 210

33

Self-Description of the Next Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Post-Hybridization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Connection Problem of Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . End of Perfection Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

213 213 213 214

34

Outlook: Inhomogeneous Social Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Basic Problem: Membership Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Self-Knowledge of Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 ProtoSociology [Publication of the segments: Sociological theory, globalization, theory of modernization, multiple modernities, sociology of membership, philosophy of sociality and social ontology (selected publication)] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 ProtoSociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Chapter 1

Background Presuppositions

Research Background The present volume is an inventory of the redeployment of the research program of the segment “Sociology of membership, sociological Theory,” “Globalization, modernization, multiple modernities” of ProtoSociology.1 It inevitably presented itself due to the changes in contemporary society, of which many representatives of sociological theory are increasingly aware after the turn of the century. From the outset, a simple research program and easy research tasks were not to be expected. The theoretical orientation is the focus on membership theory and membership sociology as a research program in sociological theory (Preyer 2018a, b, d). The sociology of membership requires a fundamental understanding of the sociology of the next society to provide the reader with the corresponding theoretical plausibility.

Social Ontology, Placing the Observer If we ask about the realm of the social and its ontology, we start from an observer (interpreter). This observer is not only facing one’s own domain, but this individual belongs to this domain. We assume that this realm can only exist if there is an observer. In this respect, in contrast to the modern natural sciences, apart from quantum physics, the observer belongs to the field of sociology. This does not exclude that an individual can also take a distanced attitude toward oneself. The

1 https://uni-frankfurt.academia.edu/GerhardPreyer/Sociology-of-Membership,-SociologicalTheory and https://uni-frankfurt.academia.edu/GerhardPreyer/Globalization,-Modernization,-MultipleModernities

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_1

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1 Background Presuppositions

latter is grounded in the linguistic structure of what we conventionally call “human language.” Every communication and action have preconditions or dispositives, that is, pre-decisions and presuppositions of various kinds. Within this framework, our communications are structurally determined. They are thus oriented to the abstraction of regularities of expectations. Expectations are dually coded. These preconditions cannot be negated arbitrarily. In this context, there is a restriction of the scope of negation. Of course, this is also true for system boundaries. They may be shiftable or changeable while being self-reproductive. A system is structurally determined if it operates in its own domain with distinctions that limit it from the inside and the outside, for example, with the distinction member/non-member, connectable/non-connectable. For sociology, this means that it studies structurally determined systems and orders. For social systems, this entails that they are structurally determined via expectations of expectations. These expectations are not only constants in time, but they have a selectionreinforcing effect as we project them onto future events. This is emphasized, for example, by Luhmann’s system theory (1995). It is a point of view that is often overlooked. We thus expect expectations as expectation of expectations as members of social systems. The fulfillment conditions of expectations are communications and actions. It can be assumed that communications reproduce in two non-overlapping domains: one’s physicality and in social relationships. What are the properties of the observer? We assume that anything that can be said of one observer can also be said of another observer. The observer, for his or her part, is placed in a social domain. One observes in one’s domain “membership status functions” and “communications” and their environment. Toward them, the individual can act and have a lived experience. In doing so, one can attribute the acting to oneself or the membership unit and the triggering of the lived experience to the environment. This assumes that the observer can describe his or her object area, something that is only possible if one makes the distinction between self-reference and otherreference. It follows that this is accompanied by a difference between system and environment and presupposes it for the establishment of attribution. We assume that the ultimate instance of description is the observer and the richness of the expressions of the language one uses. Here, it is worth pointing out that the social universe establishes itself in an evolutionary niche. Every membership decision and communication accomplishes this placement. The interdependence break between system and environment thus establishes a domain in which action and communication of the participants among themselves is used to determine, for example, mating and fighting.

Theoretical View

3

Theoretical View The gap between theory formation and empirical research in the broadest sense must also be bridged not only by methodology. It must always be taken into account in the understanding of methods that they have a certain function in sociological research. They do not constitute a reality but allow for a surprise or self-irritation in research. It follows that social constructivism cannot be true as the entity of research in sociology are not constructions. It should be mentioned that the usual distinction between quantitative and qualitative methods obscures the problem that form a distance to the object area, a gain of knowledge about the communication of the members of the social system. Luhmann agrees that no single research program should be imposed on a discipline or even science. This also applies on a condition that this is tried and can be successful by certain interest groups (Luhmann 1992, 413). This is understandably not a whole new insight. It is recommended to design sociological theory not in the sense of a “theory” as a theoretically deductive axiomatization, but as a kind of roof under which various research programs have a place (Lakatos 1970, 91–196). The turn of Lakatos in the theory of science is one to a “sophistic methodological falsificationism” (Lakatos 1970, 122). In contrast, the talk of research programs in sociological theory cannot be interpreted in a methodical sense. This is motivated by Eisenstadt and Schluchter’s approach to sociological theory and sociology history. Eisenstadt formulates as a central question for the development of sociology whether, as Merton assumed, the various orientations and receptivity to the external interests of the sociologists will disappear with the continuous institutionalization and maturity of the subject, or whether, as Bendix expected, the anomalies cannot be eliminated.2 “Southern theories,” such as those from postcolonial studies, are to pair to the metalanguage analysis of sociological theory in the contemporary multipolar world. The hegemonic constellation of the last 200 years is to be classified on the object language of sociological theory. By virtue of the turn in sociological theory of multiple modernities, there is greater effort in framing societies as membership orders and as constitutive structure of social exchange. However, sociological theory as in other sciences does not claim to homogenize the beliefs of scientists. That would be unprofessional. The assumption of an ultimate opinion is not a constraint for the institutionalization of scientific research.3 It is also undesirable because it would block research preventing our capacity to recognize change and something new. The theoretical and substantive question of current sociological theory is that of the reference problem of theoretical and empirical analysis, for example, methodological nationalism (for example, United States of America, People’s Republic of China, European Union). The general problem is not simply the technology or 2

Tiryakian (1971), Eisenstadt (2006a, b), Schluchter (2006), on the Kuhn debate: Stegmüller (1973); Preyer (1998a, b, 40–58). 3 Peirce (1966, 398) and others: indefinite community of investigators.

4

1 Background Presuppositions

varieties of the institutionalization of the participation in a free market, because technology is used differently and they are to distinguished varieties of market organizations (Nederveen Pieterse 2018, 194). The research program of multiple modernities as a segment of sociological theory agrees with Nederveen Pieterse (2018, 179–197) in recognizing that we are confronted with the problem of “debugging theory” and the concurrent fact that “there is no master key” (196). In contrast to Nederveen Pieterse, it is advisable to make level distinctions. The guideline for this is the distinction between object and metalanguage. The object language, however, requires self-observation of the members of social systems. This is not global or universal, but the restabilization of an asymmetry or a difference, that is, between self and external reference. Members of social systems cannot negate this difference. However, it is always important to keep in mind that sociological theory and its research programs must be placed within a scientific system. By remembering this, we will refrain from imposing a certain approach on other colleagues. We observe our colleagues and leave the decision about the viable theory of the evolution of the science system. Therefore, it should be taken seriously that “theoretical fineness begins with the awareness that there is no master key” (Nederveen Pieterse 2018, 196). This is not a new insight, but it depends on what we conclude from it for sociological theory. The latter is therefore encouraged to try out many research programs in order to continuously gain an understanding of the social-structural changes in the twenty-first century and what problem solutions of the last century to continue to stabilize.

Globalization Research In a review and evaluation of globalization research in different disciplines, such as sociology, political science, history, anthropology, and economics since the 1990s, it is striking that the term “globalization” is used differently. According to Robertson’s first book on the topic, the systematization of empirical research has continued in different theoretical directions (Robertson 1992). In the meantime, the research program of coordination with the research program of multiple modernities and the sociology of the hybridized/glocalized membership order is emerging. However, it is short of a unified analytical reference framework which takes into account the observer’s point of view. The lack of an integrated research program in globalization research can be explained by the fact that the studies have not been innovated from the point of view of the specific subsystems such as the political system, the legal system, the scientific system, or the economic system. The reference frameworks of traditional sociological theories and concepts for the resystematization of research, and the political rhetoric of particular interest groups in structural change have impeded adequate innovation of sociological theory. Although research from the perspective of subsystems provides an insight into their structural change and the upcoming

Globalization Research

5

social problems of order, it does not, for example, cover several areas including: the dimension of cultural globalization, the change in the structure of communication through modern technology as well as the restructuring of ascriptive solidarity and collective identities.

Chapter 2

Systematization of the Book

Overview of the Study “Part I: Inventory of Sociological Theory” begins with an outline of membership sociology. It is to be kept in view throughout the course of the study. Readers are encouraged to ask “At what point is the observation of membership decision and membership selection positioned?” We urge students of this text to resystematize the approach presented. The sociology of membership sets the orientation for the study of the sociology of the next society. In dealing with its problem references, the reader should always ask what follows from this for membership selection. In addition, the sociology of membership as a guide to the reference problems dealt with should start from the issues outlined. This begs the question: “What are the implications of membership selection for the morphogenesis of membership systems as a difference order, their evolutionary survival and the social inclusion-exclusion order on the micro and macro level?” From there, he has a projection of the membership order of the next society and the ongoing differentiation of membership markets. The basic message is that social systems are determined by the membership decision and its binary coding. Their operationalization or programming determines the membership order (“order = regulation of membership”). This is the selfreference of social systems as membership-determined systems. This decision exposed the membership systems to observation and irritation. In other words, the decision and its selection is the elementary self-observation of social systems. The concept of system is retained and placed in such a way that it clarifies the complexity gap between the membership systems and the environment. This is the general theory to be specified to particular social systems, groups, communication system, formal organizations, subsystems, and interaction system.1

1

For a systematic elaboration of the approach: Preyer (2018a, 19–192).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_2

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Systematization of the Book

This is followed by a systematization of globalization research and leading theoretical approaches. In the section “Many Faces of Globalization,” we undertake a fine-grained analysis of the state of research and leading theoretical approaches of the homogenizers, the heterogenizers, glocalization, hybridization, creolization, multiple modernities, and network morphology. Of particular interest here is the Robertson–Axford problem as both authors ascribe to the research program of multiple modernities a blindness to the problem of globalization. The Robertson–Axford problem has not yet been sufficiently problematized. Robertson himself, however, has commented on Axford. He does not see Axford’s “theory of globalization” (2013a, b) as adequately addressing his concept of glocalization. The study presents a critique of the concept of globalization found in standard globalization research. This is of particular importance as current research has an ultimately misguided understanding of what constitutes “global.” It obscures the change in socio-structural semantics. “Part I” concludes by describing the evolutionary transitional situation in which we find ourselves, distinguishing consensus and dissent among globalization researchers. The argument in “Part I” rests on the merits of systematizing the existing approaches to the analysis of contemporary society. They are an indicator that the latter is undergoing a structural change due to digitalization. In order to grasp these connections, a critique and recasting of the concept of globalization is needed. The section can also be read as an introduction to the approaches of the sociology of contemporary society. This leads to the problem reference and the consequential problems of the validity of western modernization, which sociological theory has to confront. Only when sociologists address this matter seriously, can we expect progress in sociological theory. Next, “Part II: Review: Western Modernizations” contrasts the liberal, welfare state, and ecological modernization with the changed basic situation of the reconstruction of sociological theory and its research programs. The part outlines the epochal breaks of western modernization since the so-called saddle time, a transitional period between early modernity and modernity in the eighteenth century (Koselleck 1979a, XV).2 The section is intended to take stock of the changes in the basic situation of social communication and the evolution of action and function systems underpinning the reallocation of sociological theory. It is not absurd to consider that we live in the present society in another so-called saddle time, the consequences of which we cannot yet estimate. The systematization is carried out under the guiding question that Western modernizations will not be repeated. What is also needed is a reassessment of the steering function of the state as the organization of the political system. What is also needed is a reassessment of the steering function of the state as the organization of the political system. In doing so, however, one must not make the mistake that society can be controlled as a system of membership orders.

2

Sattle means mountain saddle.

Overview of the Study

9

From the point of view of the “Research program of multiple modernities, glocalization and membership order,” the redeployment of solidarity integration is the reference problem which introduces the end of Western modernization and the recasting of the theory of social integration. It has no moral point of view, and it is broken by the claim of Western humanist elites that the social communication of members of social systems is accessible to ethical regulation. “Part III: Global Studies” ranks “Global studies” (Nederveen Pieterse 2013) in the problem situation of sociological theory since the turn of the century. “Global studies” take up the “research program of multiple modernities” (Eisenstadt 2002) and transfer it to the analysis of “multipolar globalization.” Nederveen Pieterse transfers “global studies” into the research program of redefining globalization research through the connectivity of network formation. It is a merit of global studies that they reintroduce the concept of society in the plural into sociology. It was abandoned, for example, by Luhmann (1974a) and his followers in favor of the concept of world society. The analysis of the constitutive structures of world society (Münch 2011) suggests the continuation to society as a system of membership orders and its regionalization. For the redeployment, the concept of society must be renewed and classified in the “research program of multiple modernities” as a membership order. This introduces the differences between the distinctions present in sociological theory and their resystematization. The reader should keep in mind that this and “Parts I– III” prepare the recasting of the theory of social integration. The reframing of social integration theory emerges from the research of the ProtoSociology research project (Preyer 2018a, 353–407, b, 391–434). In this new version, social integration theory delivers its independent contribution to contemporary sociological theory while establishing a different research program of social integration theory. The update of the “Third research program of multiple modernities” is a focus of research and systematization of sociological theory. It considers the placement of the observer and the observation of observers of the conceptualization of the social ontology. This also concerns the definition of the situation of the sociological theory. “Part IV: Third Research Program: Multiple Modernities, Membership and Globalization” describes the definition of the research situation from the point of view of two sides. One is on or within this side and the other is beyond the “Third research program of multiple modernities 2016.” The definition of the triggering situation is the research on multiple modernities, such as that conducted by Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Miriam Ben-Rafael, Boxter Liwerant, Krawietz, Marangudakis, Nederveen Peterse and his research group, Preyer, Krawietz/Preyer, Preyer and Krausse and the systematization of the multiple modernities research program in terms of membership theory.3 “Part IV” outlines the restacking of 3

In the cooperation with Werner Krawietz (1933–2019) from 1994 to 2019, a continuation of the approach in multiple modernities research and critique of the concept of world society has been conceived. However, there is no joint publication about this. The shared research program can be easily seen in the publications given by the authors. In the continuation is referred to the approach with Krawietz/Preyer.

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sociological theory as suggested, for example, by Krawietz (1984, 1993, 81–133, 2007a, 1–34, b, 2008, 181–206, 2009, 249–271, 2012, 71–101), Münch’s sociology of regional society and the limits of social exchange, Willke’s system theory of drift of the world society, and the research group of authors of multiple modernities as well. The “Third research program of multiple modernities 2016” is ongoing, on both aforementioned sides of this research program. The program is also included in the renewal of the concept of society as a system of membership. The program makes a corrective to the concept of culture. It is inspired in sociological theory by Southwest German neo-Kantianism. This is associated with a different version of cultural communication and its selection of meanings. The “working hypothesis” of the research program leads to the resystematization of the theory of social integration and the analysis of the constitutive structures of world society in sociological theory. In order to address the problem of the recast of the theory of social integration, it is appropriate to address the old stratification of Europe, European stratification and the new stratification structure as borderlines within a globalized societal communication The new stratification structure initiates the hegemonic liberalization of membership conditions. The motif within and beyond the “Third research program of multiple modernities” of 2016 is the continuation of the new version of the theory of social integration (Preyer 2018a, Part IV, VII, 3 b, Part V, 1–4). The continuation is not adequately recorded until we specify the recasting of the concept of social integration on the social stratification structure (Part IV, Chap. 20, in this book). Access to this problem depends on the insight into member integration through “premarket human capital formation” as opposed to “post-market social compensation” (Münch 2009, 327). The reader should keep a constant eye on this problem, provided that he or she intends to cover the membership-theoretical research program of the recasting of the concept of integration as a system of difference. Of particular interest for the research program is the exchange with the theory and sociology of law. In this respect, a cooperation has been in place with Werner Krawietz, who sadly passed away in 2019. In the course of this cooperation, he supplemented the “Research program of multiple modernities” and the sociologists of membership with a multiple level approach of legal theory and sociology of law. A reference problem was the criticism of the concept of world society (Luhmann 1974b) and its replacement by the concept of the “society of societies” (Hondrich 2001a, 141) and the membership regulations (Krawietz 1984, 1993, 81–133, 2007a, b, 1–34, 2008, 181–206, 2009, 249–271, 2012, 71–101). In this respect, the result of the cooperation in the presentation of the redeployment of sociological theory after the turn of the century is to be placed as the Krawietz–Preyer research program of a sociology of regional society and its selective medial observation and self-observation. In recent years, the socio-theoretical problem of the exchange has amounted to the fact that the “emerging level” of social communication cannot be undermined without evolutionary loss of complexity. In system theory, this is also analyzed as the problem of externalization. For example, if the money medium is differentiated

Overview of the Study

11

from the domestic economy and the structural differentiation between the household and the economic enterprise is carried out, then this can no longer be changed without significant disadvantages and blockages of social exchange. This also applies to other functional systems. If the money medium is differentiated as an exchange medium, the payment of public administration employees and civil servants can no longer be converted to a natural income. As such, the evolutionary function and performance of differentiation are repeatedly misjudged (Preyer 2018b, Part III IV). Next, “Part V: Membership Order of Chinese Society Without Solidarity Integration” outlines the strongly immunologically controlled Chinese social communication and the membership order of Chinese society. Chinese modernization represents a particularly educational case of multiple modernities. In the old modernization theory of the 1950s, the modernization of Japan was often cited as a deviation from a Western developmental path. Convergence theorists of the 1950s and 1960s have struggled with this point. We can also see this in many Western sociological publications on Chinese modernization. The recasting of the theory of social integration is therefore instructive as it does not follow the welfare regime and the institutionalization of democratic constitutionalism of an open community of citizens of Western modernization. The blind spot of the Western observer may prevent access to the particular structure of Chinese modernization and the dynamism that dissolved it. Of particular interest are the problems faced by Chinese modernization following the transformation of Chinese communism. Sociology and sociological theory should rise to the challenge that China has a very distinct social reality for which we have yet to draw up a classification. This is readily understood from the fact that most members of Chinese society have a collective orientation as a priority as opposed to being institutional individualists or human capital individualists. It should be noted in this context that an interest in the realization of Max Weber’s Confucianism study in his sociology of religion was that there is a different social reality in China as argued by Schluchter (1991) in his reinterpretation of Max Weber’s Confucianism study. “Part VI: Sociology of the Next Society; Redeployment of Sociological Theory” focuses on the problem of the sociology of the next society and new developments in the research terrain—a core subject of the book. The sociology of contemporary society and the next society suggests other research priorities, which should be undertaken using the example of structural changes in the political, economic, and legal system as well as the function of modern communication technology. This initiates the view of the changed situation of contemporary societies and their selfirritation. Of particular interest in observing contemporary society is, for example, the flood of scandals, its inflation and populism. This requires a sociological explanation. Axford’s (2021) and Steger’s (2019) research program of “postmodern populism,” Laclau (2004), Nederveen Pieterse (2018), and Roninger (2023) systematizations are a first step in this direction, suggesting a further resystematization. On the state of research and systematization, we direct our readers’ attention to the work of Axford and Steger and James (2020). It is crucial to note that the redeployment of

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sociological theory has to consider the changed socio-cultural semantics and thus the self-description of the next society in which an inhomogeneous social structure is reflected. The next society will be a society beyond Western humanism, ancient European traditions, and cosmopolitanism.

Continuous Transitions The transition to the next society may not come as a surprise, but it is worth considering how it is predetermined by the empirically well-researched and mutually reinforcing processes of redeployment in contemporary society. This is true even if we cannot look into the future as we cannot negate the difference between the present future and the present. The future can only be reached in the present and reproduces this difference between the two horizons in the time dimension. One might legitimately wonder whether we can determine when the next society will start or if there is a path to the next society. The question has to be answered to convey that it has always started. In this respect, there is no way into the next society. From the point of view of contemporary society, every time-to-date society is a next society that is followed by another post-next society. Every present has its temporal aftermath, without being compelled to assume that time is flowing somewhere. There is therefore no finalized temporal state, which amounts to society, the action and communication of members of social systems. The problem is that timedetermined membership systems cannot negate their system history, which itself falls into time. They cannot dispose of the time dimension in such a way that they can go back in time and from there, for example, take alternative development paths. This in turn refers to the time dimension by which the membership systems are selfdetermined and which are not available to them. The sociology of the next society is not a vision, it is not a prognosis of a future state of social communication and it does not claim to force future states in any intention guided by norms and values. This is already failing because the time dimension of membership systems cannot negate the difference between the present future as a target state of intentions, plans, and system programs, and the future present. This also applies if the difference is very small. For their stock, unlikely events are always to be converted into probable events. This requires a robust constitution of membership systems. The research should cease its view of the structural change in the membership order of the next society as a fragmented membership order. The central problem of sociological theory is the recasting of the theory of social integration, which has its focus in the social prestige order of social stratification. This addresses the fundamental problem of the sociology of contemporary society, that Western modernization and its inclusion program will not be repeated. In the analysis of these correlations, we come across an evolutionary-theoretical problem that the achieved levels of emergence of social systems are probably no longer irreversible. This also applies to the structurally forming evolutionary externalizations, for example, if the

Other Basic Considerations

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medium of money as a special medium is differentiated from the other media and the corresponding functional system, then the social exchange can no longer be converted to the exchange of natural goods without causing considerable structural damage for the exchange of the members of society. For the other media, for example, power, influence, and arguments, the comparable facts apply.

Other Basic Considerations The goal of academic communication is not to unify the beliefs of the members of a scientific system. The opposite is the case. By communicating differences, the members irritate one another. Indeed, this could be seen as a prerequisite for them to learn something. What conclusions they draw from such an exercise is their decision. No predictions can be made about it. Sociological theory is a communication in the scientific system and the self-irritation of the subject of sociology. It has the peculiarity that the sociologist belongs to the subject area of his or her theory formation. There are still two problem references to be addressed, which the reader can use as orientation for the approach and the conclusions one draws from the investigation. It enters the end of perfection and perfectibility (Luhmann 1993a). Perfection in old European ontology means that the entities we find in the world have a being. They are determined by a complete and unchanging essence. Thus, they are subspecies aeternitatis finished beings. Perfectibility, on the other hand, says that the essence of human beings is not finished and can be infinitely perfected, in contrast to the natural perfection, for example, of human beings. The idea of perfectibility goes back to Turgot (1895), Luhmann (1993a, 212, 212–213) in reference to Rousseau’s original conceptualization as the single characteristic that sets humans apart from other animals. This is accompanied by a permanent irritation of the members of society by educational programs that repeatedly terminate. This is not accidental. Education is a self-observation of social communication exercised under the precondition of differentiated organizational systems without the educator being able to ensure his or her educational intentions. Perfectibility has as its social-structural counterpart the inclusion logic of the functional system of modern society, which from a fundamental point of view may no longer exclude anyone. Perfectibility, however, collapses insofar as it is again unable to realize its program and regresses to the explanation of good intentions. Perfectibility is informative, however, as it presupposes a different semantics of social structure, which assumes that the participants in social communication start from their self-reference. If the idea of perfection is negated by perfectibility and the latter turns out to be impossible to realize, then the sociological theory and the concept of society must be restructured so that it no longer assumes a teleology. Another point is that the differentiation of modern society into functional systems, such as the economy, law, science, and religion, precludes a functional

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primacy of a single subsystem. This is not to say that there are no particular relevancies and conduits of these line systems in their exchanges. Sociology has repeatedly attempted to designate a primacy of one subsystem, for example, the economic system. However, this can be considered a failure. This is accompanied by a problem reference that the members of the functional systems cannot eliminate the blind spot of their observation from their own point of view. An example is that economic communication describes societal communication under the problem reference of scarce goods, the legal system under the point of view of legal regulations, and the scientific system under the point of view of gaining scientific knowledge. It is not by chance that modern society has not found a generally valid self-description. Nor can it. Sociological theory has to adjust to this. We should conclude our introductory considerations for the sociological orientation of the reader. Firstly, in theory of society, we will only achieve further progress in knowledge if we change the theoretical observation (description) of social systems to the observation of self-observing social systems as membership systems. Theoretical observation then describes the decisions about membership through which social systems observe themselves. The decision about membership is not controllable, but only evolutionarily variable through the evolutionary differentiation of membership orders. Secondly, societal communication cannot be perfected as it is subject to improbable structure formation dominated by the time dimension while being susceptible to decay. On this front, neither prosperity, justice, education, knowledge nor system rationality constitute the perfection of society. This is felt by the members of all functional systems as their structural drift makes it increasingly difficult for them to use the interdependencies of systemic rationality advantages. With this said, the question arises as to whether functional differentiation can be evolutionarily restabilized. Sociological theory should be guided by the fact that we are in an evolutionary situation in which no binding representation of membership and the membership order in society can be expected. This fails by virtue of the complexity of membership orders in modern society or societies.

Short Outlook Sociology will play a prominent role in the scientific system of analyzing the ongoing transition to the next society. Due to the fact that it repositions the sociological observer, one has to find out under what conditions the membership systems reproduce themselves in the time dimension and thus as events. It does not take the position of a Laplace’s demon (1902), but belongs to the object of theory formation. Thus, the sociological theory of the self-referential loop of observation takes into account as an observation of members of social systems. It is an observation that cannot exist without membership. Just this is a new turn in sociological

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theory systemizing the ontology of the social. The turn connects a view of method and substantial question in sociology. The ongoing transition to the next company will not take place without distortions. It is not necessary to infer from this the loss of social integration. However, we should ask ourselves whether, for example, the concept of “crisis” is still true as the distortions always trigger self-irritation and self-observation of social communication, without which we cannot learn anything. The socio-structural semantics of the concept of crisis and of “criticism and crisis” (Koselleck 1959) have long survived. For a detailed treatment on the concept of crisis as an exhaustive conceptualization of societal communication which is not to renew, we encourage readers to our 2020 work (Preyer and Krausse 2020). With regard to crisis semantics, it should also be remembered that “criticism and crisis” in the transitional saddle time of the eighteenth century led to the Jacobinism (terror) of the French Revolution (Koselleck 1959).4 It is the model for the subsequent revolutionary experiments on a world scale and Jacobinism also belongs to Islamic fundamentalism in its various versions. Historical experience has taught us that there is no “good” to be expected from it. Looking back on the social history of modern societies, it can be concluded that socialism led to poverty and capitalism to prosperity. This will not change in the next society.

4 For a detailed summary of revolutionary research and systematization, we encourage readers to turn to Eisenstadt (2006a, b).

Part I

Inventory of Sociological Theory

Keywords Homogenizers · Heterogenizers · Society · Globalization · Glocalization · Hybridization · Creolization · Multiple modernities · Robertson– Axford problem · Network morphology · Differentiation of membership orders · Sociological theory

Chapter 3

Update of Sociological Theory

Sociology of Membership New Turn The theory of membership gives a particular answer to the question “What determines social systems as self-determined systems?” and “What are their ultimate components that have no resonance in their environment?”. The answer is that the self-observation of societal communication consists in observing the decision about membership, its marking and formal as well as informal specification. It is at the same time their self-irritation. The membership in social systems is the universal status function of social systems and this status indication (marking) is observation-dependent. We assume in this respect that the social domain is to be characterized by a class identity, for example, the social domain exists as long as this class identity exists. The social domain is something artificial and it is not a determined automaton. Membership theory gives a special answer to the problem of social ontology, that is, the question of the ultimate components of social systems. The social systems are member-determined systems with only their own variation, selection, and restabilization processes. Their final components are not indivisible entities that enter into any kind of relationship, but their basic operation is the membership decision and its selection. It has to restabilize itself in the time dimension. A time-stability can achieve the membership decision only by the organization of membership, which is too restabilized in time, and thus stabilize through structural formation. It follows that membership theory is a sociology of the membership conditions. This may be an unlikely event that can also fail, but the social systems determined by membership have proved quite robust in their evolution. This is true even if they have only recorded a fragile social order and the integration of their members.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_3

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Membership Selection The decision on membership is a selection that exposes itself as an event of selfobservation. The membership decision as one of the decisions on and distinction between member and non-member presupposes the self-observation of social systems. As such, it is an elementary asymmetrization of social systems which they cannot negate. This is the only way to create social systems and society. The membership decision as an act, however, is at the same time a communication that marks the system boundaries of belonging and non-affiliation. However, this decision, as a decision, does not stand as a temporal event. It therefore requires the structures to bring about restabilization. The membership decision is the operation that makes the difference to the environment of social systems. As a decision, it is an event that disappears in time. One could characterize it in such a way that this decision has no time-stability as this is a time-related event, that is it disappears in which it occurs. Communication as an event is unique and non-repeatable as a token. The robustness of the membership systems is probably explained by the fact that membership selection is stronger than its variation and that the restabilization cannot be freely varied if, for example, someone has finally fallen through an examination and has not found employment for too long. This, in turn, would entail that the person no longer has any chance of successfully participating in the design of connection rationalities in the membership systems, drifting into the exclusion zone of social systems. The liminality or the boundary situations of the systemtypical events of social communication thus reinforce the self-observation of the membership systems and have a binding effect for the participants in communications. They are binding in that these liminalities as transitional situations reinforce the self-observation of social communication. This is a negative integration. However, this does not preclude structural changes in membership conditions. It should be emphasized that membership selection triggers a surplus and an indeterminacy of the decision, as it can always be different. This is true regardless of how likely one of its variations is. It is to be assumed that the microvariation is present in all functional systems and can only be used by selections. In this respect, a surplus of variation of membership conditions is required in all functional systems. A good example of the latter is the logic of inclusion in the functional systems and their overload.

Morphogenesis of Membership If we consider the problem of the evolutionary differentiation of social systems as a system determined by membership, this concerns in general system theory morphogenesis or interdependence interruption as the differentiation of system and environment. Membership in social systems is a reference to meaning that has no resonance in their environment. It should be noted that this is an epigenesis. The formation of membership systems is not a natural event, which can be systematized,

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for example, by neurophysiology, biogenetics, physics, and chemistry. This is because the membership systems require their self-observation. The reproduction of the system is not only a situational event, but has to ensure duration in the time dimension. This reproduction is the situation-independent operation of a distinction in a non-dispositional environment. “Reproduction = the restabilization of membership systems” consists in proven problem solutions in the time dimension. The cross-situational restabilization of the repetition of the membership decision and selection is their “own value” according to the membership theory. The term goes back to system theory. It has the function of uncertainty absorption, but it is not a guarantee of guaranteeing the duration of membership systems in the time dimension. The concept of uncertainty absorption states: Uncertainty absorption takes place when inferences are drawn from a body of evidence and the inference, instead of the evidence itself, are then communicated. (March and Simon 1958, 165)

The term has found, for example, its way into Luhmann’s systems theory. In addition to system theory, the term can find a generalized application in the classification of the function of membership. In this sense, each member has his or her own authority as there can be information about the reasons for his or her position in social systems. However, it is well-known that they can be quite different. This assumes that a situation definition is available only in the time dimension for the members as the assumed type-identical situation. The reference problem of membership systems must be preserved in the self-generated uncertainty of their own future. This is self-preservation of membership systems, which they cannot manage from the point of view of their environment, hence from the outside.

Evolutionary Survival The dominant reference problem of the self-preservation of membership systems is that they have counteracted their evolutionary survival and disintegration. It cannot be prevented, but they have to develop robust structures that guarantee the chance of their reproduction as temporal and event-specific systems. We can determine the problem in such a way that time does not flow in the time dimension as assumed, for example, by Husserl.1 Instead, it disintegrates. In this respect, duration is the overarching functional imperative of membership systems, which they can only guarantee through structures without there being an evolutionary guarantee of survival. The operationalization of the membership condition is structurally coupled with the distribution media as an interpenetration zone, such as spoken language, writing, letterpress, and communication technologies. A central problem with the distribution 1

Husserl presented different analyses of time consciousness. To identify the basic problem: Seel (2016).

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medium of digital media is the fact that digital technologies have already changed their membership conditions structurally, with an unbiased review of the conditions of participation in social systems. One only thinks, for example, that dealing with the technique of word processing is already a matter of course for a job. This is already so self-evident that it is impossible to imagine it any other way. Membership theory and sociology of membership go beyond traditional system theory. Although it retains the concept of the system in order to locate the complexity gap between the system and the environment, it also makes a different position on the content of the system concept as a sociology of membership. It marks the systemenvironmental differentiation triggered by membership selection, which members of social systems cannot exceed. Here, the selection of meanings presupposes the selection of memberships. There can only be sense for members of social systems. Of course, this does not rule out the possibility that we can observe differently, for example, as methodological individualists. Populations first have to pass the threshold of system formation and their membership conditions in order to maintain their existence in the dimensions temporally, factually, and socially with the accompanying restrictions. This has co-evolved and is no longer at our disposal. Membership conditions, in turn, can be subject to inflationary and deflationary processes; for example, the proliferation of participants in the economic system does not lead to inflation of participation conditions, while the facilitation of access to the university, political, and community systems does. In this respect, we also register corresponding deflationary processes in these areas. The social systems as membership system are conservative systems that each new member has to learn. Only under the fulfillment of this condition, the marked member can participate in the communications constituting the system. Fundamental to this is the marking of body that exposes one to observation, speech, and communicative acts. It may be unappealing to us and we may also have mental reservations about it, but the sociologist should always be clear that the co-evolution of social systems as membership systems is a random event. Their occurrence is rather unlikely and there is precisely no evolutionary and social-structural guarantee that membership systems will survive. The ecological problems that have arisen in the horizon of contemporary society are probably not the greatest threat they face. It is our existence as individual entities, the associated self-love and self-assertion as well as the disposal of the members of social systems over a negation scope, which threatens them from within. The membership order is always a fragile one and threatened by entry into a state of exception and civil war.

Inclusions–Exclusions Order The present research is also to be interpreted as a contribution to the analysis of the inclusion–exclusion order of the next society. The person confronting the text should keep in mind that there is readily discernible empirical evidence for membership

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sociology. The evolutionary forms of inclusion and exclusion are membership orders. Membership sociology therefore claims and can redeem not only a descriptive adequacy with respect to the social ontology of membership systems, but also an explanatory adequacy through the membership-theoretic description of the forms of inclusion and exclusion. It is its systematization of the inclusion–exclusion of evolutionary membership orders of social communication. These orders and their membership-typical selections are determined by the differentiation forms of segmentary, center-periphery, stratificational, and functional differentiation. Luhmann understands inclusion as a form: whose inside (inclusion) is designated as an opportunity for the social consideration of persons and whose outside remains unmarked. So inclusion only exists when exclusion is possible. (Luhmann 1997, 620–621, authors’ translation)

It is not about the conditions of participation in interactions or access to organizations. Persons are social auxiliaries of attribution. Parsons (1977) assumptions about socio-cultural evolution as a multiplication of adaptive upgrading, differentiation, inclusion, and value generalization, are not exactly contested by Luhmann, but he undertakes a redescription of the problem addressed by them by distinguishing forms of evolutionary system differentiation. They structurally define inclusions– exclusions. Instead of the form inclusion, one could also speak of system membership by which the respective area of exclusion is indicated. In this context, his approach is to interpret as a sociology of membership. We should be always clear for the sociology of the next society that populations have to pass first the threshold of the system formation and their membership conditions in order to receive their existence in the dimensions temporally, factually, and socially with the accompanying restrictions. This has co-evolved and is no longer at our disposal. Membership conditions, in turn, can be subject to inflationary and deflationary processes; for example, the proliferation of participants in the economic system does not lead to inflation of participation conditions, while the facilitation of access to the university, political, and community systems does. Here, we also register corresponding inflationary and deflationary processes in these areas. The differentiation of the order of inclusion consists primarily in the fact that the structure of social integration under the condition of functional differentiation has led to different solidarity markets. They can hardly be coordinated with each other anymore. At the breaking points of these markets, a succession of social movements have emerged that have more or less successfully managed their organizational formation, for example, trade unions, the ecology movement, citizens initiatives, and the women’s movement. These markets can be innovated to varying degrees. They are dominated by the oligopolies of interest groups, which are also engaged in cutthroat competition for solidarity services. In this context, the problem of the continuous granting of rights and their cultural legitimation arises, especially in the increase of solidarity benefits. The old social policy, which, as is often not mentioned, also led to exclusions, will no longer be able to be continued under these changed conditions.

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Membership Order of the Next Society The inclusion-order as a membership order in the next society can no longer mean integration into a social community that encompasses its members. Rather, the opposite will be the case. New ethnic conflicts and forms of nationalism will be difficult to contain. Moreover, new nuclear powers will make a peace policy continuously more difficult. Within this system, we must be prepared for social upheavals, insecurity, anomic developments, and exclusion. On this front, it is to be expected that solidarity markets will be formed more according to ascriptive solidarities. The new creation of solidaristic integration opened up in the course of glocalization and the expansion of subsystems can only be undertaken in the recognizable enlarged zones of interpenetration between discourses, markets, associations, and political decision-making procedures, which restructure the fields of action through networking, communication, negotiation, and compromise formation. Cultural, political, and economic mobilization can constructively resolve the conflicts it generates only insofar as “mediating institutions” regulate the exchange of performance and conflict resolution. Ascriptive solidarity restructured in this way fulfills the structural requirement that inclusions become weak and exclusions strong at the level of the social system. While this is not an entirely new sociological insight, this particular structuring of inclusion and exclusion will be increasingly reinforced by the processes of differentiation, boundaries, and changing interpenetrations in a global world system. It concerns selections brought about by the increase of acceleration, changed qualification structures (keyword knowledge workers), the need for the development of collective intelligence, and the ongoing reallocation of centralization and decentralization by modern communication technologies. Under the condition of functional differentiation and the separation of subsystems, the concept of order can no longer be treated in a unifying way for all social systems. What they have in common is the system-environment difference. Every inclusion and exclusion order has to assume that the totality of these systemenvironment differences can only approximately fit together. If we take the description of the control problem from the social system, then only the vanishing point of cognitive orientation and indifference of the exercise of roles from the status positions of membership systems remains. This does not claim that members of social systems no longer have counterfactual expectations. The problem, however, is how long they maintain these expectations in the face of a dramatic increase in their disenchantment. Therefore, morality also fails in the design of social systems. Social order can be explained by different theories, for example, by explaining the formation of order by sense, the formation of social systems, by organization and by socio-cultural evolution. But we could ask ourselves, what is the sense of asking about the unity of society and even if it is only an imagination of this unity? A unity that is no longer communicatively accessible to the members of society as society only takes place and can be experienced through system formation. Thus, society itself is not accessible, although all social events take place in and through society.

Systematization of Globalization Research and the Theoretical Accounts. . .

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Society and societal communication regulate themselves in that it has negation potentials. These potentials are emergent through the system-environment difference. Through the ongoing decision about membership, social systems observe themselves. In social theory, we will make further progress in knowledge only when we change the theoretical observation (description) of social systems to the observation of self-observing social systems. It then describes the decisions about membership through which social systems observe themselves. The decision about membership is not controllable, but only evolutionarily variable. This transfers sociology of membership to evolutionary theory of membership order. From there, sociological conflict theory and the sociological study of large functional systems can be given a new direction.

Differentiation of Membership Order Market The differentiation of the order of inclusion–exclusion consists primarily in the fact that the structure of social integration under the condition of functional differentiation has led to different solidarity markets. They can hardly be coordinated with each other anymore. At the breaking points of these markets, a succession of social movements have emerged that have more or less successfully managed their organizational formation, for example, trade unions, the ecology movement, citizens initiatives, and the women’s movement. These markets can be innovated to varying degrees. They are dominated by the oligopolies of interest groups, which are also engaged in cutthroat competition for solidarity services. In this context, the problem of the continuous granting of rights and their cultural legitimation arises, especially in the increase of solidarity benefits. The old social policy, which, as is often not mentioned, also led to exclusions, will no longer be able to be continued under these changed conditions. In a European comparison, in the past New Labor in Great Britain should be mentioned here, which was no longer prepared to maintain social integration as an ongoing subsidy of poverty milieus.

Systematization of Globalization Research and the Theoretical Accounts in Sociological Theory State of Research When resystemizing sociological research on globalization, account must be taken of the state of research by which we are guided. It depends on the background against which we conceive the sociology of contemporary society. The problem situation and its definition can best be distinguished when we start from the two collections of Turner ed., Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity (1990) and

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Featherstone, Lash, and Robertson eds., Global Modernities (1995). They contain the relevant approaches that have become relevant in the course of the process. The cut is due to the fact that the volumes document the transition of modern-postmodern debate since the 1970s to globalization research and the global modernity in the 1990s. Eisenstadt did not contribute to these volumes. On a resystematization of the modernity-postmodernity debate, we encourage readers to review Preyer (2018a, Part II) for evidence that we are theoretically and empirically beyond modernity. The transition to a changed situation of theory formation is dated to the beginning of the twenty-first century when a new structure formation of social exchange and a restructuring of functional systems began to take place. The finding states: 1. There is now a shift of the North-South to the East-South (Japan, South Korea and China) axis (Nederveen Pieterse and Rehbein 2009; Nederveen Pieterse and Kim 2012). 2. We are on our way to a next society with a digitized social communication as a leading medium of dissemination and organizational medium. It has been structurally altered by the communication technologies, the functional systems and their organizations, as well as the membership condition (Baecker 2007; Ben-Rafael 2018; Drucker 2001).2 3. World society is not easily a social system of accessible communications of members of social systems, but its constitutive structures consist of regional societies with changed center–periphery relations. In them, transnational stratification overforms national social stratification (Münch 2008). It follows that world society (Luhmann 1974b) must be explored as a “society of societies” (Hondrich 2001a, 141).3 The research program of a sociology of the regional society and its selective media observation and self-observation goes back to Krawietz and Preyer (Krawietz 2012, 70–101; Preyer 2018b, 349–370).4

The expression “next society” goes back to Drucker. He also uses the term “knowledge society.” However, this is a very ambiguous definition. The term is too vague and has too broad a scope. It should also be noted that knowledge is only accessible to members of social systems through organization. 3 By world society as understood by Luhmann, we refer to the area of accessible communication. In this way, it characterizes the modern social system. Luhmann considers WORLD as a differenzlosen Letztbegriff (unmarked space). Participation in world society as a communication system has two perspectives. Participants take a congruent and an incongruent setting. If their communication is successful, there is a selection that the participants can handle. At the same time, their attitudes are incongruent, because for each participant the perspective of the other to which the agents have no access. This difference is not to negate. However, this does not justify the concept of world society. 4 It is worth mentioning in the history of German sociology since the 1950s Rüegg, who pursued a regional sociological research program. Zu Rüegg: Schefold (2017, 229–245), Transdisciplinary conversation with Prof. Schefold: Walter Rüegg in Frankfurt: sociologist, humanist, rector, 26. October 2018 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz2raIivAaZxrgaYx7gFygA?view_as=subscriber 2

Systematization of Globalization Research and the Theoretical Accounts. . .

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This finding has been empirically described by different theoretical approaches (Nederveen Pieterse 2004, 2016, 2018, 2013; Münch 2011). In the awareness of the problem, a convergence of the different approaches can be seen. This applies regardless of the conclusions that colleagues draw from their insights.

Theoretical Approaches In retrospect, the following approaches are to be distinguished in the sociological theory of globalization: 1. The homogenizers and the heterogenizers5 2. The in-between accounts as Glocalization accounts (Robertson 1995 and also Nederveen Pieterse 1995, 2004) 3. Hybridization and multiculturalism approaches (Rowe and Schelling 1991; Nederveen Pieterse 1995, 2004) 4. The creolization approach as a new syncretism (Hannerz 1987, 1989, 1992) 5. The multiple modernities research program (Eisenstadt 2000) 6. Network morphology (Castells 2001, 2002, 2003) The following research programs are available on the changed situation of contemporary society at the beginning of the twenty-first century, its observation and description. They have already led to extensive, empirical, and fruitful results, which initiated the resystematization of sociological theory. 1. The Global-studies and multipolar globalization (Nederveen Pieterse 2018) and the theory of globalization (Axford and Steger 2020), as well as multiple globalization (Ben-Rafael 2018; Ben-Rafael and Sternberg 2016; Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael 2019; Marangudakis 2016), multiple membership order (Preyer and Krausse 2016; Preyer 2016b, c; Gromitsaris 2021), and a little bit mixed approach between the last both is Bokser Liwerant (2016, 2022). 2. The theory of society of the constitutive structures of world society as field theory of action, system, and institutional theory (Münch 2011; Krawietz 2017). 3. The system theory of the structural drift of world society and its compensation by non-nationally dominated control systems (Willke 2003). The substantial insights of his investigations are helpful for the identification of the redeployment of sociological theory. 4. The Third research program of multiple modernities, membership and globalization (Eisenstadt, Preyer and Sussman, Preyer, Preyer and Krausse, Krawietz). The program is extended with an intersection to the investigations of Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael, Gromitsaris, Bokser Liwerant, Marangudakis, Münch, Roninger, and Willke. The approach shares the problem 5

The distinction between homogenizer and heterogenizer was introduced by Robertson in 1995, 25–44.

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identification of the follow-up problem of expanding social exchange and its differentiation, as it is proposed by Axford (2013a, b, 2016, 2022), Steger and James (2020), and Robertson (2016, 2022). However, it assumes a resystematization of multiple modernities and takes into account different membership conditions at the macro level of the research programs of sociological theory.6 The approaches are supported by empirical research using aggregated data. The problem of these approaches and set of research is the structure of world society vis-à-vis inclusion and exclusion in the new welfare state, the regime of liberalism and pluralism, the transnational division of labor and global multiculturalism as a global mélange (Nederveen Pieterse 2004). This has already triggered a redeployment of the sociological theory. In this context, it is no exaggeration to assume that Max Weber’s theory of rationalization has long been one of the historical approaches of systematizing the structure of modern societies, their institutional order and their evolution, which can no longer be renewed. The motive of Nederveen Pieterse for a reorientation of sociological theory and research rests on the point that no sociological insight into the constituent structures of world society and the development paths of the regions can be expected from the ultimately barren rhetoric of globalization advocates and opponents.7 A vastly different approach is needed to this end. The sociology of membership is a new approach to this, motivated by the available studies.

6

Nederveen Pieterse (2013, 551–556, 2014, 165–169); Axford (2013a, 2018); Münch (2001a, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011), Preyer and Krausse (2016); introduction to Eisenstadt: Preyer and Sussman (2016), Preyer (2016a). 7 Münch (2011): constitutive structures of world society.

Chapter 4

The Many Faces of Globalization

Homogenizers, Heterogenizers, and Glocalization Homogenizers Global Modernity Sociologists, political scientists, and reflexive anthropologists whose research edify the approach of cultural studies along with economists and historians who took part in the first stocktaking of the understanding and effects of globalization are frequently featured as either homogenizers or heterogenizers. The distinction goes back to Robertson (1995, 25–44). This intellectual genealogy has a long history in sociological theory, encompassing the study of modern societies that changed in the aftermath of the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century, far from being homogeneous, these societies were differentiated along a diverse ascriptive ethnic and religious membership system. In the interest of clarity, it should be noted that homogenizers accept the approach of world system analysis and assume a global modernity as exemplified in the works of Anthony Giddens as well as Marxist and functionalist scholars. From their point of view, there is a tendency for society to achieve structural change behind the global scene—a point explored by Giddens, Wallerstein’s world system approach, and Parsonian functionalists. For them, modernity is a product of the modern world system that developed in the West and expanded into a worldwide modernity culminating in a convergence in evolutionary change. This was also the background assumption of Durkheim and Max Weber. These researchers accept a scientific realism (essentialism) and a corresponding epistemology. The objects of their investigations and their theories are given to the homogenizers as such in the world. On this front, these social scientists are to be classified as modernists. A partially comparable approach is available in Willke’s (2003) analysis of the control systems. Fukuyama’s End of History (1992) is a homogenizer. In the 1990s, his work was widely read with his Hegelian and Nietzschean interpretations of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_4

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contemporary society and the further democratization of authoritarian regimes (Huntington 1991: third wave of democratization).

Classification in Western Social History It is not a coincidence that the social-structural changes brought about by globalization have been ascertained by questions of classical sociology and the theory of modernization. This applies to Giddens, Robertson, and the Wallerstein school, but also with certain restrictions to the German tradition, which has dealt with this set of problems at the vanguard of the models of Western modernity and reflexive modernization. Exemplars of such tradition include Münch, Willke, and Beck. As far as the fundamental question of the classification of globalization in the social history of modern society, Münch (1998, 68–117) distinguishes between the exchange model of liberalism of the first modernity, the welfare state of the second modernity, and the ecological modernization of the third modernity. For Robertson (1992b), globalization is a condition of modernization.1

Heterogenizers Criticism of the Universal Claim of the West In contrast to homogenizers, heterogenizers describe globalization as the universal claim of the West toward other cultures as the dominance of a particular culture. Proponents of such a view include the interculturalists Said (1978) and Bhabba (1994) as well as the reflexive anthropologists Clifford and Marcus (1986). They assume that globalization is a diffusion between the American economy and the American way of life with other cultures. This diffusion is hierarchically structured by the dominance of Americanism and a continuation of modernity. Ferguson (1992) even speaks of a mythology of globalization in the sense of a progressive uniformity and standardization of social communication as a subjugation of world cultures. In this context, the criticism of Eurocentrism and Orientalism is valid. Said (1981) specifies the term “Orientalism” to the Western description of the Orient through an approach that heavily influenced post-colonial studies as a sub-field. Eurocentrism generally states that there is a lack of rationality and rationalization in non-European societies (Max Weber) that prevents structural innovations, such as a modern purchasing economy. Through this vantage point, researchers claim that there is no convergence in the social-structural change of contemporary societies. Globalization is an ideological

1

We encourage readers to explore the relevant historical studies, including details regarding an evolutionary historical-economic approach in Plumpe (2019).

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product of a so-called American Coca Cola and McDonald’s culture. In other words, this approach is to be attributed to the typical criticism of the consumer society widespread in the United States.

Theoretical Orientation The representatives of this approach take an ethnomethodical and hermeneutic attitude toward the objects of sociological theory and research and assume that these objects should be examined as constructions that cannot be detached from the background of the researcher. The heterogenizers turn to everyday life and habitually write cultural studies that may include ethnomethodologies in the tradition of Garfinkel (1967). Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations (1996) is a matter for heterogenizers, as it is based on irreconcilable cultural differences and rivalries that cannot be harmonized.

Glocalization Global Consciousness Robertson introduces the concept of glocalization as an in-between approach as a critique to both the heterogenizer and the homogenizer (Robertson 1995, 25–44). His approach neither naively assumes globalization to be a unification of the world nor as a phenomenon strictly marked by the forces of heterogeneity. He attributes globalization to the relationship between the universal and the participatory and the interplay of the local and the global (Robertson 1992a; Robertson and Giulianotti 2005, 171–198; Robertson and Inglis 2008, 165–169). From Robertson’s point of view, a global consciousness is not only a result of globalization processes, but also an engine of globalization. However, these processes do not lead to cultural and social-structural homogenization. Central to one’s understanding of globalization is the role of modern communication technology, which changes the self-observation of social communication and establishes new selections of perceptions and observation under the requirements of real-time communication. In the process, globalization becomes a media construction implemented by large organizations, for example, in sports, tourism, and mass media.

Global and Local Robertson places in the social exchange constitutive contexts of systems of action and communication through which glocalization takes place. To this end, he speaks of the “universalization of particularism” since the end of the nineteenth century

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understood as the intervening of general regulations in nation-state regulations, for example, in economic exchanges. It follows that the “particularization of universalism,” that is, the application of general rules and standards vis-à-vis, for example, global communication technologies regulate their different use and set expectations for the members of social systems such as employees of companies participating in this exchange, tourists and sports fans. This is accompanied by an approximate global cultural convergence as an emergent level of social exchange, provided that political communications (national level) and exchange processes are ordered according to global standards. Glocalization can therefore be described as simultaneousness and an interpenetration of the global and the local as it triggers and restabilizes each other and new zones of interpenetration between social systems. It establishes new hybrid social entities that can no longer be interpreted with the distinction between universalism and particularism. However, this should not be interpreted as a social integration of a community of values. The orientation toward values cannot integrate the members of social systems at all because it cannot be adapted to the system-environment difference of the membership systems. Similar to morality, they also tend to conflict and not harmonize different membership interests. Legal communication, for example, cannot integrate the membership systems or the society as a membership order as it is based on conflict and its resolution. The legal decision is asymmetrical and in too many cases does not find the agreement of those negatively affected by it. This also applies to communication and decisionmaking under private law, which is oriented toward a balance. Here, one should not expect too much from the legal system. This does not exclude the possibility of strengthening the jurisdiction for conflict resolution, but one should be aware of the limits of legal communication, as it cannot take on a function of social integration. The starting point for the correction of the universalism-particularism distinction are the two different adaptations of this problem by Robertson (1992a) and Hannerz (1992). Turner and Friedman took up the problem and initiated the resystematization of basic sociological concepts (Turner 1990a, b, 1–93, Friedman 1995, 69–90). The merit of Robertson’s approach is to have shown an alternative to the homogenizers. This issue should be taken seriously and further addressed. A good example of glocalization is the analysis of the Japanese mangas of Dolle-Weinkauff (2014, 29–47). This leads to the problem of decivilization, hybridization, and creolization (criticism of humanism), explored next.

Hybridization Symbiotic Syncretism The analysis of hybridization is a critique of the classical theory of modernization, thus of the homogenizer. The concepts of structural hybridization (global mélange and post-hybridization) refer to the way in which forms are separated from an existing practice and recombined with other practices into new forms (Rowe and

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Schelling 1991, 231). In this respect, however, it is also a critique of the heterogenizer for its emphasis on the symbiotic syncretism in social-structural formation. Nederveen Pieterse broadens the approach to structural hybridization. He stresses that this principle is useful for the analysis of the “structural forms” of organizations: “This principle can be extended to structural forms of organization” (Nederveen Pieterse 1995, 45–68, 49).2

Being in Between The research program of hybridization can be seen in three distinct ways: 1. As an analytical tool 2. As a critique of social and cultural boundaries, as well as 3. In special power relations The hybridization of social communication and membership conditions is the socio-cultural space (in between) in which social communication is structured and reorganized. This presupposes their self-observation. It behaves to culture in the same way as deconstruction to conversation, as it undermines binary distinctions and provides other observations. The hybridization approach is a critic of classical modernization theory and is placed beyond Max Weber’s rationalization approach. On this point, hybridization agrees with the concept of multiple modernities (Eisenstadt 2000), exemplified by the example of the modernization of the “global south,” the social and political modernization of Africa, South America, and Asia.

Creolization Criticism of Humanism Research on creolization (New Cultural Syncretism) is another approach. The concept of creolization goes back to the ethnologies of Hannerz (1987). He combines the research program in Anthropology with the world system analysis and the center–periphery differentiation of Wallerstein (Hannerz 1987, 200–216, 1989, 546–559; Cohen 2007, 369–385; Axford 2013a, 65–66). From this point of view, the fundamental question of reformulating the relationship of sociological theory to humanities in general is raised among globalization researchers. The problem of the reconceptualization of the “family of humans and humanity” with regard to

2

For more details on his approach, we encourage readers to see (Preyer 2009a, 48–73).

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“identity” “hybridity” and “hybrid multiculturalism” (“global mélange,” “decivilization”) can be located beyond classical modernization and development theory.3 Above all, the reconceptualization of the problem of gender identity is viewed as a consideration of globalization. The artistic prototype for this is, for example, David Bowie. The difference between the variability and staging of the gender role identity between the art figure David Bowie and the traditional identity construction immediately catches the eye when one notices him with the gender role marking in the film “And always lures the woman” (Et Dieu .. créa la femme) with Brigitte Bardot and Curd Jürgens, directed by Roger Vadim (1956). This is a different marker of members of social systems in their social exchange. The reference problem of creolization, the expression itself is a hybrid term, as the deconstruction of the self-description of the conditio humana of the “old European tradition” (Luhmann 1997, 893–912) is thus named, defining man as animal rationale. This means that social systems and society as a system cannot be finalized in human terms. Thus, the legacy of the Aristotelian tradition has disappeared into a black hole. The entities that we address as humans and classify as mental-physical (biological) entities belong to the needy environment of social systems as membership systems. This does not contradict, for example, Parson’s theory of analytical action systems.4 Schelsky argued in a similar direction when he assumed that the whole human being is fiction and scientific superstition.5 From the point of view of the scientific system, creolization as a global diffusion is “universally applicable.”6 This is also called a Caribbean view of world culture.

Methodological Steps The process of creolization takes place in three steps: 1. The description of the position between two or more social cultures by selecting some used components and the negation of others. 2. This opens up “new possibilities” for the definition of the situation of members of social systems that transcend and replace or replace the culture of origin. 3 Creoles live in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of South America (Portuguese: Crioulo, Spanish: Criollo). We thus classify with “creoles” the African slaves born in the colonies and in the Spanish colonies the descendants of the white peninsular born (in Spain) immigrants as opposed to the mestizos (Indo-Spanish). In the Portuguese colonies of West Africa “Criolo” is a classifiable family with its own language and custom. “Creoul” is used as a classification term for the ethnic and cultural components in Latin America and the Caribbean. The term also classifies pidgin language as a precursor to the Creole language. For further information, on the history of the term and on the placement of the term in linguistics and ethology, we encourage readers to see Knörr (2007, 2009). 4 On the final format of the analytical action systems: Parsons (1974). 5 On a reassessment of Schelsky’s sociology: Krawietz (2017, 133–215). 6 The old diffusionism as the German School of Ethnology goes back to Friedrich Ratzel.

Multiple Modernities

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3. The power of this process, in the case of successful creolization and hybridization, is that the emergence of a “creolized world” is present, which brings about the redefinition of the human race. Hannerz (1992) concludes that this marks the end of the autonomous definition of members of cultures, as the definition of the situation of social exchange changes through the migration of populations, the flow of ideas, things, images, scientific knowledge, and economic means. Creolization and hybridization as a new cultural syncretism ends the westernization and homogenization of social communication and describes the model of a post-hegemonic situation of social communication and membership in social systems. In this regard, they are also an alternative approach to homogenizers and heterogenizers.

Multiple Modernities Criticism of the Validity of the Western Model of Modernization Classical Modernization Theory However, the Eisenstadt research program of multiple modernities within the frame of reference for Comparative civilization research since the 1970s is consistent with the modernities in the plural, which distinguishes different modernization paths.7 Classical modernization theory and development theory is based on the assumption that the Western model of modernization is inevitably spreading. This concerned the core of this modernization: 1. Of the Western cultural value system as its combination of “universalism and individualism” and “rationalism and instrumental activism (interventionism)” 2. Of institutionalized individualism (Durkheim/Parsons/Münch tradition) 3. Of the Welfare State (Keynesian Membership Regulations) 4. The Civil Rights Inclusion Program (Marshall/Parsons: legal/civil, political, social civil rights, Marshall 1964) Eisenstadt’s research program of multiple modernities fundamentally rejects the generalization of this approach. It should also be mentioned that Western modernization has not been uniform and has different institutional orders in it, for example, in Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. This also applies to the attitude of the various elites in the economic, political, and scientific systems to the legal, economic, and community order.

7

Eisenstadt (2004); ProtoSociology 2004: Preyer (2011a, 2016a); Marangudakis (2016, 48–64); Ben-Rafael and Sternberg (2005, 4370–4); Ben-Rafael (2012, 223–227).

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Redeployment The core of the “research program of multiple modernities” is that the structural evolution of membership orders and their modernization does not produce any evolutionary potential, that all societies have in common, that special modernizations must be distinguished, and that the Western modernization program cannot be generalized. The research program combines the construction of a general reference framework of the analysis of the socio-structural evolution of societies with research on historically structural conditions, such as, in China, Europe, North and South America, Western and Eastern Europe, Japan, and India. The frame of reference is the relationship between “creativity/action-structure” and “cultural-social structure”(semantic map) with which the control of the flow of free resources by different elites in the social division of labor is to be examined. Eisenstadt takes motifs from Giddens (1995) approach to structuration.

Robertson–Axford Problem Follow-Up Problem Robertson and Axford object to the “research program of multiple modernities” to the extent that it does not adequately consider the influence of glocalization processes. Robertson places “constitutive contexts” in social exchange, which are multiplying (Robertson 2016, 65–70; Axford 2016, 71–89). They are an external global environment independent of memberships in local social systems, their organizations and nation states, for example, migration and diaspora. These are therefore interpenetration zones and border structures of social exchange, the analysis of which must be included in the research program in its continuation. However, this does not refute different modernizations as the one of Russia, South America, historically, or of Japan and China since the 1990s. If we make the distinction between homogenizers versus heterogenizers, we have the problem that the juxtaposition is a false alternative. This is the merit of Robertson’s concept of glocalization, which as previously discussed stands as a theoretical alternative to this distinction. Axford would agree with this in his “Theory of Globalization” and his view of the “World-Making Power of New Media.” At first glance, it is obvious that we assign multiple modernities to heterogenizers. This is true in that, from this view, there is no global civilization in world society as it is prevented by their constitutive structures. Eisenstadt assumes that there is an exchange and a struggle in the fragmented world society for the control of the flow of resources. Its version of social integration includes its inherent fragility, as well as the limits of conflict resolution and the management of communication. However, it must also be borne in mind that Eisenstadt does not exclude social exchanges between society. Instead, he has a sense of the problem of the constitutive structures of world society, which have been transformed by migration, transnational

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division of labor, and international political institutions. It specifies the changed definition of the situation of fragile expansion of communication systems as meaning that it emits “constructive and destructive potentials.” For Eisenstadt, therefore, the story is not to about to end, but to note that that we are in a new risky starting position. Islamic terrorism is a good proof of this, but so are the new social movements. The violence of both limits and also calls into question the intersociety dialogue. This, in turn, will be accompanied by new friend–enemy relationships that give the members of social systems postmodern identities. From his point of view, the destructive potential of modernity is unleashed in them.

Continuation of the Research Program The problem of contrasting homogenizers versus heterogenizers has been theoretically worked on with the “Third research program: multiple modernities, membership, and globalization” (Preyer and Sussman 2016, 1–29). The program continues the “second research program of multiple modernities 2003” on a resystematized level and respecifies levels of research of multiple modernities.8 It is an approach of multiple modernities that incorporates the processes of glocalization and hybridization from a membership theory and membership sociological point of view into the research program. This is obvious, thus hybridization and glocalization change the membership conditions of social systems and bring with it other observational distinctions. It is worth noting that the concept of globalization is reinterpreted with the concept of glocalization. As a result, the “Third research program of multiple modernities, membership, and globalization” provides access to the identification and systematization of similarities and differences between existing types of modernization. The concept of glocalization shows the influence of globalization processes on the restructuring of the social stratification and communication systems of the subsystems, such as the economic system. The changed design of the “research program 2016” will be discussed in this context.

Once Again: Robertson–Axford Problem The continuation of the “research program of multiple modernities” gives a secondorder answer to the Robertson–Axford problem and explains why it has become a “problem” in the first place. The problem arises when we place the observer with an eye on the exchange or when we carry out self-observation of social communication from the standpoint of the new media. The title of Axford’s book is not by chance The world-making power of new media—mere connection? (2018). The analysis of global processes is for him the adoption of the observer’s point of view of the new media. This is instructive in that we can go a step further and ask “Who is observing 8

For the second research program: Eisenstadt, Lerner, Grab ProtoSociology 2004, 318–371.

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the observer!?” and “Where do we place the observer of the sociological research programs!?” With the adoption of an observational point of view there is always a typical blind spot. It can only be relativized by observing the observer. However, the relativization of the blind spot does not mean that it will be eliminated. This is an argument in line with the sociological method. Another substantive argument is that Axford’s assumption that global communicative connectivity is the primary trigger of a global process is a media program designed by certain institutions and organizations, for example, the BBC World or the United Nations. The answer to the Robertson–Axford problem is given by the “Third research program of the multiple modernities, glocalization, and membership order.” It concerns the sociology of world society as a society of society of membership orders. It addresses an order of difference that is not eliminated by participation in digital communication. However, is the following question justified: is there a link between the membership regulations of the regional societies? The answer is “yes,” there is. The key to the analysis of the constitutive structures of world society as the differentiation of membership orders is transnational stratification and its restructuring. Nonetheless, the reference to the problem also leads to Castells’ Network society, because what he calls “information age” is organized as a “culture of real virtuality” through social networks based on the new media and the new communications technology. An already further explored interpenetration area of glocalization is the growth of world cities, such as Berlin, Paris, Brussels, London, New York, and Tel Aviv-Yafo, all of which give evidence to the interpenetration of economic, social, political, and cultural restructuring of the social structure (Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael 2019).

Network Morphology Changed Observation of Interaction Systems Here, we would like readers to consider Castell’s approach for his ability to align a concept of society next to an analysis of globalization processes dating to the 1990s through the notion of a “network society” (Castells 2001, 2002, 2003). Its theoretical starting point is the sociological description of the changed structuring of interaction systems and their observation. For him, network morphology and network logic carry greater weight in a concept of society than interactions and organizations. They intervene in all forms of social interactions and organizations. Networks are multiple interconnected nodes. In individual cases, the nodes must be specified on the specific networks. Castells sociological insight into the structural change in social communication can be fundamentally agreed upon. This affects their structure and thus the evolution of the expectations of members of social systems. The change in structure points to the membership conditions of the social systems self-constituted by membership. The shifting of societal communication and thus the social structure are organized

Network Morphology

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through and with the processing of digitally presented communications. It is to be processed in the communication system of the membership orders on the levels “society,” “organization,” and “simple interaction.”

Network and Social Framework The spread of networks through social communication technology is always linked to a social framework. This could be an objection to the morphology of network sociology as exemplified by networks of coca and poppy fields, covert laboratories, secret runways, street gangs, and financial institutions for money laundering in the network of drug trafficking in certain regions of South America, the structure of Japanese society, the problem of Europeanization along with the organization of the political system, the mass media and political manipulation. One problem is what happens when a society collapses. Disasters, such as war, migration, and underdevelopment, address the changing problem of the social order of regional societies and their place in the structure of world society. Castells points out that the global change in communication in almost real time captures the structure of all organizations and interactions as a timeless time between the major regions and continents. This timeless time is the now; that is, the present that determines every network membership and its restabilization. In this respect, there are no alternative projects and values that can be established beyond this time network order. By this we recognize that the approach of the network society suggests a membership theory interpretation, because it changes the conditions of participation in communication systems and the associated legal or illegal pursuit of interests modified from the plant.

Network and Membership Castells addresses the changed membership conditions of the network society (Castells 2009). This should be considered a relevant sociological insight. In doing so, he assumes that the frame of reference of traditional sources of power, for example, violence and negotiation, coercion and persuasion as well as political domination and cultural framework have changed. In his view, this means that the relationship between networks of the mind and power is framed anew. This also concerns the human mind and perhaps even, through modern communication technology, the neural processes in the brain of the neurophysiological basis of the constitution of the members of social systems as an altered symbiosis between the members of social systems and communication technology. In view of the changed symbiotic relationship of the users of this technology, which goes hand in hand with it, this is quite clear-sighted.

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Castells secret Marxism is a limiting aspect of his scholarship and the theoretical inconsistency of his network sociology as he assigns modern communication technologies to the productive forces that require other relations of production (networks) and dimensions of power. His approach is limited by the fact that the network structuring of communication systems binds too much to the theory of power. Nonetheless, these are constrictions that are also present in other sociologists. It is then difficult to separate the substantial insights of network sociology from their unifying systematization. However, there is one point on which it can be accepted, as it points to the structural disintegration of the members of social systems. It is the problem to implement the hard, material technology in the social systems and to regulate the changes between the political and economic system according to the specifications of national politics and international institutions. This applies, for example, to banks, media, global networks of creativity and innovation, as well as the binding rules governing the conditions of participation in the economic system by the political system, such as, in the case of Time Warner, Disney, Microsoft, and Apple. The insight is instructive in that it is not to be expected that the systemic consequences of action with regard to a system and organizational program will have to be coordinated and regulated along the economic, scientific system and political system. The alternative can only be to give more leeway to self-regulation. However, this will not be accompanied by formal organizations and their asymmetric conditions of interaction disappearing altogether but will be reorganized. This is relevant to organizational sociology, as formal organizations provide a regulatory service that cannot be replaced by networks.

Chapter 5

Transitional Situation

Consensus and Dissent Misleading Term Globalization has become not only a topic of economic, political, sociological, and anthropological research, but also a source of intense debate within the larger public. In the German context, it is not rare to find employers’ associations that advocate deregulation for companies to better withstand global competitive pressures. At the same time, widespread opposition to globalization often rests on fears of unbridled capitalism and hopes for greater regulatory mechanisms vis-à-vis financial markets, as well as the preservation and continuation of the traditional welfare state postWorld War II. It should be pointed out that sociological theory has a serious problem: What does globalization actually do and what does it mean? In particular, the word “globalization” is misleading, provided that we assume its literal meaning. In cartography, globe is a spherical replica of a celestial body or the apparent celestial sphere. In everyday language, the word “globe” means the earth. The globe is not identical to the sociological concept of the environment. It should be noted in principle that the structural change in social systems and social communication does not include the cartographic globe. This model fits more with the modern understanding of the world’s surveying; that is, the Columbus world as the world of explorers, the world of inventors epitomized by Leonardo da Vinci, the world of Leibniz as the world of the Monad, and the Humboldt world as the world of language (Mittelstraß 1992). In this respect, we have a terminological problem in sociological theory, which affects our factual understanding, sociological research, and theory formation, all of which determines the very placement of the observer of theory formation and research. From an everyday understanding of globalization among laymen and journalists, we are affected by and informed about climate change and the necessary energy © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_5

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transition, resource finiteness, such as scarce water, the increase in temperature and the spread of impure air, demographic development and migration. Members of social systems are indisputably affected by this and cannot escape it. Even if we assume that this is true, there is a very different problem that arises vis-à-vis ecological communication (Luhmann 1997, 128–134), which causes irritation among the members of social systems. Ecological communication is communication about ecology in society. The events mentioned are not irritating themselves, but the members of social systems experience irritation. Irritation is therefore always selfirritation. This problem is instructive because the problem of ecological catastrophe cannot be solved from the outside, that is, from a system-neutral point of view, but only in the membership systems of social communication and its organization. This imposes the limits of membership-organizational constraints that need to be identified. For example, will the political center of Brazil be ready to end the clearing of the Amazon rainforest? In the case of Brazil, the problem also refers to the particular social stratification and the coalition between the political, military, and economic elites. The ecologically moral protests inevitably run empty and trigger counterprotests. The problem of moralization is unlikely to be solved, as the interests of the political and economic elites are hard to reconcile and are prone to drift apart. The problem with ecology is not only something that can be dealt with so easily through cognitive insights as we can also act against our better insights. This will often be the norm. The concept of globalization brings with it a great degree of obscurity, since socio-structural changes cannot be clarified with the concept of the globe. Nor is Kant’s consideration helpful for dealing with this problem, which states that because the world is a bullet, its inhabitants cannot get out of the way. This circumstance, one may regret or not, but it proves insufficient to explain the structural formation of social systems whose members meet in certain status positions and take a frontal position when partaking in communications and their connection rational. However, the term “globalization” should not be employed in its naive understanding of sociological theory, provided that we understand by this a unification of social communication and a single world society comprising the globe. This begs the question: can it be simply replaced by another term? There are always limits to creativity in terminology. One’s chosen term should remain open here. The substantive dimension is concerned with the analysis of the physical and hybridized social structures of regional societies, their social exchange, border structures, and media observation. If the term “globalization” is still used in this text, it can be read as a dead metaphor. Instead, it is used as a more technical expression to describe the extended exchange of systems of action and communication and the structural problems associated with it, for example, the restructuring of transnational stratification and economic exchange.

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Reference Problem of the Globalization Research There is a consensus among researchers on globalization: 1. Modern communication technology allows something like real-time communication, which structurally changes the communication systems with regard to the temporalization of communication. This applies not only to the speed of information dissemination, but also to the extension of communication. This is associated with special requirements for the participants. The speed of communication design, for example, can lead to information and competitive advantages. Those who are too slow fall behind in the design of the connection rationality of communication. 2. Transnational institutions and changes in the conditions of competition in the economic system initiate a reorganization of the political system and its organization (state), for example, by the competitive state. 3. New regionalization will be brought about, as exemplified by the East Asian and Pacific region. 4. Globalization is so uneven as it triggers new areas of exclusion which it cannot avoid. The new division of labor in the economic system exacerbates economic inequalities in the individual major regions and between nation states. However, the extent to which this is the case and is inevitable differs. However, there is no agreement on the following: 1. Is globalization just a transnational division of labor in the economic system or a multidimensional process? 2. What does globalization mean in the first place? 3. Is there really such a thing as globalization or is it mere rhetoric? In this respect, is there also talk of a “globaloney?” 4. Are the events that we describe in the economic, political, and scientific system as “globalization” bindingly regulated politically and legally, such as, the regulations of the financial markets? (Nederveen Pieterse 2004, 7–21) From these problems we recognize that sociological theory requires special research programs for its empirical research and theoretical systematization. Giddens (2001), for example, distinguishes globalization skeptics, understood as those for whom a global economy is no different from the world economy we know, from the radicals, understood as those for whom the consequences of global markets today have an impact in all areas of life. For the latter group, the notion that markets also influence traditional regulatory power of the nation-state, both internally and externally, is seen as fictitious. According to Giddens, both positions are wrong, as they relate globalization only to the economic system and do not recognize the “revolutionary” aspect that accompanies it (Giddens 2001; Nederveen Pieterse 2004). From an empirical point of view, it is obvious that the reference problems affect all social systems, such as the ecology, the transnational expansion of the economic system, communication through digital new media, migration and

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fundamentalism. As such, Giddens stands as an alternative reading to both homogenizers and heterogenizers. His talk of “revolutionary” globalization lacks a conceptual analysis and drifts into an inflationary way of speech.1

Replacing the Concept of Globalization Multidimensional Networking We can approach an understanding of globalization through the response of a Pakistani colleague: An English Princess (Princess Diana) with an Egyptian boyfriend, uses a Norwegian mobile telephone, crashes in a French tunnel in a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian driver, who was high on Scottish whiskey, followed closely by Italian paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, treated by an American doctor, assisted by Filipino para-medical staff, using Brazilian medicines, dies! (Nederveen Pieterse 2004, 122)

The answer gives us an indication that globalization as a result must be examined as a multidimensional, networked process. It is not an extension of communication systems only, but a certain structure. One should be aware, for example, that the largest “call center” for global services is positioned in the Philippines (Friedman 2006). However, we also recognize from the description that the talk of globalization does not adequately capture the process described. In this respect, a different sociological terminology is needed.

Redefining Globalization Research If we assume multidimensional networking and ask for a term as general as possible for the classification of these “networks,” then the concept of connectivity as the central meridian of globalization could prove to be informative for the analysis of globalization and redefine research on this phenomenon. However, the concept of connectivity requires a specification. It is always a communication system of the status groups of membership systems.2 Thus, it is a system that does not float freely but is to be examined from the perspective of social stratification, organization, and its changed structure. To put it differently: the linking piece of every connectivity in the social communication of members of social systems is organizational actions and their experience. This initiates the restructuring of sociological theory and the placement of its observer.

On the conceptual history of the “revolutionary concept” from reading as a “cycle” to a political concept of struggle: Koselleck (1979b). 2 On the concept of connectivity and its (new) relevance: Part I, Chap. 3, in this book. 1

Replacing the Concept of Globalization

45

However, there is also a further caveat to the overload of the concept of connectivity. Axford (2018), for example, tends to use connectivity as the key concept of a globalization theory. From a “communicative connectivity,” he sees a “global constitution.” It is said to be accompanied by a “global consciousness” (Robertson 1992). Axford’s approach, however, lags somewhat, as “global consciousness” is a Western media construction. In Chinese society, for example, such descriptions of social communication are still available. Nor is it clear that the “digital culture” leads to a “new global order” in which “everyone can participate.” The opposite is the case. Participation in the digital networks has special membership conditions. Baecker (2007) pointed out, among other things, that one cannot enter the social networks in an idiosyncratic way. One needs a godfather. This may be difficult depending on the membership in a social group, but it is a limitationality of network communication (Axford 2018, 58–80; Sandywell 2011, 14).

Redeployment In particular, it is important to highlight the following processes: 1. The economic system is increasingly denationalized and deterritorialized by globally operating enterprises. At the same time, the center–periphery differentiation of this functional system has changed as financial markets have a new role to play. 2. The segments of the labor market and business organizations are being transformed by modern technologies and financial markets. This has already ushered in a paradigm shift in the economic order, as the incremental innovation of the coordinated (social) market economy is being increasingly replaced by a radical innovation in the open market economy. 3. The political system is losing its regulatory competence in the fight for free resources of interest groups. This dissolves the welfare cartels of the welfare state and leads to a restructuring of the governance regime of the insurance and welfare state. 4. There is no homogenization of the legal order of the legal system on condition that social communication is spread and 5. International migration leads to a hybrid multiculturalism. Nederveen Pieterse (2004) in particular highlighted this point. The points above highlight how much society has changed since the turn of the century.

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Changed Initial Situation As an effect of the redeployment processes, we observe a relativization of the rigid homogeneous life forms and a redefinition of the boundaries of families, communities, and local social organizations. This does not exclude counter-editors. In particular, when it comes to social status of citizens’ role in the political system, attempts have been made to redraw the boundaries between the political center and cultural affiliations. In this context, new enclaves of countercultures and new cultural scenes were created in the major sites of London, New York, and Tokyo. Since the 1970s, a new subdivision has been created which could not meet the technical requirements of the economic system. As a result, the professional, cultural, and political spheres of life became more plural and fragmented. These processes were associated with the rapid change in social stratification and the fact that it was no longer stable. A new gradation of lifestyles and conditions of participation in social communication emerged, which pushed back general ideological orientations. This included the fact that the social-conservative attitude was increasingly dissolved by higher professional status. The status consciousness was no longer based on the axis between the center and the periphery. In the political sphere, the political conflicts were focused on the distributional struggles of the conservative welfare state. The new social movements since the 1960s, including those related to the environment and women, as well as non-governmental movements and Islamic fundamentalism were no longer center-oriented, but claimed social spaces for themselves. This was in line with the fact that these social movements distanced themselves from the nation-state as the center of ontological and social visions. However, it continued, albeit to a limited extent, in its role as a distributor of resources. In the political system and in political communication, this led to a weakening of the parties and the representative bodies.

Chapter 6

Outlook: Difference in Membership Conditions

Strengthening the Condition of Difference The changed basic situation of the social membership regulations and the assessment of the present systematizations require a different research program. It should also be assumed that in the struggle of transnational status groups and the uncorrected transformation of social stratification, competition between interest groups is not more peaceful. The constitutive structures of world society as a society of societies can also reinforce these rules of difference. Economic exchanges in the major regions will not automatically bring prosperity to the exclusion areas. On this front, significant exclusions are to be expected as well, exclusions that also apply to Western Europe. The sociological analysis of the problem is the extent to which economic, institutional, and educational conditions reduce social, economic, and political inequality among members of society. It is difficult to make predictions about this. It can be assumed that the declining and uncompetitive regions will suffer large welfare losses as a result of an expansion of the social division of labor. The Western humanist elite is unlikely to alter that. The multidimensional networking of members of social systems increases the speed of information and communication, but it has conditions which it cannot generate by itself, such as the increase in economic employment, government expenditure per capita, and specialization. Sociologists should assume that the change in solidarity is a “painful process” and that global justices prove to be ineffective vis-à-vis the “power of the worlds of origin” (Hondrich 2001a). The transformation from a “concrete to an abstract collective consciousness” is not a global process and “transnational integration” runs through social stratification, from which the transnational elite in particular has its advantages. As such, it cannot compensate for “national disintegration.” The looming problem of social integration can be seen in the fact that the expansion of the legally standardized economic system also energizes a gray area of formally legal prohibited economic exchange, such as the increase in crime rate and arms trade. This is a situation in which relative © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_6

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deprivation increases, as expectations of participation in economic prosperity are not fulfilled. This is highlighted by Münch (2009) following the analysis of the relative deprivation of Merton (1985). At the current stage, it can be assumed that this collective problem cannot be solved by morality and ethics.

Difference from Early Modernity In order to approach contemporary society from the perspective of Western modernization, it is advisable to respond to it and its organizational principles. If we assume that the concept of globalization and world society must be corrected in sociological theory, then this requires a recasting of the theory of social integration. It will not assume, for example, that the supra-regional division of labor will so easily initiate a homogenization of social communication, nor will it assume that the world society is a collective in which an institutionalization of the social community across regions can be expected. The fundamental difference between the changed basic situation and early modernity is not the extent of the global flow of resources, but the connection with these processes in the multiplication of the clashes of different societies and social spheres in the communication society. This initiates a change in the relative positions of the different societies in the new global frame of reference, which leads to a confrontation between them. This goes beyond the East-West conflict, as the images of the enemy are no longer polarized. Within society, the distinction between opponent and enemy is relativized. This constellation triggers an increase in the existing peripheral local non-hegemonic social groups toward the centers of their national and international systems, which often bypass translocal institutions and the political community opinion. This reinforces the differences and inequalities between the various centers and their peripheries, especially between the areas integrated into the hegemonic financial system and the economic technology centers as well as the areas that are increasingly falling behind. This increases the resentment of the propertyless in the exclusion zone, which can no longer be integrated into the economic system and civil society. Among the structural changes in the political system one can point to fragmented sovereignty and the loss of charisma of the political center.

Confrontations This basic situation of the new confrontations between societies in a global frame of reference has already changed the orientations of social movements. They are no longer oriented, as in the social movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to universal principles and to the institutionalization of the revolutionary state. There is much to suggest that in this changed basic situation, communication systems are

Confrontations

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changing to make these inter-civilizational confrontations more difficult to address. They can easily escalate into wars. This is especially true if the combatants are not nation states. It may well be that, after the end of the world civil war, we are entering a phase of global war. The experience of terrorism is proof to this end (Preyer and Schissler 2002, 49–62, 73–80). This does not, however, result in global disintegration in inter-civilizational relations nor in a decline in social integration as the confrontations and conflicts also bind those affected by them. This, it should be noted, is an old sociological insight (Simmel 1908, 247–336). Above all, we recognize that the expansion of Western power order leads to experiences of difference and not to the resolution of conflicts since its cultural, and even moral, guiding principles are not shared everywhere.

Part II

Retrospective View: Western Modernizations

Keywords Western modernizations · First · Second · Third modernity · Redeployment of solidarity integration · End of western modernization

Chapter 7

Question

Organizational Principles In the problem situation of globalization research since the 1990s, the German sociologists Beck, Münch, and Willke, for example, have reacted to the changed situation of theory formation and research through the resystematization of Western modernization (Beck 1986, 1993; Beck and Bonss 2001; Münch 1998, 2001a, b; Willke 1997, 2001, 2002, 2003). Sociologists classify “basic institutions” or institutional orders with organizational principles, which are institutionalized in the course of the modernization of social support layers. They have to meet the requirement that they restabilize themselves as “structures” and a “differential order formation” under certain historical framework and initial conditions. It is not a question of the word “organizational principles,” but of the problem-related relationship with the classification of institutions, which do not vary freely in the time dimension and must be reversible. An example is the kinship system and the institutionalization of the codes of the functional systems. The authors mentioned different background assumptions and research programs in sociological theory when analyzing the basic institutions and structures. However, they share the point of reference to grasp the changed starting point that has been emerging for all social systems since the beginning of the 1990s as a result of the processes of globalization.

Concept of Risk Before Beck’s criticism of Münch is properly dealt with, we address the concept of risk. We distinguish the self-induced risk from the dangers we are entering. If we speculate on the stock market, we are creating the risk of mis-speculation ourselves. In contrast, we are in danger if we do not protect ourselves in bad weather by appropriate clothing and may catch a cold even if we have not caused the cause of the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_7

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Question

cold ourselves despite not having put ourselves in a situation where we are in danger of getting a cold. However, creating risks can be a danger to other people; for example, if someone speculates on the stock market, this could be a danger for their family members.1 It should also be noted that I can only create risk as a member of social systems. This also applies if the person concerned ascribes the risky act to him or herself or heroically stylizes it. This can be seen in the fact that this high-risk action by attribution of a third party refers to a system of action in which these acts can be carried out in the first place. From the point of view of the sociological description, the problem arises as to what risk absorption is provided for in the membership systems and to what extent social pressure can prevent the risk from being taken. The risk dimension refers to the time dimension as the difference between the horizon of the past and the future cannot be negated as a distinction in the presently experienced present. The present disappears with its entry. From the respective projection in a future, the difference between the present future and the future present cannot be negated either. If we refer to damage limitation, this must be institutionalized. This, in turn, requires organizations, which in turn are ordered by the time dimension. However, the talk of “risk society” is somewhat misleading, which is risky for social communication and the pursuit of interests from the investment’s level. The problem is that sociologists have only invented the concept of risk society since the 1980s. This is probably explained by the fact that they were looking for a classification of structural change, which could no longer be adequately classified with cyclic descriptions of processes, for example, in the economic system. Beck and his research group thus react to the structural change in the economic and political systems and the epochal break he diagnosed between first and second modernity. As his research program “Reflexive modernization as a meta-change” signals, he claims to grasp “the whole of change” that “affects all areas of society.” This is also motivated by counteracting the biases in sociological theory, which specifies, for example, the reference problem of the study to “the historical formation of post-war modernity, which now becomes a tradition that needs to be rationalized in need of justification” (Beck and Bonss 2001, 31). This explains his talk of “meta-change.” In the distinction between “First modernity,” and “Reflexive modernity,” he also includes the “postmodern” situation of social communication.2

1

This Luhmann’s version of risk and danger is the return. For an overview of the general criteria for distinction between First modernization, reflexive modernization, and postmodernism, see Beck and Bonss (2001, 41).

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Classification in Western Social History

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Western Modernizations In his criticism of Beck’s description of the risk society and the modernization of modernization (reflexive modernization) in particular, Münch starts out from three organizational principles and developmental stages of Western modernity: 1. The economic liberalism of the First modernization 2. The welfare state economy of the Second modernization 3. The environmental economy of the Third modernization brought about by globalization (Münch 1998: 68–117). This concerns the sociology of the next society, the critique of the concept of globalization, the concept of world society as an area of accessible communication, and the ongoing renewal of the concept of glocalization (Robertson 1995) Münch’s systematization is not in competition with Beck’s research program due to the problem of the redeployment of Western modernizations. Münch’s approach, however, differs from Beck’s systematization, because the problem specification of the relationship of social exchange in the respect market is also changing. The organizing principle of the three modernizations is the different social exchange of respect among members of social systems and payment by the money medium, which is neutral to special respect. In retrospect, we mark with them epochbreaks in the history of society since the eighteenth century as a transitional saddle time (Koselleck 1979a, XV). Münch takes up both motives for the problem of the conformity and the non-conformity of globalization researchers. The systematization of the versions of Western modernization must be placed within the frame of reference of the second modernization of European societies, which prevailed in the nineteenth century. The question of the analysis of social communication is the regulation of social exchange of respect and the willingness to allocate respect with the money medium by payment in the communication systems. The description of social exchange must be carried out from the perspective of the membership conditions of the organizational principles.

Classification in Western Social History The modernization of European societies since the nineteenth century concerns the classification challenge of globalization in the social history of modern society or societies. There is no agreement among sociologists and historians on periodization. The problem is the formation of epochs and their thresholds, distinguished in retrospect by an observer. There is no need to dispute a comparable problem. It is usual among sociologists mark the watershed of the modernization process with the French Revolution. This, however, leads to the problem that such an assignment obscures the structural changes before the year 1789. In the research on revolution,

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Tilly’s (1993) presentation is obvious to detach himself from this fixation and to distinguish types of elevations. In doing so, he is attentive to the point of view from which social history is systematized, that is, which is the system reference of historiography. By this we draw attention to the value of including the observer in the analysis.

Chapter 8

First Modernity and Modernization

Structural Problems The liberal economic system, the nation-state, the individualistic professional ethics, and scientific rationalism are assigned to the first modernity and modernization. In the dissemination of the institutionalization of modern culture and the enforcement of functional differentiation since the nineteenth century, the first modernity and modernization had their culmination in modernism. The basic institutions include the nation-state, the cultural program of individualization (for example, Durkheim’s theorizing vis-à-vis the cult of the individual) and instrumental activism (interventionism), the acquisition economy (separation of household and business), scientific rationalism along with the devaluation of everyday knowledge, as well as the assumption that ecological resources are almost unlimited. Structural differentiation includes the differentiation and interpenetration of systems of action and communication, the territorial limitation of the organization of the political system (modern state organization), the gender-specific division of labor, the small family along with the membership and prestige order established by social stratification, as well as the hierarchical social exchange between the knowledge monopoly of experts and lay people between the scientific system and other functional systems. It is part of the sociological and cultural-theoretical common good to characterize modernity through the great meta-narratives of the idea of progress (perfection), intellectualization, liberalism, socialism, and the foundation of human creativity and modern institutions through metaphysical assumptions. This representation has now been corrected by postmodernism and the analysis of the unencumbered paradoxes of the program of modern culture. The paradoxes of rationalism, individualism, universalism, and instrumental activism (interventionism) are worth noting. Eisenstadt would agree, as he also addresses the problem of the “antinomies of

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modernity.”1 The discourse of paradoxes or antinomies should not be read in a logically semantic sense, as in by Russell for example, the barber who shaves all who do not reassure themselves, but as opposing processes in the action and communication systems of social communication. They always occur under certain systemhistorical conditions. From this the conclusion must be drawn that Western modernities do not exist without these paradoxes. They are not only undesirable side effects that can be corrected, but are created in Western modernity itself. There is therefore no modernization without risk and with its associated anomalies. When we redefine the theory of social integration, we see that both the nomic and the anomic combine.

Individualistic Professional Ethics and Damage Limitation It was part of the first modernity that individualistic professional ethics became established as a condition of membership of the economic system. In Max Weber’s view (2014), this includes the role of ascetic Protestantism and the individualization of the personality through professional work. In Durkheim’s (1902) sociology, the non-contractual components of the contract and the cult of the individual are thus addressed (reference problem of organic solidarity). Individual professional and economic success regulates payment and respect in economic competition, hence the social respect that the members of society show toward each other. His selfunderstanding found this condition of participation in economic liberalism, in the assumption that an “invisible hand” controls the economic process. The implementation of the first modernity revealed the structural problem that the individualistically structured economic system could not limit social damage and consequential burdens through the market. The individualistic economic ethics led this system into border areas, which required the establishment of new interpenetration zones. This concerned social policy and the welfare economy, which had been in place since the second half of the nineteenth century. It began in full in the early twentieth century as the economic system was restructured by industrialization and urbanization. Kaufmann (2001) points out, for example, that the career of the word “social” has only started since the 1830s and refers to a restructuring of the company and its membership conditions. It thus expresses a special self-observation of social communication.2

1

Münch (1991, 29–48); Eisenstadt (2000, 24–33); Preyer (2018a), Part II IV 1–2, on the problem of the “Paradoxes of Modernity”: Part II IV 2, V 1–4. 2 On the different programs of the welfare state since the “Labor Question and Social Policy 1863–1918,” “The Crisis of Social Policy (1920–1945)” and “Social Policy since the Second World War”: Kaufmann (2001).

Chapter 9

Second Modernity and Modernization

Keynesian Membership Order The welfare state, the relativization of individualistic professional ethics through social-state redistribution programs, the gender revolution, the optimization of rights, and the crisis of full employment are called the second modernity and modernization. We should classify it as the Keynesian membership order. It is worth remembering that the Weimar Constitution was the first constitution of a welfare state (Kaufmann 2001, 79–80). It was institutionalized as a consequence of the uncontrollable economic cycles and crises in the political system. Kaufmann reinterprets modern constitutional democracy on the basis of claims to be granted by the social state, for example, the social obligation of property. It is typical of the welfare economy, the New Deal after year 1932, the program of the Great Society of the 1960s of President Lyndon B. Johnson in the United States, and the Western European welfare state after World War II. In retrospect, these were transitional solutions and time-specific programs that did not adequately consider their own requirements and did not properly respect the governance opportunities of social systems. This also points to the theoretical shortcomings of the programs. One of the improper conditions is, for example, the failure to take account of economic dynamism through mass consumption through the increase in incomes and the associated change in social stratification. This includes the innovation of the industrialization of agriculture. It should be remembered, for example, that industrial gainful employment without agricultural work was outside the horizon of workers before World War I (Plumpe 2019, 447–457).

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Social Compromise In order to understand these relationships, a distinction should be made between the social and welfare states. The welfare state is a consequence of the transformation of the political system through the inclusion program of functional differentiation (that is, the inclusion of the population in the political system). The welfare state has the task of mitigating and correcting the exclusions of members of social systems through social assistance. This leads to a greater dependence of the way in which parts of society are made more dependent on political decisions. With the welfare state, the ethics of action have gone beyond liberalism and individualistic professional ethics. The subsequent institutionalization of a social compromise established an insurance and risk regime (Willke 1997) aimed at limiting the uncontrollable economic developments and the impact of modern technologies on those affected. This was accompanied by the need to restructure the relationship between payment and respect in such a way that their assessment criterion is no longer based exclusively on individual services. The social compromise was to support the temporary and permanent incapacity of members of social systems through transfer payments, so that they can maintain membership status in society and not fall into an exclusion zone from which they can no longer emerge. Sociological and politological research distinguishes between 1. The liberal welfare regime, as in Great Britain, the United States, and Australia 2. The conservative-corporatist welfare regimes, as in Germany, France, and Italy 3. The social democratic welfare state, as in Sweden and Norway The liberal version provides means-tested performance at a low level and requires the primacy of privately organized security. The conservative-corporatist version is based on insurance-based benefits and is supported, if necessary, by subsidiary assistance, such as familial support, which is only basic for those affected in order to avoid poverty. The social democratic version guarantees a largely social assistance independent of the family aid at a high level 4. In the ongoing research it has been pointed out that in Spain, for example, due to the high decline in the birth rate, a different version, a Mediterranean version, is available which is not yet adequately classified. Spain was initially described as a residual welfare state (Esping-Andersen 1998, 19–56)

Limit of the Welfare Program The penetration of economic rationality by all subsystems is not a logic of the economic system, but is explained by the welfare economy as an intrinsic value of the membership order of the social community. Without this programming, economic laws would not be the generally binding orientation system. The economic and financial experts are the priests of this system, who spread its general validity and at the same time ensure by institutionalizing their professional roles. The

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increase in gross national product is not a neutral measure of value. Yet it becomes the basis of the ethical assessment of the behavior of the members of society. Other ethical standards have a hard time asserting against it. Although they are listed as “limits of growth,” such as environmental stress and health damage, they have been interpreted as unintended consequences to be balanced under the welfare economic model. There is a need for ever-increasing sustainable economic growth in order to ensure social balance and to preserve the prosperity of members of Western societies. On this front, sustained economic growth is without an alternative, especially when one takes into account, as it is called, “the ecological transformation” of society. This transformation without further economic growth—of any kind—cannot necessarily be guaranteed. With the second modernity and modernization, the economic growth required to finance the welfare state has reached the limits of its own program, not only in technical and economic terms, but also through the absolutism of its own ethical standards. This is partly due to how solidarity versions of help are programmed by transfer payment, in which case the economic laws have a dramatic effect. On the sociological problem of helping, we encourage readers to see Luhmann (1974b, 134–149). This affects social and pension insurance, the labor market, vocational training, and the university system and could be called the inevitable paradox of the welfare economy within the welfare state, which it cannot eliminate by its own means. As a consequence of the programmatic challenges of the welfare economy and the welfare state, the problem relationship of the transformation of the welfare state from the consumer-to-productive welfare state can be more easily detected (Münch 1998). It is worth noting that the claims that are taken for granted with the old state of travel and its solidarity integration, especially in Germany, must be put to the test. This requires a change of mentality, which assumes that it is a legend that the political order must be systematized according to the legitimacy of political decisions and the so-called state goals. However, this will also include a change in the age of retirement and a defined benefit income. Labor law in Germany in particular, but also in France and Spain, needs to be corrected, as it leads to unemployment, particularly youth unemployment.

Chapter 10

Third Modernity and Modernization

New Basic Situation In contrast to the welfare economy and the risk regime as the second modernity, sociological theory characterizes contemporary society as a new basic situation and its definition on the threshold of a third modernity and modernization. This addresses the problem of the sociology of the next society. It must be characterized by the globalization of the division of labor and communication networks, financial and labor markets, the requirement of the transition from the welfare economy to the environmental economy and the new welfare state. It “develops beyond liberalism, welfare economics and nation-state in a system of global interdependence” (Münch 1998, 117, 45–117). Münch has emphasized that the upheavals of the social community from the traditional ethics of the states to individualistic professional ethics and from the ethics of welfare economics to an ethics of environmental economics are brought about by changes in ethics and economics as well as their institutionalization in the social community.

Correction of a Terminology With the above in mind, the following should be noted in a more sociologytheoretical consideration, which does not concern the subject matter, but the talk of the environment and ecology. Luhmann pointed out that both terms are no longer distinguished and that the talk of “ecology” has also become a journalistic and political concept of struggle (Luhmann 1997, Vol. 1, 128–134). This can hardly be corrected at the actual stage of the topic of “ecological communication” as a communication about the ecology of the members of social systems. There is no need to dispute the results of climate research and its rather gloomy forecasts, but in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_10

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sociological theory a distinction must be made between the environment and ecology. The environment of membership systems does not reach its members, for example, micro- and macro-physical processes. The ecology of membership systems, on the other hand, concerns their placement in a niche of biological reproduction of populations whose conservation imperatives reproduce at the membership system level and their evolution. In this sense, it is only evolutionarily very late, since it is only in the second half of the twentieth century, that awareness of the scarcity of ecological resources has emerged. It has not yet been decided whether it will really be learned to deal with it.

Chapter 11

Redeployment of Solidarity Integration

Problem-Related Structural Changes Change of the Functional Subsystem Structural change from the incremental innovation of the social market economy to the radical innovation of the liberal market economy is changing the structure of the major functional systems of the economy, politics, science, and education. This also affects the institutionalization of the social market economy in the 1950s in the Federal Republic of Germany (Münch 2009, 72–134, 73–79). The reference problem is the relationship between “innovation, structural preservation and structural change” (Münch 2009, 73–79). Structural problems have arisen since the 1970s as a result of changes in functional systems. It is helpful to highlight the changed framework conditions that initiated the further redeployment of functional systems and social communication. This was already evident in the early 1990s. The dispute between economics, politics, cultural discourse and social group life, between usefulness, effectiveness, truth and solidarity, and the intersystemic circulation of money, power, language and reputation as symbolic and generalized communication media are increasingly coming to the fore of social events. In this way, we are experiencing at the same time an enormous moralization of economic action, but also an economization of culture, a politicization of economics and an economization of politics, a solidarity of the economy and an economization of solidarity, a moralization of politics and a politicization of morality, a cultural unification of the group life and an inclusion of ever-wide strata in culture, an ever-widening participation of groups in politics and an ever-increasing politicization of the political community group life. The end product is a society in which its own logic is increasingly taking place in the zones of interpenetration of the subsystem and less and less in the reserves; for example, economic benefit calculation captures ever larger parts of political action, and vice versa, political action reaches deeper and deeper into economic action. Thus they are in constant conflict with each other and are constantly pushing social development through their conflict. (Münch 1991, 23, authors’ translation)

The description and systematization of structural change is informative. It points out problem areas of sociological research. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_11

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Limits of Societal Control, Claims of Human Capital and Humanist Elites However, two other points of view should be noted. Above all, political rhetoric feeds the misconception that the differentiation of membership systems can be controlled from within the political system. The attempts are not encouraging, in the field of crime, such as economic crime, drug trafficking, and prostitution, as well as in the field of immigration. Still, this does not mean that no planning is possible. Instead, planning can be successful in smaller membership systems. Even the economic policy of the western states was not a success story in the past. There is also a problem reference, which is often overlooked also with the reorganization of the simple interaction system among present ones by the spreading medium of the modern communication technologies. Any planning requires communicative realization and feedback through reflexive loops. Thereby the requirements exist subject to the pressures of the organization of communication in simple interaction systems. Another problem is that the inclusion program of humanistic elites dedicated to solving the problems of world society will fail. This is not to deny that it has also had successes, for example, in the standardization of economic exchange, such as the legal standardization of the rejection of non-welfare organized enterprises, for example, child labor and excessively low wages. However, they have lost access to large regions, for example, Russia, China, and large parts of Africa, Asia, and South America. In addition, there is likely to be little overlap between the human capital entrepreneurs and the humanist elite, which does not necessarily preclude a match in their lifestyles. In sum, the systematization of these connections between the conflicts of the functions of the subsystems and the orientations for action requires a repositioning of the sociological observer beyond the place of mutual environmental observation of economics, politics, science, and the group organization. This, in turn, would lead to an important restructuring of the zones of interpenetration among membership systems of self-observation.

Change of Zones of Interpenetration New Placement of the Sociological Observer The restabilization and the associated selective inclusion and exclusion concerns the time dimension and the projection of expectations for the exchange of respect and payment. As a result, their zones of interpenetration are also subject to change. These include the sketchy references to the economic, political, legal, educational, and scientific system (Münch 2009, 106–111). The change of the zones of interpenetration concerns the structural change of the functional systems of contemporary

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societies vis-à-vis innovation, preservation of structures and structural change.1 Thus, the location of the sociological observer is placed differently as one is no longer restricted to the perspective of individual functional systems, for example, the economy, law, politics, and science. The methodological sense of this approach should always be conscious. Thus, the blind spot of the observer is relativized from the perspective of the subsystems.

Restructuring of the Zones of Interpenetration Zone of Interpenetration: Economic-System–Political System Radical innovation initiates a transformation of the conservative welfare state into a competitive state and the recasting of the function of the organization of the political system (state organization). The competitive state sets in motion a reorganization of training in the science system within an industrial complex of an educational reform. As a result, the zone of interpenetration between the economic system and the scientific system is reorganized. In the history of the system, the established global financial system has triggered the restructuring of the economic system since the 1990s, which limits the influence of the organization of the political system (that is, nation states) while being affected by it. The “financial crisis” of 2008 did not change this feature. The center of the economic system is the financing of companies which can no longer be secured by a house bank (Willke 2003, 132; Münch 2009, 266–309). However, this does not apply to the German middle class and the mid-sized market.

Zone of Interpenetration: Economic System–Science System The use of scientific knowledge in the “radical innovation” of the economic system by high technology is to be expected. This goes hand in hand with the promotion of collective intelligence (Willke 2002), since the application of individual intelligence means that the increasingly complex tasks can no longer be solved. The successes in scientific research are no longer achievements of heroic and ingenious scientists, but of research groups in which scientists are organized. However, this does not exclude any descriptions of scientific communication in a different way. The technological dependence of economic radical innovation initiates a reorganization of the interpenetration zone between the economic system and the scientific system, which affects all membership systems.

1

Part IV, Chap. 21, in this book.

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Zone of Interpenetration: Science-System–Education-System–Political System The reorganization of courses, shortened study periods, rearrangements within the scientific system through foundations, and a variety of organizations, resystematizes the interpenetration zone between science, educational, and political systems. The reorganization of the scientific system will continue to vary, with the establishment of new courses in the European Union and will contribute to a stratification of the scientific system by research institutes which are, for instance, not responsible for bachelor’s and master’s programs. In the process, the organization of teaching and research will have to be taken care of by system evolution.2 The exchange between these systems is therefore always problematic as in modern science “knowledge” is set in the material dimension; furthermore, in the time dimension it is a knowledge on demand and not Aristotelian knowledge.

Zone of Interpenetration: Economic-System—Expectations of Members of Social Systems The high level of stock market capitalization, the decline in bank financing, the market-based financing of companies, and the dominance of financial economics have initiated a surge in short-term employment through the redeployment of the organization of companies, performance-related income, and a differentiation of income according to companies’ earnings. This is indicative of a shift to knowledge-based expertise. The interpenetration zone between the economic system and the expectations of the members of social systems must be characterized above all by changed employment profiles. It has an impact on welfare pluralism and in human capital individualism, which at the same time increases and dramatizes competition in the labor market. Those who cannot keep up in their professional qualifications fall more and more into the lowest social stratum of non-employed and unqualified economic employment. They no longer have a chance in their biography to share the social status of human capital individualists (Münch 2008; Preyer 2009a, 453–507). There is another problem with a broad impact for the analysis of this interpenetration zone. The concept of precarious employment has a journalistic usage and has also been adopted by sociologists even if it does not belong to the conceptual toolbox of sociological theory. However, the reference problem at stake is instructive for sociological theory. This concerns the question of whether we still live in working society and “whether we (can) replace self-employment and civic work.” Münch (2011) answers the question negatively as the “global economy” initiates income differentiation by region, industry, and qualifications in what constitutes a pluralism

2

On a theoretical-empirical critical evaluation of educational science: Münch (2018), on the inevitable crisis of knowledge in the functional systems, which cannot be solved: Willke (2002).

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of competition that can no longer be reversed. This forces structural changes in markets, institutions, and social integration. It follows that job security can no longer be the model of normal employment. It is no coincidence that between normal employment for life and the risk of unemployment, the area of part-time employment (that is, precarious employment) is increasing. This undermines national charities and searches for other damage limitation. The spread of civic work is unlikely to occur, as the prestige of the members of society remains tied to their status in the social division of labor. In this respect, Münch’s assessment carries precision: A cramped clinging to the labor market institutions of industrial mass production is an obstacle to the development of the new flexible forms of work of the information society. Preventing open and individualized contractual relationships in order to be able to maintain the fiction of the normal working relationship is not a viable strategy in the long term, because it slows down employment dynamics at the expense of high unemployment. The consequence of this is the permanent division of society into working and non-working workers. This is not a way of restoring social integration under the conditions of global competition. (Münch 2001b, 59–60 authors’ translation)

As far as sociological theory is concerned, we recognize in this manner the recasting of the concept of social integration in a competitive society, which leads to other self-descriptions of social communication.

Zone of Interpenetration: Legal-System—Other Functional Systems If we assume that the constitutive structures of world society are to be examined as a multiple heterarchy of the different regional membership condition, then we also address the function and performance of the legal system. From the analysis of the reference problem, there is a consensus between the analyses of Krawietz, Münch, and Willke. The structural change of the law is thus addressed as it interrupts the connection in the interpenetration zone between the legal system and the organization of the political system of the nation-state, which exists in the social history of Western society. As far as the change in the legal order is concerned, we are now talking about a hybrid law. The changed situation is that there is no hegemon in the political system that guarantees the political-legal binding of functional systems (Willke 2001, 131). Krawietz (2009), Münch (2008), and Willke (2001) emphasize that there is “no lateral world system of law” after the structural formation of Western modernization between the legal and political systems. This also applies if society cannot exist without the law. Legal communication and its realization are not guaranteed by the political institutions that support them, for example, by a global legislator and the corresponding governments. This explains the impotence of the major political organization such as the UN. The regional social structures of the world society lead to a localization of the law. It therefore does not result in a universal community of law or in a universal legal order. If the law of world society is a system at all, it is a system of legal systems. What is new is that in contemporary society there is a confrontation between Western and non-Western legal traditions, for example, the Islamic legal order,

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which calls into question Western legalism. As far as legal theory, it follows that the adoption of a priori valid and reasonable legal principles and the adoption of a natural right must be abandoned—a step that should clearly be taken by legal theory itself.

Interpenetration Zones The interpenetration zones between the functional systems are changing as the membership systems are shifting to self-selected, short-term, non-organized and managed and success-oriented cooperation into system-typical associations of social groups (transnational elites, human capital individualists). This is the difference from the organizational principle of the social market economy with its long-term and regionally organized innovation networks.

Multi-level Model and Global Governance Structural Change In the substantial description there is a convergence of structural change to the next society between Münch’s multi-level model of the restructuring of the political system and social integration and Willke’s sociology of the knowledge orders and global governance (Willke 2002; Münch 2001a). Willke assumes, for example, that the democratic legitimacy of the political system is changing structurally. This applies, especially in Germany, to the full inclusion of members of social systems through transfer payments and the associated over-taxation. Willke notes the fundamental performance problem of the democratic organization is that the “intelligence of democracy” is insufficient in its search-oriented problem-solving and competes with “decentralized, distributed expertise” against which it is compulsively inferior: If democratic parliaments today make value decisions against genetic engineering, for certain forms of family, against cloning, for certain pension models or against nuclear energy, but the practice of the social systems concerned cannot or does not want to be bothered by the lack of relevant knowledge, then the crisis of governance is followed by a crisis of legitimacy, which can become a systemic risk. (Willke 2002, 262–263, authors’ translation)

Restructuring of Political Communication The consequential problem of the welfare economy of the coordinated market economy is therefore that it intervenes extensively in the function and performance regulation of the subsystems and inadvertently follows a regulation and its

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standardization and requires its control (Willke 2002, 263). Willke recommends vertical subsidiarity as a “strategic thinking” to counteract this situation. As a result, Münch would agree that the political governance function is based on decentralized problem-solving. In the current state of affairs, we encounter, for example, the ongoing self-irritation of political communication, a considerable personalization, a lack of political disaffection, the decline in institutional trust and the increase in conflicts of legitimacy as the dismantling of social benefits are marked as an “emotional social reduction” by interest groups. There should be no doubt, however, that the redistributive cartel of political parties, interest groups (trade unions, business associations), and churches cannot be renewed, for example, in Germany (Münch 2009, 163–185). Relative deprivation (Stouffer et al. 1949; Merton 1985; Münch 2009) will probably not be avoided in the transformation from a welfare state to a competitive state and the social-state solidarity integration to a pluralistic integration of competition (Münch 2009, 227–265). The commonality of Münch’s and Willke’s view of the “profound change in socialization” is also that the need to redefine the function and performance of the political system is not sufficiently recognized by sociological theory and political science. We should go a step further and carry out the description and analysis of the present society from the point of view of the next society.

Chapter 12

Outlook: The End of Western Modernization

Inventory We can draw the conclusion from the inventory of the sociological theory of contemporary society that the next society does not institutionalize universal competence for problem-solving, but rather converts social communication to selfsteering membership systems. This is linked to a major structural change in the relationship between “innovation, structural preservation and structural change.” We are now recognizing the fundamental problem that is being faced by the fact that in the evolution of the social system, members have not learned to deal with the ecology of membership systems. This addresses the sociology of the Next Society, its theoretical description and empirical research, which initiates the redeployment of sociological theory. The inventory of the research on postmodernism, globalization, hybridization (global mélange), and multiple modernities leads to the global studies and the redefinition of globalization by the concept of connectivity (Nederveen Pieterse 2021), the problem relation of the theory of globalization (Axford 2013a), the theory of society of the constitutive structures of world society as a society of societies (Münch 2011; Krawietz 2009), the system theory of the structural drift of world society and its compensation (Willke 2003), the research program of multiple globalizations (Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael 2019), and the third research program: multiple modernities, membership and globalization (Ben-Rafael 2018; Eisenstadt 2000; Krausse 2015; Krawietz 2009; Preyer 2018a; Preyer and Krausse 2021; Preyer and Sussman 2016). These studies and research programs require the next society and its membership conditions to be considered from different perspectives. The overarching problem is the prerequisites for self-management of the membership systems and their ongoing reorganization, which has to be restabilized in the time dimension.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_12

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Paradoxes of Modernity Talking about the past, we as authors and readers are localized in the time dimension capable of distinguishing our own operations in time dimension. This is not something mysterious as we do not follow any subjective arbitrariness with it, but mark history as historical events, which presuppose an interruption in time. We can only speak of a battle being fought when it is fought. There is still a very fundamental problem to point out, not only with regard to the systematization of Western modernizations but also with regard to the sociological assessment of the structural change of the present. Modernization and the accompanying structural change are not without risk. The consequential damage of Western modernization has been the subject of repeated attention since the nineteenth century. It should also be pointed out that Western modernities has its “dark side” when one thinks of the fundamentalism that accompanies it along with genocides and revolutions. It was always believed that these are ultimately random events that can be corrected by the insight of the members of society and the improvement of education and organization. Münch and Eisenstadt have pointed out that in sociological theory western modernity does not always adequately consider the paradoxes and antinomies of Western modernization. It follows that “universalism and individualism” and “rationalism and interventionalism” (Münch 1991, 27–64) are laid out in the premises of the cultural program of modernity itself and cannot be eliminated. The problem of the cultural program of modernity, which is often not regarded from Münch’s point of view, is the concept of rationality itself, provided that the distinction between formal and material rationality is typical for him (Max Weber). The “material rationality” is not actually rationality, but the arbitrary and traditional claim of the members of social systems. It should be noted, however, that if one distinguishes a formal rationality, for example, the acquisition of knowledge and the procedural arrangements of conflicts, then the counter-concept of material rationality arises. But why do sociologists stick to this distinction? Could something not be true with the concept of rationality itself? Among the paradoxes of the cultural program are the tensions noted by Eisenstadt (2000) in the cultural program of modernity between a “totalizing” and a “pluralistic program,” between “reflection” and the “active design of nature and society,” the different assessments of “feeling” and “reason” as well as between “control” and “autonomy” or “discipline” and “freedom.” Eisenstadt emphasizes that the “tension” between the institutionalization between “control” and “autonomy” (“discipline” and “freedom”) is a persistent problem. In his view, this is due to the fact that institutionalizations introduce their corresponding demarcations and thus limit the creativity (autonomy, freedom) of the members of society by exercising control, power, granting and depriving them of trust and distributing resources. For Eisenstadt, too, these antinomies are laid out in the modern program itself. The efforts to homogenize include, for example, modern nation states and the determination of what is to be respected as civilized in civil society. The fundamental

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problem of the order of difference, for example, between a totalizing and a pluralist political program has not been solved. This can be seen in the fact that, in the face of pluralist political programs and ideologies, the collectivist political programs and ideologies have not disappeared. The two types of the collective are the distinction of common primordial (spiritual) characteristics and the revolutionary program of Jacobinism, that is, the claim to reshape society according to an ideal that goes back to medieval eschatological sources. These include the religiously fundamentalist, socialist, nationalist, and fascist movements (Eisenstadt 2000, 24–33). However, it should also be pointed out for political sociology that the concept of sovereignty was a social-structural transitional semantics in the eighteenth century that is inadequate for the analysis of the political system. Often, it fails to consider the paradox of sovereignty that the head of the political hierarchy of the decisionmaking order can override its legitimacy. This addresses the arbitrariness of decision-making, which is not ethically or legally motivated (Luhmann 2000, 342). The fact that there was even talk of arbitrariness in the sense of an indispensable ingredient of sovereign decision-making must stop us for a moment. For by this alone, the fundamental paradox of the political system had dressed up according to the Zeitgeist. In itself, the fundamental alternative would be to decide or not to divorce, and sovereign would be the one who can decide or not decide. This question should dissolve the concept of legal sovereignty, because the legal system, unlike the political system, cannot ultimately refuse to take decisions. The political paradox of sovereignty would then consist in the unity of decision and non-decision and could be dissolved, for example, on “state resonance,” into the reflexive possibility of deciding whether one also decides or (also) does not want to decide. (Luhmann 2000, 342, authors’ translation)

This problem may somehow keep the political system invisible and rationalize, for example, in the semantics of modern sovereignty by the monarch’s representation of God or by the volonté générale (Rousseau: general will, common will), but it also remains in force in the more or less secularized state organization through the institutionalization of the state of emergency. This is part of the political cultural program of modernity and its semantics of legitimacy.

Deconstruction–Reconstruction We can agree with Münch and Eisenstadt that modernization “is not without risk” in a very fundamental sense. This also applies to the demand for the ecological transformation of society, as it in turn is associated with risks and unpredictable events. The “dialectics” and the “dynamics of the communication society” (Münch 1998) refers fundamentally to the problem that there is no self-perfecting modernization and no final state of evolution. We should assume that paradise lost (Milton 1667) is unrecoverable. This is not an entirely new insight. The paradoxes of the modern cultural program are analyzed from the inside. The problem is whether they can be applied to the social upheavals since the turn of the millennium. It is certainly true that the problems we formulated with the dimensions

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of globalization do not disappear. We have to reckon with new growth problems of the economic system, with a pluralism of competition among human capital individualists, continuous devaluation of knowledge, loss of individuality and new hybrid concepts of individuality, inflation and deflation of law and political decisions, that is, the overburdening of the legal system and the political system as well as the digitization of social communication. This goes hand in hand with a different social-structural (cultural) semantics. However, if we take the attitude of Nederveen Pieterse’s deconstruction–reconstruction, we come to a surprising conclusion in the review of the versions of Western modernization. We then take the cultural program of Western modernity not literally in the sense that they are actual orientations of the participants to different member systems of the institutional membership systems, but contingent observational distinctions that keep their social-structural semantics invisible. In this respect, they do not exclude alternative observational distinctions of the members of social systems. The reconstruction would then be the switch to a second-stage observation, from which it can be seen that they lack a final basis, generating an empirical content when we examine, for example, the uniqueness of Japanese society and its modernization in the course of the Meiji Restoration (1868) and the Chinese modernization since the 1990s within the reference framework of the updated “research program of multiple modernities.” This, in turn, leads to global studies and to renewal of the concept of society as membership order in sociological theory. Western modernity is no longer a project. However, we are not witnessing the end of history, but its intensification. The focus of ongoing research will be on the structures that have not only been created by the multiple modernities, but which are constantly changing through them. Western societies have already lost their monopoly on the cultural program of modernity and its reinterpretation. This process introduces a new hybrid pluralism and a different order of globalized cultural networks and communications that have not yet existed in the structural evolution of the social system. It replaces the reinterpretation of the cultural program of modernity.

Part III

Global Studies

Keywords Concept of society · Global studies · Dimensions of globalization · Structural change · Permanent irritation

Chapter 13

Motive Force and Research Program

Structural Change Nederveen Pieterse has transferred globalization research, the “research program of multiple modernities,” the strategy of de- and reconstruction of development theory, and the hybridization approach into the research program of global studies.1 The motive force for these studies is the drastic changing structure of contemporary society since the beginning of the twenty-first century and a response to the ideological descriptions and rhetoric of globalization. Nederveen Pieterse (2012, 36–60) defines the changed situation by shifting the globalization axis from the North-South of the last 200 years to the East-South (Japan, South Korea, and China) axis. For him, the evidence for this shift rests on the following: 1. A new trade geography and weaker hegemony 2. The multi-propagation of multipolarity as a topic of research in “global sociology” It is obvious that this also triggers another self-observation of social communication, which also carries corresponding blind spots.

Resystematization of Sociological Theory The global studies research program states: Global studies reflect the greater pace, expansion, and intensity of global relations and effects. Global studies have increased through exponential growth, dynamics and problems. It is a response to the branching, intensification and deepening of globalization. Global

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13 Motive Force and Research Program studies have spread because global relations and problems require a global approach. It is a necessity that is felt by the forces experienced, the international organizations and corporations all over the world. (Nederveen Pieterse 2013, 552)

These studies are distinguished by the following characteristics: They are multi-centered and a critique of Eurocentrism and Orientalism2 They require multi-level thinking and take up the approach of glocalization They are kaleidoscopic But they are not limited to specific areas, as relations of global social exchange require a global approach 5. They are not limited to national and international relations in the political system

1. 2. 3. 4.

This initiates a resystematization of the research programs of sociological theory.

Connectivity The resystematization of sociological theory is not yet complete and new points of view are emerging in the frame of reference of global studies. Nederveen Pieterse continues his approach in that he reacts to changing conditions of thought in the scientific system. The connectivity of the members of social systems of different social status functions as the central meridian of globalization while acting as the new key concept that has become the focus of both the analysis of contemporary societies and of evolutionary historical research. Thus, the concept of globalization is at least reinterpreted, if not replaced. Economic exchange, migration, technology, philosophy, world religions, conqueses, empires, and also diseases are “strands in the expansion of networks of connectivity.” Each point of connection and expansion of these connections triggers corresponding winners and losers among the participants, as well as a repositioning and rebalancing of the operation of social network membership systems. This is a different and also a new way of approaching the processes of globalization in contrast to their description and systematization through the liberalization of economic exchange and the economic integration of different economic systems, for example, the economic exchange with China. From the current perspective, Nederveen Pieterse notes from the perspective of the current trade conflicts that there is a deglobalization, which does not necessarily represent a decline in connectivity in social communication and structural evolution. Instead, this connectivity is not a continuous sequence of events, but rather, in the reconstructive view, it presupposes an observer and social structures, as well as discontinuities in social history. It follows that the evolutionary theory can be concluded from the fact that it does not establish any laws of progression.

2 To a Hobson (2012, 12–35), to a Hobson distinguished frame of reference for the analysis of structural evolution: Bokser Liwerant (2016, 177–205).

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Multicentric World Society Nederveen Pieterse assumes that a multicentric world society cannot be studied from the perspective of a single region. He is undoubtedly right about that. Research into the changes in social communication and the constitutive structures of world society cannot be carried out from a single point of view. Each center or region has its own history and thus its own historical conditions and cultural basis. On this front, global perception and observation must be adapted to regional and national variation within institutions. Nederveen Pieterse has to agree that in analyzing the changed starting situation of contemporary societies there is no Archimedean point, that is, no Laplace’s demon, from which we can observe the whole of social communication and place the parts of this whole into it. Here, there is no holism in the sociology of contemporary societies; hence, it involves the observer in the analysis of structural changes in the constitutive structures of world society. As sociologists, we cannot observe social communication from the outside. This is in the way of the research program in that the global studies limit macrosociology to special epochs, for example, the seventeenth century, the Enlightenment or the nineteenth century. But sociologists maintain the claim that there is global connectivity that connects epochs and centers. From the point of view of the type of researcher, Nederveen Pieterse recommends that the generalist in the world of specialization is needed, but not a false generalization. The reference problem of the theoretical continuation of global studies is “consciousness and action” as well as “the different types of market economy.” The continuation of the global studies should be classified as the problem of the sociological theory of analysis of the constitutive structures of world society and the multiple globalization as global multiple modernities. From this point of view, open-ended research programs could stimulate each other. This leads to the renewal of the concept of society. It should be kept in mind that society and social communication can only exist if there is self-observation. In this respect, Luhmann, for example, distinguishes between social and societal action.3 Action as Social Action Action does not exclude solitary social action, as long as it is determined by the social dimension, for example, putting on make-up, reading, writing, and personal hygiene. It is also obvious that we can act without the presence of others. This does not exclude “making sense” of others even though they are not present.4

3

It is often not considered that Luhmann, in the course of his critique of the theory of action, in the chapter “4 Communication and Action” by Luhmann (1995a, 137–175) makes a correction. 4 Luhmann (1995a, 426–427): The problem is not at first, how large the socially permissible scope for lonely action is. This is a question of the options for the individual separation of members of social systems. In pre-modern societies, this room for maneuver was not great. In modern society, the change in the system of kinship (modern family), for example, raises the problem of intimacy. Stabilization by delimitation from the social environment is also a problem of the “family” of the next society.

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Action as a Societal Action A societal action differs from lonely social action in that it participates in societal action through an exposure of itself to observation. It therefore presupposes foreign reference and observation of others, which can be observed by the participants in a communication system. This leads to the problem of the concept of society. According to Luhmann (1995a, 162–163) this refers to the distribution media of writing, printing, and digital communication technologies, as well as to the differentiation of society and interaction. This will be the case, but it does not clarify the concept of action and communication, but presupposes it. This is true even if Luhmann argues that communication “flags” the action in order to observe, describe and be attributed. The problem is also whether we can observe actions and communications directly, which raises the question: what concept of action do we intuitively use? However, social observation can only exist if there are simple interaction systems that ensure the function of self-observation. This also applies to their transformation in communication technology.

Chapter 14

Renewal of the Concept of Society

Frame of Reference for the Theory of Society It is recommended to draw attention to its subject area when constructing the reference framework of the theory of society, so as to show why the analysis of membership order is to be recommended as its reference problem. Although sociologists often speak of theory of society, also with the intention of rhetorical demarcation, it is difficult to identify the reference problem in sociological theory. In this context, it is advisable to assume that “theory of society” is less problematic. The problem-related relationship of theory of society is their own subject area in contrast to theories of action, interaction, and organization. The difference is determined by the fact that they: 1. Adopt a broader reference framework for sociological research 2. Place a macro-sociological concept of society as an emerging level figuratively speaking about the actions and communications of members of social systems that have independent social characteristics 3. This level requires a separate analytical framework Society includes all social units that go beyond organizations and simple interaction systems, such as the municipality, city, region, world society and state, their social structure and the changes to which they are subject.1

1 Münch (2004), Vol. 3, 9; on the concept of society and the theory of society: Preyer (2018a, 26–30, 49–153).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_14

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Different Society as Mixed Formations The motive for renewing the concept of society through regional membership regulations is that there is no empirical evidence of uniform modernization. The inclusion of exclusions in societies of world society must in turn be characterized by the structural characteristics of regional companies, which are limited by the social exchange processes of different scopes. This applies, for example, to East Asia, Central and South America, and Africa, but it also applies to European societies and the society of the United States. A well-researched case is, for example, the Chinese outside of China. The overarching problem is whether the resulting level of emergence affects the structure of social communication. If yes, how and why? In this respect, the research program of the analysis of the “constituent structures” is of interest for the problem-related reference to the recasting of the theory integration of social systems as a segment of sociological theory. Nederveen Pieterse accepts that there is no uniform development path of modernization. As a result, Western modernity is not only varied in institutions and organizations, but also changed, for example, in China, Japan, and India. His research claims to prove that “real modernities” exist in different societies as mixed formations. They bridge the past and the present, importing and translating styles and customs from other cultures. Therefore, the concept of “society” and “societies” demands renewal. In doing so, it ought to be partly based on the “national paradigm of sociology,” which applies the concept of society to, for example, Thai, Indonesian, and Chinese modernity (Nederveen Pieterse and Rehbein 2009, 32, 31–32). The social spheres are differentiated by region. On this front, there is an overlap with the analysis of the constitutive structures of world society.2

Hybridized, Glocalized Modernization Nederveen Pieterse’s approach in sociological theory is to distinguish between different regional modernities, for example, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. At the same time, there is an “interaction of many moderns” of these areas. For this research program, the link between regional societies is the global division of labor (Schwengel 2009, 206–227). By extension, Nederveen Pieterse concludes that modernization and modernities are glocalized. This is close to Robertson’s analysis of globalization and compatible with Eisenstadt’s approach as there are comparable functional problems such as in the economic use of scientific knowledge, the regulation of conflicts by primary and secondary legal systems, and the requirements for economic success. However, the comparable functional problems do not imply their unified problem-solving. It should be borne in mind that the 2 On the sociology of regional societies (Krawietz, Preyer) and on multiple globalization (BenRafael).

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historical, social, and cultural components of modernization must be distinguished. The field of global studies has now produced studies of the development process in East Asia in comparison with the societies of Chile, Argentina, Russia, and the West. 3

3

On investigations on China’s modernization of ProtoSociology: https://uni-frankfurt1.academia.edu/GerhardPreyer/China's-Modernization About the Multiple modernities in Latin America: Bokser Liwerant (2016, 177–205).

Chapter 15

Dimensions of Globalization

Placement of the Observer Global studies claim an integrated research program that transfers the analysis of the different dimensions of globalization in research into a multipolar globalization. This is also compatible with the investigations of Münch and Eliezer Ben-Rafael. It should be noted that the distinction between dimensions places the observer differently. Since the 1990s, the following dimensions have been distinguished in the descriptions of globalization: 1. The dimension of the global environmental impact stake affecting all social systems 2. The dimension of cultural globalization as the media dissemination of cultural communication and observation, multiculturalism (global mélange, new syncretism) 3. The dimension of economic globalization as a restructuring of the transnational social division of labor 4. The dimension of political globalization as the redefinition of the governance of the political system 5. The dimension of the globalization of social communication through modern communication technologies as the intermediated sector of globalization 6. The dimension of scientific globalization and the dynamics of the knowledge economy and the problem of collective intelligence (Willke 1997) 7. The dimension of the reshaping of collective identities as the ascriptive orders of the membership communication of social systems These dimensions point to typical structural problems of the constituent structures of world society as a society of societies and the self-observation of its members. We should not assume that there is a collective definition of good life in it. We should also expect vastly different versions in terms of the ethics of lifestyle. Many sociologists assume that the transnational economy leads to income differentiation © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_15

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by region, sector, and qualifications. This initiates a structural change in markets, social institutions, social stratification, social integration, and social self-description.

Structural Change The finding of sociological observation and systematization is that a structural change of the institutions, social stratification, reduction of counterfactual expectations, and an interpenetration of different components of the cultural dimension occur and is to be expected further. 1. At the institutional level, structural change has an impact through vertical and horizontal differentiation, such as in the decline and replacement of the collective representation of employees to represent individual interests with the individual companies. This means that securing employment will no longer be based on the normal working relationship. 2. The reallocation of social stratification in the economic system initiates a pluralism of competition through the new employment relationships of social integration. It dissolves a strong collective integration of solidarity, as guaranteed by Western welfare states. Expanding participation in communication systems tends to increase negative integration and push back collective solidarity and its institutionalization. This is the recasting of the governance function of the state organization of the political system. 3. This, in turn, is associated with the increase of cognitive versus the counterfactual orientations of members of social systems, such as, human capital individualists. However, the change in competitive conditions also leads to the drift of those who do not meet the expectations of the work and communication profiles into the exclusion area. By extension, this will continue to lead to a backward-looking backlash of postmodern populism.1 4. In the cultural dimension, we observe an interpenetration of international, national, cultural ethnic and linguistic dimensions. Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Miriam Ben-Rafael (2019) have demonstrated this well in their study of the Linguistic landscape in big cities. In this important work, transnational diasporas are seen as an indicator of the transformation of both social groups and large cities in what constitutes a different type of multiculturalism. We should therefore assume that the accelerated structural change is to be accompanied by ecological problems and distributional struggles, of anomie and disintegration. This introduces the recasting of the theory of social integration in sociological theory.

1

To a diagnosis of these connections with a slightly different emphasis on reference problems: Münch (2001a, b).

Chapter 16

Outlook: Permanent Irritation

Initial Situation The distinction between dimensions must not be misunderstood as dimensions are not necessarily a globalization of autonomous subsystems of the membership system of society, such as the economic system. Instead, these individual dimensions form special interpenetration zones, such as those between the political, economic, and scientific system. As a result of these processes, a restructuring of functional differentiation occurs, which exposes social communication to permanent irritation. This leads to new coordination problems between society, organization, and interaction. In the methodical setting, the award of dimensions performs a repositioning of the observer. In order to have an insight into the dimensional processes, the second stage must be monitored. The observer shall be set up on the boundary of the systemic operations. From there, one observes observers. In this respect, the fundamental question for sociological theory is where it places the observer and whether it is able to expect observers to observe. It is not to be expected that the continuously stabilized order of differences in social communication can be brought to a uniform solution. They can no longer be managed by nation states. Instead, they describe the breaking points of integration based on solidarity, which are exacerbated by the dynamics of the spread of the communication society. This is reinforced by the fact that global markets now leave their mark on all social systems. They can no longer be remedied by programs of the political system, but neither by economic growth and the redistribution it makes possible. This also affects the generalization of the democracy program of the political subsystem as it is not possible to see how it can be successfully transferred to international politics. Here, sociology has to ask the right questions in order to grasp the dissolution and consequences of the restructuring of the subsystems.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_16

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Restructuring of Membership Order The most far-reaching change we observe is the restructuring of the inclusionexclusion order. It is amenable to a sociological analysis of membership. From this follows the break with the “logic of inclusion” of functional differentiation as a claim to full inclusion of society members in the functional systems of the social membership order. We should assume that the restructuring of the Western welfare state no longer leads back to a Keynesian model of society. This is often misunderstood by sociologists. However, the restructuring of the inclusion-exclusion order will entail a reassessment of the steering function of the political system. Münch (2009) and Willke (2001, 2003, 2016), in particular, have pointed this out in their socio-theoretical studies of contemporary society. In this context, the sociological observer should practice neutrality. Only from a sober analysis of contemporary society can we expect further progress in our understanding of the restructuring that has already been recognized. In the next society, the membership order and therefore the inclusion and exclusion in the membership systems will be fundamentally changed. As a result, their self-observation and self-description will vary. This tends to increase negative integration unilaterally, without its positive counterpart. At the same time, this addresses the new problems of analyzing social integration and the question of the strategy for handling it. In terms of membership theory, the new problem can be described in the sense that exclusion is brought about by functional differentiation, that is, by the membership conditions of the subsystems and formal organizations that go along with it. Here, it is increasingly difficult that exclusion will be channeled through the model of the welfare state in the future. Functional systems and organizations decide on participation and exclusion, which means that an exclusion process occurs within the subsystems. Examples are unemployment, withdrawal, and lack of social connection in old age. Another consequential problem of the dismantling of solidary integration can be seen in the fact that the particularism of the networks prevents inter-group solidarity. The members of the social groups lose control over what happens in their social field of action, and it becomes increasingly difficult to form a bond with it. This affects communities, regions, and the nationstate. We can observe this not only in the United States but also in Europe. Cities are increasingly becoming exclusively economic functional areas with centers of entertainment, shantytowns, and ghettos of the well-to-do that are fenced off and guarded.

New Conflicts The conflict situations just mentioned lead more and more to a desolidarization of social systems. From this follows an increased and intensified permanent irritation. This concerns the structural conflicts, which are brought about by the dynamics of a global world system. Among them, we highlight the following:

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1. The restructuring of the economic system, as new socio-political conflicts are brought about by economic globalization. Companies are increasingly taking advantage of their comparative cost advantages, and growth is taking place in global (transnational) manufacturing and distribution chains. This leads to new employment structures, including wage dumping. 2. Due to the ecological problems that cannot be easily eliminated, for example, the climate crisis, the expected water shortage, considerable ecological distribution conflicts are to be expected since an overexploitation of natural resources takes place due to the manufacturing and transport chains, consumption and leisure behavior. 3. The spread of commercialized Western culture continues to create conflicts between autochthonous and commercial culture, and between center culture and peripheral cultures. Autochthonous cultures claim their own rights vis-à-vis the one-size-fits-all culture and resist their appropriation by a global cultural market. Peripheral cultures counteract the claim of the center culture on a national and global level and register their claims against it. The result is a conflict between multiculturalism and individualistic universalism that can hardly be balanced. 4. However, the economic use of technological innovations also brings about new moral-ethical conflicts as they bring about situations that are no longer covered by conventional morality, such as, the use of genetic research for medical diagnostics and transplantation medicine. Sociologically, this means that classical integration theory, which assumed norms (basic norms), generalized values, and a basic consensus as the unit of society, is no longer convincing. This has far-reaching consequences for social systems theory and social theory. However, we can also see from this that structural conflicts bring about a differentiation of the order of inclusion according to memberships. The redeployment of sociological theory in view of the present globalization research initiates a reinterpretation of the existing studies. As a result, they are not declared worthless, but are fed into a more integrated research program. Membership sociology is a new approach, but the “third research program: multiple modernities, membership and globalization” takes up the motives of the approaches discussed and their continuation. This leads to our next section.

Part IV

Third Research Program: Multiple Modernities, Membership and Globalization

Keywords Correction of the concept of culture · Integration theory · Stratification · Multiple-level approach · Research priorities · Changed basic situation · Regional societies · Membership conditions · Social integration

Chapter 17

Reference Problem

Sociology of Regional Societies Axford’s “Construction of Global Social Structures,” Robertson’s “Glocalization and Global Consciousness,” Nederveen Pieterse’s “Global Studies,” presumably Eliezer Ben-Rafael’s and Miriam Ben-Rafael’s “multiple globalization,” “transglobality,” and “the combination of globality and transnationalism” adhere to a reinterpreted concept of globalization. Transglobality refers to a relationship between global and local domains (Laguerre 2009) and is near to the concept of glocalization. At the same time, the group of scholars just mentioned take into account a differentiation of membership conditions to the extent that globalization cannot be interpreted in the singular. A closer look at their studies and systematizations shows a certain indecision point toward where the concept of globalization is to be placed in the sociological theory of globalization and what globalization means. However, this does not dismiss the highly instructive quality of their scholarship, which presents more or less unspoken indications of the correction of globalization research in order to provide an adequate understanding of the present society and the sociology of the next society. Here, the sociology of membership is an alternative option to the approaches highlighted above. In the research project ProtoSociology “Globalization, modernization, multiple modernities” the investigations revealed that in sociological theory a fundamental clarification of the concept of globalization is needed.1 Glocalization, hybridization (Global Mélange), and creolization as a reference to problems are a helpful orientation for an analysis of hybridized social structures for the systematization of the structural change to be observed. From the macro-sociological point of view of a sociology of regional societies, it is advisable to proceed from membership orders when analyzing the constituent 1

https://uni-frankfurt1.academia.edu/GerhardPreyer/Globalization,-Modernization,-MultipleModernities s, Preyer 2018a: Part III, Bd. 3 Part IV, XII. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_17

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structures of society. This applies provided that we accept the concept of regional companies and distinguish a grosso modo regions of the world, such as Western Europe, North America, South America, and East Asia. This is a criticism of Luhmann’s concept of world society and its regions. It theoretically organizes the functional differentiation of the social system of regional differentiation.2 This approach must be modified to allow us to reinterpret the concept of society. World society is then to be systematized as a society of society in sociological theory.3 The approach is consistent with and supported by Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Miriam Ben-Rafael (2019), Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Sternberg (2016), and Bokser Liwerant. However, the reference problem of the membership conditions comprises also simple interaction systems and organizational systems as they have to meet the requirements for their own conditions of participation and their restabilization in the time dimension. One example is the presence in the interaction system with participants from different ethnicities and formal regulation of membership in organizational systems. The different structure of careers could be mentioned as another example. This also applies if they change and place different demands on their members in the time dimension, for example, the employee qualifications that go hand in hand with digital technological distribution media. In the meantime, they have become self-evident.

Theoretical Initial Situation The “Third research program: multiple modernities, membership, and globalization 2016” is motivated by the fact that we are observing a far-reaching change in social membership and participation in communication in contemporary societies. We are currently in and simultaneously after the “Third research program: multiple modernities, membership, and globalization.” This situation calls for a changed design of the research program. The research program is oriented toward examining the new and different changes triggered by the dynamics of the “constituent structures” of world societies. They bring with them new tensions caused by the relationship and the exchange of social units. One should not assume that these constituent structures favor a peaceful world. It could also trigger the opposite. It is worth highlighting that the program regards the change in the social structure in all subsystems of social membership and communication. It can already be seen that this change does not unify social exchange, and it does not establish a global village. The very opposite is true. Social exchange leads to hybridization, fragmentation, and the transformation of collective identity through new social movements. The structural social change is initiated by

2 3

Luhmann (1997 Vol. 1, 145–171, Vol. 2, 806–812), Preyer (2018d). Nederveen Pieterse (2009, 15–38), Münch (2011), Krawietz (2012), Preyer (2018d).

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the selection of the new media communication and is not caused only by individually differentiated social structures, such as, social subsystems and migration. The basic theoretical problem must always be kept in mind: which membership conditions are selected, and what are the requirements for the membership conditions of social systems, which have to reproduce themselves as temporal events and expose oneself to self-observation? This is often not the reference problem that distinguishes it centrally from sociological theory. In this respect, a reassessment is needed.

Changed Design The step toward the changed design of the third research program 2016 “Multiple modernities, glocalization and membership order” draws further conclusions from the changed situation in sociological theory: 1. There is no unified single world society, global civil society, and global modernization. 2. Robertson-Glocalization (1992) and multiple modernization are restructuring social systems. In this way, the observational position of communication, social exchange, and restructuring is repositioned not only theoretically, but also in the everyday system of the membership systems. 3. The primacy of functional differentiation in subsystems of the economy, law, politics, religion, and art over differentiation in regions must be abandoned.4 This concerns the constitutive structure of world society with regard to the arrangement of the relationship between segmental, stratified, functional differentiation and its boundary structures. From the theoretical point of view of sociological theory, the distinction between analytical systems and factual membership systems must be made. The two are not to be confused. Luhmann’s theory of differentiation tends to mislead in this respect. 4. The distinction between traditional and modern societies is relativized or abandoned.5 This requires careful consideration, as it is not advisable to abandon the distinction between the structure of traditional societies and the functional differentiation of the modern social system and its evolution in sociological theory in general. Traditional societies are determined by differentiating their social structure. This does not apply to the multiple constitution of modern society or the system of modern societies, which are structurally determined by interpenetration zones between the functional systems.6 4

On the critique of the theory of differentiation: (Münch 1984, 1991, 336–371; 2011, 38–57; Preyer 2016d, 117–139). If the term functional differentiation is used in this text, it is an abbreviation. De facto social systems must be distinguished from their analytical systematization. 5 See about, Eisenstadt: ProtoSociology 24 2007, 361–362; Nederveen Pieterse (2016). 6 Münch (1991, 309–371), Preyer (2018a, 193–257).

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In a more free reading of the task of distinguishing between traditional and modern societies, however, so much is true that the ascriptive membership in different types of social systems and the collective identities of their members have not disappeared. Instead, they are re-forming in response to the changed social exchange (Preyer 2016e, 71–111). The reshaping of ascriptive solidarity requires a special explanation. It is restructured under the conditions of functional differentiation as different forms of helping, religious, and ethnic communities are pluralized which do not integrate the social communication of the members of social systems into an overarching community at the level of social communication. As a result, ascriptive solidarity is renewed and restructured as a system of membership and solidarity, which has been relativized but not disappeared in modern societies. In retrospect, we can also see the persistence of primordial collective identities, such as membership to a language community and the attribution of the corresponding characteristics, such as fatherland and gender characteristics.7 It should also be emphasized that religious communication does not disappear in modern societies. The opposite is the case as it can also intensify since religious communication is subjective with the capacity to re-enter social communication. 5. Social exchange does not unify social communication and world society consists of a “society of societies” with different membership conditions. As a result, the concept of world society is abandoned. It is replaced by media self-observation of the membership orders of multiple modernizations. The “Multiple globalization and glocalization is to add (the authors)” (Elizer Ben-Rafael, Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Miriam Ben-Rafael) is then the self-observation of the social communication of the next society. 6. A crucial question remains: how can the social change of contemporary societies be classified in the history of Western modernization along with the functional differentiation and interpenetration of social subsystems? (Axford 2013a, 110–129). It is advisable to address the Neo-Kantian-inspired concept of culture, which increasingly affects itself as a self-blocking of sociological theory (Rickert, Max Weber: Cultural Meaning). Although the concept of culture has been carried along in sociological theory and research, it cannot be said that it promoted new insights. The concept is often used rhetorically, and it serves as a scientific and political profiling and demarcation. If one looks at scholarly publications to what is called “cultural turn” in sociology, one is not particularly encouraged to follow the approach. There is therefore a need for a more fundamental clarification of the concept of culture.

7

On the protosociology of ascriptive solidarity: Preyer (2016e, 71–111).

Chapter 18

Culture: Correction of the Fundamentals

Restructuring Cultural Science Luhmann agrees that there was no lack of effort, but in sociological theory the concept of culture has remained unclear. This has not silenced another rhetoric regarding the relevance of culture in sociological theory. The value concept is similar. In the German tradition of the southwest German school of Neo-Kantianism (Windelband, Rickert), the course was ultimately set wrong in its history of influence with regard to the cultural problem in sociological theory. This goes all the way to Parsons’ sociology in its attempt to renew a cultural sociology that has continually slipped away from a considerable rhetorical effort and seems to believe in the magical power of uttering the word “culture.” This also concerns the distinction between understanding and explaining, idiographic and nomothetic sciences and the hermeneutic circle, which goes back to the German tradition. The problems are caused by assuming that understanding and explaining are to be classified as a disjunctive contravalence. To discuss this problem, it is advisable to reinterpret the part of understanding and explaining by von Kutschera (1982, 79–149). Rickert (1926) corrects Kant’s transcendental philosophy. He replaces humanities with cultural sciences. Culture consists in the value-related nature of objects, and cultural sciences stands next to natural science. This is motivated by the fact that psychological aspects of cultural studies are to be excluded. He entrusts, for example, the special status of cultural studies through the “formal” prerequisites of their objects as “cultural objects.” Their definitions are not laws, but the value of these objects. In this respect, the subject of cultural studies is determined by values. Parsons has always been pressured by this matter. The individualized conceptualization must thus be specified on cultural objects as symbolic entities. They are not objects of perception, but as values they have the status that they are valid or not. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_18

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Sense Constructions (Sinngebilde) For cultural studies, the complete disjunction between perceptual objects and objects of meaning is fundamental. These emblems are objects of understanding. This explains the Platonism of values, the distinction between the ontological difference between law—value and nature—culture and the epistemological distinction between recognition—values within the frame of reference of a pure logic of scientific conceptual formation. In the German conceptual history of the cultural concept, “civilization” is distinguished from “culture.” The English and French term for both is civilization. The philosophy of values and culture is also an expression of the German academic elites after the founding of the German Reich in year 1871 as the concept of a “cultural nation” (Meinecke 1908) allowed a self-identification of the ethnically differentiated elites of German society. Cultural theory is the systematic sociological-historical prerequisite for the fact that sociological theory, for example, in the tradition of Parsons, classified and claimed to explore culture as shared values and beliefs of the members of social systems. The German sociologist König has argued since the 1950s that sociology has blocked itself by adopting a value relationship (Max Weber). This is not as absurd as is repeatedly claimed.

Correction A break with the sociological tradition, which gives the concept of culture a prominent place, is present in the sociology of knowledge as “semantics and social structure” of Luhmann. In this context, semantics is not to be interpreted linguistically, but rather as the “traditional value of ideas” and the self-description of social communication. It may be worth preserving, but it is subject to the socio-structural change of the forms of differentiation. For example, according to Luhmann, the selfdescription of pre-modern social stratification collapses in the eighteenth century. From this point of view, the observation of, for example, religion and art as culture is the “worst of all concepts,” which had “devastating consequences.” It is “bad” as it obscured the self-description of social systems and it is “devastating” because culture has been elevated to an object of worship (Luhmann 1995b, 397–398; 1999, 31–54; Burkart 2004, 11–39). Luhmann justified the emergence and career of the concept of culture through the reallocation of social-structural semantics in the second half of the eighteenth century. For him, the concept of culture, like the concept of the state, is a historical concept. One should agree with this. The historical origin of these concepts has been forgotten in the nineteenth century and they have been assumed and asserted as selfevidently ahistorical. This certainly needs an explanation from the sociology of knowledge. The cultural concept of “cultural” has been changed from “cultural” to a comparative term, which is to be ordered on the observation of the second stage (colere:

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maintain, cultivate, and qualify). These are not symbols and values, but distinctions and operations of comparison. This situation occurs when one is increasingly confronted with strangers, which is attractive and repulsive. The concept of culture is replaced by Luhmann’s self-description of the system, that is, the description of the system by itself. This asserts its system identity in the system-environment relationship regardless of opinions about the system from a foreign perspective. It should be emphasized that this is a determination of meaning and selection of meaning, which is successfully or not handed down as “maintained semantics” of an idea and which generates a surplus of meaning. Their connectivity in the time dimension in social evolution and selection, which is based on time- and socialstructural-typical plausibility. It can be assumed that most of it is forgotten and that individual memory and membership memory are very selective. A memory of the members of social systems over long periods of time also depends on the written language and the continuous expert interpretation of the available texts. The coordination of Luhmann’s approach to the cultural problem with the changed situation of the self-description of contemporary society can be established in such a way that we assume that culture is a “world representation” of the systemenvironmental world in social communication, which uses different means of expression in different societies (Luhmann 1997 Vol. 2, 80–881). Baecker has reinterpreted and varied Luhmann’s repositioning of the concept of culture and its deconstruction. He assigns language, writing, letterpress, and digital communication to the dissemination media as “cultural forms” that changed the social structure (Baecker 2007, 147–174, 206–228). If these world representations are written down, the texts are a medium of remembrance, which can be edited and selectively evaluated again and again in time. They then act as the memory of the members of social systems. The self-description of systems and the system-environment relationship as a cultural orientation of society and its membership order is now to be characterized by the global diffusion of cultural and institutional communications. This manifests itself in the orientations of the members of social systems and their creativity and the system-typical organization.

Cultural Communication New Syncretism The replacement of the concept of culture and the objectification of culture is helpful for the reclassification of the results of cultural communication, which were established by cultural globalization. The differences with the usual sociological systematizations, the observation of cultural communication is no longer focused on the diffusion process of the institutionalization of a system of cultural orientations, but on the hybridization and the syncretism triggered by the organizational system.

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This is the background problem of Gidden’s double hermeneutics.1 If we keep this in mind, then the cultural dimension is not determined either by the generalization of values, nor by individualistic multiculturalism, but by a new syncretism. Therefore, the global diffusion of cultural and institutional patterns is an important aspect of the cultural orientation and self-description of social communication. These are distance effects (Stichweh 2000, 254–256). For these effects, it is typical that the social units involved in it do not enter into a direct communicative process.

Segmentary Culture This phase initiates a process of indigenization (decivilization) of institutional and cultural behaviors. It goes along with the transformation of mass society into a segmentary society, triggered by the differentiation and direct accessibility of information and marketing strategies with the dissemination medium of modern communication technologies. The content of these messages and communications is tailored to a mix of the respective buyers of the age cohorts, social groups, their customs and rituals, as well as different languages (Ito 1991, 33–58). With regard to this changed cultural fabrication, we are now talking about a segmentary culture. A segmental society and culture is no longer integrated through common values and beliefs, nor through counterfactual orientations of the communication participants. It is another medium of expression of self-observation and self-description of social communication, which no longer analytically externalizes “culture” in the frame of reference of the action systems, and orders it as a control symbolism in a hierarchy of control.2 Cultural, esthetic, and even moral change triggers a competition of possible interpretations of the definition of the situation of the segmentally differentiated society, leading to new differentiations of the experiences of members of social systems. As a result, cultural products and traditions are accessible to a larger proportion of populations. It energizes a global market of cultural aggregations in which its participants compete with their interpretations, with the members of social systems participating, marking, and observing themselves from different points of view. This gives us an understanding of what the deconstruction of the concept of culture means for sociological theory.

“The development of sociological knowledge is consumed by the concepts of acting people without expert knowledge. On the other hand, terms that are coined in the meta-languages of the social sciences routinely re-enter the realm of actions for which they were first formulated. However, this does not directly lead to a transparent social world. Sociological knowledge is screwing itself into and out of the realm of social life, and it is an integral part of this process that this knowledge transforms both itself and this area.” (Giddens 1995, 26). 2 For a well-replicated account of this approach, see: Parsons (1966). 1

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New Demarcation Struggles At the same time, however, cultural globalization is creating new conflicts between indigenous and commercial culture, as well as between center culture and peripheral cultures. Indigenous cultures claim to their own right over the one-size-fits-all culture and oppose their capture through a global cultural market. Peripheral cultures counteract the demands of the center culture at national and global levels and report to it in relation to their claims. This leads to a conflict between multiculturalism and individualistic universalism, which can hardly be compensated. This is highlighted by Münch (2008). This conflict has been a topic in American sociology since 1979, and since the mid-1990s, the problem has changed to the point where the concept of multiculturalism as global mélange (hybridization) has been interpreted differently. With regard to the sociology of contemporary society, there was talk of a situation of post-hybridization, as the social structure is beginning to change drastically. This concerns the changed social structure of business organization, employment, and economic investment in the economic system and the reorganization of the political system.

Chapter 19

Working Hypothesis

Social Integration Of particular interest in sociological theory vis-à-vis structural change in membership systems is the recasting of the theory of social integration, which goes hand in hand with the constitutive structures of world society (Preyer 2018a, Part IV, Vol. 3, Part V). The talk of “World Society” is an auxiliary hypothesis that serves to compare these structures. One could, at the very least, put it that way. World society condenses itself into its constitutive structures as the membership orders of the society of societies and the self-observation of its communication systems. In the process, an omniscient observer (Laplace’s demon) is taken away. This leads to the new design of the “Third research program of multiple modernities, glocalization and membership order.” Analytical level of observer placement: Society as a membership order of membership systems of a company of companies is the reference framework above the level of organization and interaction, which has an emerging level with its own characteristics. The working hypothesis for theoretical systematization and empirical research on the structural problems of social integration states: The societies in a global reference framework of the future will be differentiated in a limitless and horizontal way in regions and vertically in levels from locality to globality. (Münch 2001a, 255–256, authors translation)

From this it can be concluded that the sociological theory of the integration of social systems can be seen differently from the one in a Durkheim–Parsons tradition, in order to address the now recognizable structural problems of the unstable relationship between national solidarity, state governance, and systematizing economic growth. However, we have to ask ourselves what the quote means with “globality.” It does not mean the globe as the earth, no singular world society and no unification of communication. The level of “locality to globality” is the extent of social exchange, its organization and hybrid order formation, as well as the digital © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_19

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communication of the next society. This does not imply that the expansion of social exchanges could not be restricted again. In the context of the theory of the social integration of the Next society, we should proceed from a different order. The “analytical placement of the observer” concerns the concept of society. As far as the “inclusion and exclusion of the new welfare state,” the stratification structure of world society and civil society provided the disorderly expansion, differentiation, and interpenetration of functional systems (Münch 2001a, 269–294, 2010, 2011).

Reference Problem The redeployment of the sociological theory of the integration of social systems is the guiding principle of the question: What does it say and how is a limitless, horizontal and vertically differentiated social membership and communication integrated by the changed inclusions and exclusions of the members of social systems such as inclusion through employment or through exclusion in slums and into lifelong unemployment? An answer to this question is given by the sociology of membership and the membership order. This requires a resystematization of the functional theory of segmentary, layered differentiation and the boundary structures of functional differentiation in the regionally differentiated world society. In the recasting of the theory of differentiation, it can be assumed that the increase in the density of communication, the status struggle of interest groups, and the social exchange increases competition for scarce resources. In his study of the social division of labor, Durkheim (1902) presented the problem. The latter was taken up by Münch (2011) in his analysis of the constitutive structures of world society. Durkheim distinguishes as compensation the strategies an “increased death rate,” “emigration,” “increased crime rate,” “war,” and “specialization”—all of which counteract this structural problem. The strategies of compensation are also latent in world society as a differentiation of regional companies. The analysis of the consequential problems is the research program of the study of the consequences of transnational free trade and the problem of the inequality of living conditions in the regions of world society (Münch 2011).1 This addresses the recasting of the theory of social integration.

1

On Durkheim and the continuation of its research program: Münch (2011, 11–30).

Chapter 20

Integration Theory

Concept of Integration Reference Problem The concept of the integration of membership systems should be used in sociological theory as a general reference problem and not formulated from the perspective of an interest group. This concerns the cut that is being made. This will determine how the research program for the systematization of social integration in sociological theory is conceived and addresses the problem of membership order of social systems. In the broadest sense, this is a theoretical decision that cannot be taken away from the sociologist, as he or she should not be guided by other subjects. When we ask about a general concept of the integration of members of social systems, the answer is that integration must be understood as the structural preservation of social systems and their self-observation. Membership theory and sociology of membership deepens the problem of the integration of this type of system that exists in the tradition of sociological theory. If we assume that the membership decision is dominated by the time dimension, then there is no guarantee of membership for remaining in social systems. The subjective motives of the members and the motives of interest groups are subordinate to this. Luhmann must agree in this respect that the evolutionary contingency of the emergence of social systems radicalizes the problem of social order as a social order is something improbable. He is not alone in this; Eisenstadt has repeatedly emphasized in his work that social order is something very fragile. In retrospect, it must be emphasized that the approaches in sociological theory that are repeatedly attempted to remedy or solve this problem, such as the interaction between two individuals, the mirroring, the reciprocity of perspectives or even of mutual performances of the participants in communications, must be abandoned. This also applies to the symmetry assumption. If we assume, for example, the self-selectivity of perspectives and the inconceivability of the other (the opposite), the symmetry model can no longer be © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_20

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understood. This does not imply that the Other does not exist and is a fiction. Here, Luhmann is correct to note that the difference between psychological and social systems must be interpreted more strictly than is the case in the sociological theory handed down. However, the unstable situation of remaining in social systems and the processing of random and unexpected events could be sufficient for the artificial entities of social systems to differentiate themselves from their environment. The membership systems thus trigger the construction of new structures, which in the time dimension are restabilized, strengthened, and accelerated by several system references, for example, ego and alter, system and environment. This is to be described on the condition that every system-environment differentiation and every membership decision refers to something given that cannot be negated, for example, the experienced, the expected, the thought, the imagined, and the imaginative. In this respect, we assume an environment (world) as a condition for any theory formation in our object language. We cannot deny this requirement. The concept of membership theory thus presupposes the self-reference of the membership difference as a boundary by which each social system is structurally determined as a membership system. This structure as the selection and restabilization of membership have to bind social systems in the time dimension. It can be assumed that membership in social systems itself is timed.

Loss of Plausibility In order to avoid misunderstandings, it is advisable to assume that in sociological integration theory, integration as a membership integration, is the further term over social integration. Membership integration is a neutral term. It includes the difference and indifference of the members, their self-observation and mutual observation, but also their respect. Membership integration always involves the decision and selection of membership conditions as well as the self-observation of their operationalization. It does not affect any rating as good/bad or right/wrong. The decision and selection expel in which it includes, that is, non-membership is always present in the social system and cannot be made and observed as exclusion from outside the social system. Along this decision and selection, the operational boundaries of social systems and their organizational regulation run. From an evolutionary point of view, open and closed membership systems and their orders are differentiated. When we ask about a general concept of integration, the answer is close to “integration is structural preservation.” This does not exclude asymmetric interaction conditions among members of social systems, for example, if the formal organizations are organized by an asymmetric body that establishes powers of instruction, the employees in that organization are not disintegrated. Structure in this case is the restabilization of expectations in the time dimension, which binds time and ensures the projection of expectation of expectations. The intrinsically value of the structure

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thus lies in its cross-situational repeatability of a problem solution. Every event disappears with its occurrence, but structures are types of expectations that are repeatable in terms of expectations, such as an employee who can be hired and dismissed in a company, who could also be fired and then be discontinued by another company. However, there is still a very fundamental problem to be pointed out. The concept of integration must include the negation margins of membership selection as a feature. The selection of membership as a binary coding that excludes in which it includes provides social systems with a margin of negation. In this respect, in the integration of members of social systems, restabilization by exclusion has a structural function. We can also call this immune events. At the actual stage, however, we do not have a satisfactory theoretical placement of this term in sociological theory.1 In general membership theory, it is placed in the analysis of internal-external differentiation (Preyer 2018a, 1, 77–81). When analyzing societies as membership orders, we can speak of a rather weak and a rather strong immunology. This concerns the inclusion exclusion problem, as in the case of a welfare state that weakens a rather strong immunology with its model of respect and payment. Integration in Chinese society, for example, can be classified as a strong immunology, as there is an indifference toward the disadvantaged.2 Social integration is a special case of the integration of members of social systems or membership systems. It does not consist of a consensus among members of social systems. On the contrary, it must be explained that and why membership integration is given and set up in an evolutionary manner even without this insinuation. For example, negative integration can also be strongly socially integrated. The integration problem is repeatedly interpreted from the point of view of a basic consensus on values, norms, and institutions. Not only has this not promoted new insights, but these approaches have long since lost their plausibility. The integration problem requires a quite different approach, taking into account both, the integration and non-integration of members of social systems. The sociology of membership considers social integration to be an integration of members of social systems that is closed to the outside world. The members are socially integrated if they cannot voluntarily withdraw from this system, for example, the evolutionary segmental differentiation of the kinship system. However, they can be ejected. Similar conditions apply to the social stratification of the nobility in a society. The options for action of the members, also with regard to the abandonment of social systems, only increase with an evolutionarily higher differentiation and the higher permeability of the membership system society. The sociological theory of integration cannot be designed from a moral point of view. One can agree with Parsons that the theory of social integration is not a

1

To the immune system of society and the legal system as the immune system of social communication. It is a new version of the sociological theory of conflicts: Luhmann (1995a, 357–404). According to our evaluation, the Luhmann followers do not pursue this approach. 2 For this: Part V, in this book.

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theory-free, but an interest-free research program. In order to identify their basic problem, it is advisable to assume a reinterpretation of the double contingency (Luhmann 1995a, 103–136). This is a note that introduces a recast of the theory of social integration.

Structural Problem of Communication The subject of social ontology is repeatable communicative event types. Thus, expectations and expectations of expectations are formed, which can be projected in the time dimension by the participants in communication systems. They compensate for the double contingency in the ego-age dyads. Double contingency means that ego does not know the options of alter and vice versa. The actions of ego and alter are conditionally dependent on what alter intends/does/expects/prevents/does not do/leaves out. Contingency is that which is not necessary and not impossible. This contingency also exists when more than two participants in the communication have to be considered. The participants are themselves opaque to each other. Here, the basic reference problem of every communication is whether or not alter will recognize the communication intention and the agent has to recognize that the addressee has recognized his communicative intention. Acceptance/non-acceptance and the execution of an intended action by an addressee are to be distinguished from this. In this respect, a self-referential circle exists in such a way that “I do what you want, if you do what I want” and whether and how this circle can be stopped. The self-referential circle is certainly an unstable situation. From Luhmann’s point of view, however, it is sufficient to form a social system with its own conditions of participation, in which two systems of consciousness with their own selective environmental relationships are involved. This triggers the self-observation of the participants in communication systems and the development of new structures, which intensify and accelerate in the time dimension.3 This is not natural growth and not a priori assumptions. However, the double contingency exists again and again and cannot be eliminated in the time dimension. It provides social communication with scope for negation. They trigger the self-observation of communication. It should already be clear from this that this dramatizes the problem of the social order as a time-spanning binding regulation of expectations, compensation for damages and forms of help, since it cannot be guaranteed independent of time. This reference is informative for the analysis of the social integration of contemporary society(s) with its problem-related nature of damage compensation in as much as social communication cannot negate the double contingency structurally and evolutionarily, but can only compensate for it. It should also be remembered that the structural determination of psychic systems with their own subjective selections, the elimination of double contingency,

3

Luhmann: autocatalysis of social system.

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repeatedly becomes a problem. The surprise of the environment experienced as a contingent, the moment of the shock of the environmental reference as unreachable by consciousness and the perception of the other as a foreign body, from which we cannot avoid, irritates every communication in the sequence of its connection rationality as an event projected into the future. Membership of social systems compensates for this shortcoming by expectations of expectation, which are not, however, the last guarantees for the continuation of communication and membership. It is fundamental that all expectations of expectations are “expectations” of members of social systems. This does not make the integration problem any easier. This is reinforced by the fact that the integration of members and their status positions in the time dimension must be permanent, but not uncorrectable. Here, membership integration is a contingency formula.

Problem-Related Social Integration What Does Membership Integration Mean? De-Solidarization The recasting of the theory of social integration is motivated in the current situation of the sequence of research programs of sociological theory by the fact that globalization has triggered a local de-solidarization at the level of municipalities, regions, and nations. At the global, local, supranational level, this differentiation is not compensated by new solidarity. But it does not create a singular global society. This is not at odds with multiple modernization and the reshaping of regions. An example is the manner in which the political center of China is currently transforming the city of “Beijing” into a multi-center metropolis that reaches to the coast. This does not rule out backlash and new boundaries. For the political system, the consequential problem arises that the general interest is increasingly replaced by the perception of the organization of individual interests and a pluralism of prosperity. A Rousseauian democracy and popular sovereignty as a single formula of political communication can no longer be realized with the loss of sovereignty of nation states. Presumably, even in historical retrospect, this was more of an illusion, if not a mistake. It is also a historical semantic of the description of the political system, which makes the position of binding decisions invisible as their function. To be clear, what we call the “state” will therefore not disappear as organization of the political system. One may wonder, however, whether, for example, the Communist Party, as an organization of the Chinese political system, is a modern state. This also applies to the former Soviet Union.

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Concept of Integration For the analysis of social integration, we have to take a much more differentiated approach under the premise of the sociology of the next society than is usually the case. This is also because, in terms of sociological theory, the difference of inclusion-exclusion orders dominates all subsystems. It can be assumed that functional differentiation of the membership system society results in a differentiation process between the subsystems, the organizational system, and the interaction system. According to this approach, social integration can no longer be achieved by consensus, not even by consensus on values, but can be explained as a mutual constraint on the disposition over options of members of membership systems. The constraints are imposed by membership conditions, with membership decisions to be made and communicated on an ongoing basis. This requires the selection of members and is a prerequisite for the construction of system complexity. The membership-theoretical concept of integration thus states that integration is a selective integration of members of social systems. Members have to adjust to these conditions if they want to remain members of social systems. It should always be kept in mind that the concept of social integration is an interest-independent but not a theory-independent concept. Parsons has stressed this time and again. From the perspective of everyday life, it can be assumed that we can observe the problem of living together addressed by this concept in different ways. From the perspective of membership theory, the concept of integration is conceived as a differential order of memberships and is aligned with the analysis of the constitutive structures of world society as a society of societies. From the perspective of communication theory, this concerns the sequentialization of membership and communication as well as the area of social indifference. This area is established by the functional differentiation of the economic, political, legal, and scientific systems, but also by the fact that all expectations can be opportunistically modified. It should be emphasized that integration through membership is not tied to consensus/dissent. It is not a normative concept, but rather a limitation that accompanies the operationalization of the membership condition (code). From the point of view of the general theory of membership for the concept of integration, it should be emphasized that every social system has a system of authority (that is, normative authority, power) that enforces the projection of expectations (Preyer 2018a, 81–86). This system consists of both the auctoritas (the anomic) and the potestas (the nomic).4 Its auctoritas serves to declare a state of exception. Through it, social systems are self-determined as non-trivial machines, as they are placed in the self-generated state of uncertainty. The self-reference (selfdetermination) of social systems is to decide on the state of emergency. Applied to

4

In the more recent literature, see (Agamben 2004, 52–65, 88–104). The prototype of the modern state of exception in Roman law, the adoption of the senatus consultum ultimum (proclamation of the Justitiums (pause, suspend the law), iustitium edicere or indicere) 52–54.

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integration theory, this means that inclusion always has an unmarked outside; that is, inclusion, as well as membership, does not exclude exclusion. In order to deal with the problem, it is advisable to distinguish between the concepts of integration available in sociology. They refer to a membership theory and membership within a sociological reinterpretation. 1. Social integration as a closed membership, that is, a social system is closed by its membership condition in its internal and external differentiation, for example, the kinship system, social stratification as a system of differences between prestige groups and associations. 2. Negative systemic integration of systemic open membership, for example, in the economic, political, and economic systems. Negative integration always binds the participants to this communication system strongly. In this respect, negative integration does not preclude strong social integration. 3. Inclusion and exclusion, that is, the chance of being considered as a person as a member of social systems in the sense of an entitlement membership. The problem of inclusion and exclusion is not that of participating in communications and membership in organizations. The opportunity to be considered as a person is to be qualified by the guide to the differentiation of social membership systems. It can be assumed that one can be strongly socially integrated in the exclusion area (Luhmann 1997, 618–634). The reference problem is that the so-called “logic of inclusion” has reached its zero point and is collapsing. The humanist elites will not change that.5 4. The collective solidarity integration of collective membership, for example, the collective integration of the welfare state and of organizations such as trade unions, business associations, but also at the level of the small social systems of associations. We recognize from the distinctions that these are membership systems and orders that selectively access the life chances, affiliations, and options of their members. The sociology of membership provides an answer to what is to be inferred from the fact that functional differentiation means that inclusion/exclusion is no longer controlled by society as a whole. The decision is left to the respective subsystems. The order of inclusion that goes hand in hand with functional differentiation leads to the idealization of the “full inclusion of all people.” Such idealizations fail to recognize that the evolutionary variations of inclusions are fixed and limited by a differentiation of membership conditions of the respective subsystems. This has not

5

Preyer (2009b Bd. 2, 28–57). The concept of inclusion goes to Parsons which it classifies in the analytical frame of reference of the action systems. It distinguishes between the aspects of the development process inclusion (primary function: integration), value generalization (primary function: preservation of (value) patterns, differentiation (primary function: achievement of goals) and adaptive ascension (primary function: customization). Parsons however, it does not exclude that there may also be disturbances between the interaction of the functions, because it basically distinguishes between the analytical and empirical levels of the analysis of the actions and their preconditions.

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prevented the variability of membership conditions from being stylized into corresponding values and translated into political programs.

Negative and Positive Integration Negative Solidarity We can illustrate the changes in the foundations of social integration brought about by globalization but also by Europeanization by Durkheim’s integration theory of negative and positive solidarity. This initiates the reorientation of integration theory as a sociology of membership order. We speak of negative solidarity when members of social systems agree in conceding the pursuit of rights of action. This concerns their formal membership status. This particular membership status is guaranteed by a property right, which avoids disputes over a thing and violent appropriation. This leads by extension to an avoidance of conflict. In their exercise, these rights of action bring about negative solidarity among members in that they can pursue their interests independently of one another. Negative integration concerns the dismantling of trade barriers and the free movement of capital in the economic system. The counterpart to this is the recognition of these rights by the members among themselves and the establishment of instances, which authoritatively guarantee the observance of this recognition. From this, it can be seen that formal membership status is subject to formal regulation. Negative solidarity leads to indifference among members, as it tends to neutralize and dissolve strong ties to communities of tradition through the pursuit of economic interests. The “sacred tradition,” as Max Weber called it, does not define social community as a whole. It includes state-regulatory interventions in the economic system as countermeasures to the effects of economic activity, with the aim of reducing undesirable side effects, such as significant inequalities as well as ecological and technical risks. We recognize from this that negative solidarity is brought about by a structural overlap of services and products between the legally constituted political system and the economic system, which alters the general conditions of participation as these are no longer dictated by communities of tradition.

Positive Integration Positive solidarity implies a closure of the social community and a control of the options of its members. That is, the membership status in a community is determined by limiting the scope of its members’ options among themselves. Positive solidarity closes a community internally and externally. This includes:

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1. Members of social systems recognize each other’s margins of interest pursuit. Market relations are an advantageous prerequisite for this. One counts to it civil, political, social, and cultural rights. The granting of rights concerns membership in the social community, which is constituted in such a way that it permits the experience of difference and formal affiliations without strong social ties. 2. Conflicts are decided through legally standardized procedures. The objectification and jurisdification of community action concerns restitutive sanction (Durkheim 1902), that is, equity takes the place of restrictive sanction. This concerns a social community whose members share and respect certain equity claims. However, the membership and communication medium of respect is itself subject to inflationary and deflationary processes. This is structurally inherent in it, because deference cannot be granted independently of time. However, it is often ritualized in organizations, for example, through corporate legends and rituals. 3. Legal authorities successfully sanction the deviations of members. This requires that the legal authority can actually be enforced. This is successful only if the legal system, for its part, is not undermined and has become increasingly disfunctional due to a flood of laws. The integration and membership medium of positive solidarity is thus law. In this respect, one can also speak of legal solidarity of a legal community. The jurisdification of community action through civil law and civil jurisdiction thereby demonstrates the extent to which positive solidarity is enforced. However, positive solidarity goes beyond legal solidarity in a legal community. 4. In a common bond, it is promoted and stabilized by the density of the division of labor, frequency of contacts, civic spirit, and common origin. But it also includes: 5. The approval of justice demands for social compensation of inequalities by the members of the social system. Justice is subject to different interpretations, for example, as equality of results, fairness, fair share, or administrative equality. 6. The common emotional, biographical, professional, etc. attachment means a priority of the membership of groups over the individual members and 7. A priority of one’s own group over others. As members of the Western cultural sphere, we tend to fail to recognize that a universalistic ethic has not spread universally. For us, solidarity is also always a free choice; at the same time, the relationships of solidarity in which we live are not freely available to us. They also compel us. Sociologists have repeatedly pointed out that a universalist ethic, for its part, depends on familialism. Moreover, it should be emphasized that a universalist market of moral respect is inherently unstable. The integrating and membership medium of this positive solidarity is the sense of belonging. It is brought about by the density of the division of labor, political agreement, common group membership, but also the size of the social budget. The fulfillment of conditions 1–7 listed above, indicates the extent of solidarity integration through membership. From the extent of social integration in points 4–7 it is recognizable that it reduces the options of the pursuit of interests from members of

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social systems as the ascriptive membership condition in the respective group restricts the freedom of choice. One is bound to it as a member, and it dictates the commitment of each member. The membership condition thus determines the structure of social integration. The dilemma of social integration as solidarity integration consists in the fact that it has more and more paradoxical effects under the condition of globalization and Europeanization, which can no longer be harmonized by a higher instance. Such a higher authority was the nation-state. If the members of social systems have a broad scope of their options, which their respective membership status grants them, the greater are the possible negative external effects such as the refusal to cooperate, cynicism, injustice, or criminality. In contrast, if members’ options are overridden by membership status, this leads to a suppression of innovation through community coercion. The decline of solidarity based on ascriptive-privileged membership conditions (family, neighborhood) has led welfare states to compensate for them through the welfare system and self-help groups. Self-help groups in particular are an example of how solidarity can be guaranteed and perpetuated beyond a state welfare system. But this requires a different attitude to the solidarity problem. This also addresses churches. The paradox of social integration beyond the stabilization of nation states leads us to the problem of the failure of full inclusion and to a difference theory of the order of inclusion. This is evidenced primarily by global migration flows. In this regard, social science research proves that these migrations will continue.

Some Surprising Conclusions Non-Perfectibility When systematizing social integrations, we should start from the structural problem of the imperfectness of social communication. The sociology of membership draws the conclusion from the point of view of empirical research on social integration and its systematization that the traditional welfare state as a mutual support for national solidarity, economic governance, and economic growth is not renewed but replaced by a welfare pluralism. This is suggested, for example, by Münch (2010), Willke (2003), Preyer 2018a, b, and Krawietz (2009, 2016). It follows that in contrast to the welfarestate integration programs of the traditional welfare state, social integration is completely different from the point of view of the sociological theory of membership and must thus be systematized in accordance with contemporary society. Social integration is a “creative destruction” and a “destructive creation” (Schumpeter 1950). Schumpeter refers to the economic restructuring in the market of the economic system as an ongoing innovation through selection of competitive market participants. In retrospect, the effective allocation of resources on the market does not

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compensate for unintended consequences. This is the interface at which the welfare state is to be placed in sociological theory as an interpenetration zone between the economic system, the legal system, and the political system. The anomaly that has arisen in the Western European welfare state, for example, is the legalization of claims in the face of social decline. The welfare state is a membership order of solidarity-based collective integration at the national level of social communication of members of social systems. In addition to it, other humanist elites are organized as is the case with Doctors Without Borders, non-governmental organizations as well as private and civil society aid organizations. The research focus is the “regime of pluralism,” which is not institutionalized in a world society as a global organization. Among the German sociologists, Münch, Willke, and Preyer took up Schumpeter’s approach and reinterpreted it with different theoretical approaches. Their common problem is that this destruction and creation have a structural effect that introduces a recast of the sociological theory of social integration through the regime of competitive pluralism (Münch 2001a, 2009, 2011; Preyer 2018a, b; Willke 2001, 2003). This also harmonizes with Eisenstadt’s approach. The social integration of membership systems is unstable in terms of their investment. From this point of view, it should be classified and investigated as a “dynamic process.” It can be assumed that a segment of sociological theory is the analysis of the types of social stratification as an inequality order, prestige order and its differentiation.6 If we assume that productive destruction and destructive creation is the structural feature of the membership integration of social systems, it is the negation room for membership integration. He provides social communication with immune events (Luhmann 1995a, 357–404).

Pluralistic Damage Limitation If the model of collective integration of the Western welfare state no longer has the conditions for support between economic growth, redistribution as economic governance, and integration into the regulation of the nation state, then the question of an alternative is obvious. It consists of a form of help with limited range, which has to cope with an “imbalance as a permanent state.” It amounts to weak coupling of membership systems without the right to universal competence. The problem is that “the regime of pluralism” of civil society associations, the “heterotopia of social order,” the “global dynamics and the local living worlds,” the “inclusion and exclusion” in the “new welfare state” and the “multiple heterarchy of regional societal membership orders” is an unstable condition. We cannot rule out the possibility that civil war will break out again and again. In this there is a convergence

6

Parsons–Luhmann–Münch Tradition: Problem of the justification of inequality, (Parsons 1977, 321–380), on Parsons’ stratification theory: (Münch 1982, 172–194), on the forms of differentiation: (Preyer 2018a, 156–165).

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of problem awareness, for example, between Krawietz/Preyer, Münch, Willke and even Luhmann. Assuming this problem, social integration programs will no longer have to assume a consensus on social norms and values as determined in the time dimension, but from “handling in the event of disappointment” (Luhmann 1995a, 238–239). The recognizable redeployment of social integration and the associated inclusions and exclusions goes hand in hand with a structural change between solidarity and justice. It is triggered and strengthened by the disintegration of representational democracy and the representation of common interests. At the level of the “constituent structures of world society,” social compensation can no longer be guaranteed by the state guarantee of relatively equal life chances for the world’s population. It is necessary to examine the extent to which the regulation of social integration and, with it, the exclusion of self-regulation, is left to social communication in the next society.7 In this respect, the continental Western European society differs from the United States. This leads to the transformation of the welfare state as a research program of comparative welfare state research.

Change of the Welfare State The fundamental problem with the changed governance of the political organization is that the success of the welfare regimes after the Second World War has obscured the view of the changed situation of the relationship between functional systems. This also applies to many research programs in sociological theory. The social policy of the welfare state cannot be applied to the changed situation. This applies both to the legalization of the working relationship, which is increasingly given to companyspecific regulations, but also to the increasing de-solidarization of the parties in the political system, as well as to the transnational legal regulations of conflicts in the political and economic systems, as they cannot be institutionalized globally. Here, the difference between trade union representation of interests and human resource management will no longer be bridgeable. Whatever the inclusions and exclusions in the new welfare state, we should not expect a European or a global social policy. The structural problem of all welfare regimes is that they have increasingly legalized the claims for inclusion, which in turn overwhelm the efficiency of the legal system. This also applies to the exchange of the political system with the economic system as the financing of social policy remains linked to ongoing growth. In case of the nation-state loses its integrative function and inclusion is just formal, then the sociological research focus should be the changed conditions of inclusion and exclusion. By virtue of the legal system remain restricted as emergence of institutional models of political conflicts. The latter are not based on power-based decisions anymore.

7

On regime of pluralism, competitive state we suggest reading Münch (2010).

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In order to understand these relationships, a distinction should be made between social and welfare states.8 The welfare state is a consequence of the transformation of the political system through the inclusion program of functional differentiation as full inclusion of the population in the political and other functional systems. The welfare state has the task of mitigating and correcting existing exclusions through social assistance. This leads to a greater dependence of the way in which parts of society are made more dependent on political decisions. The problems of social policy will increase as the transition from inclusion to exclusion becomes more fluid. The political system comes under constant pressure through its inclusion program and its impact, which it itself is hardly able to handle. It is to be emphasized that the political system cannot control the other subsystems in the sense that it imposes special purpose programs on them. It is worth noting that there is a problem pressure from the demands and demands of various kinds, which it itself cannot process. This leads to attribution problems, as the effects on the legal, scientific, and other social systems can no longer be clearly calculated.

Divergence Order The basic assumption of the theory of evolution is that it is happening and it is not at our disposal. Evolutionary theory is a theory construct in the scientific system and has not found a successor theory (Preyer 2018b, 18–19). From the point of view of sociological theory, the structural evolution of the social system will probably change in the next society rather toward the preservation of divergence orders. This favors primary legal systems. The programs of the functional systems can only work out system problems as an influence on the system events in the best case. However, they cannot externalize them, as they would lose their function as a result. However, these divergence orders can no longer be established by the development of new spaces, but by the perception of speed advantages. This makes them unstable from scratch. Under these conditions, the exclusion ranges increase. However, it would be wrong to assume that legal communication could regulate inclusion and exclusion. This would amount to self-destruction of the legal system. In the global frame of reference, therefore, more and more social movements will form, which are directed against Western dominance and their own political centers. In this way the social movements declare their supposed rights. It is already apparent that local, regional, ethnic, and transnational social movements are no longer center-oriented, but are distinguished from the global flow of information by self-reference. This applies particularly to anti-globalization opponents. Of particular research interest are the changes in social communication and collective identities, the structure of the political, economic and legal systems, the orientations of the support layers, and the change in stratification that they bring about. It is striking that there is a differentiation between the winners and the losers

8

Baecker (1994, 93–110), Luhmann (2000, 422–428).

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of modernization. This introduces new distributional conflicts in the battle for free resources. In this context, the investigation into the continuation of the patronage should persist. The control mechanisms of the coalitions and elites, which affect the components of the social order and its regulations, should be examined. The sociological problems to be investigated are the feedback mechanisms between the structure of the elites, the changed social-structural semantics, and the management of social communication (Eisenstadt 2006a, b, 298–299). This refers to how and whether continuous feedback is received or whether it is interrupted in certain change paths.

Differentiated Membership Order We live in a mobilized society, which encompasses economy, politics, solidarity, and culture. In this process, society, organization, and interaction change in such a way that a structural gap between them is created. Interactions have to be ended and started, society on the other hand is a resource that guarantees that with ended interactions, society does not stop. Society is no longer communicatively accessible. This enforces the dominance of restructured ascriptive solidarities, for example, through exchanges of certain benefits for certain recognition of professional, ethnic, and regional group identities, but also through national ascription, which will not disappear even in the next society. This is a consequence of the differentiation of the order of inclusion and a mechanism of restructuring social integration in a global world system. Formal organizations have the function of limiting the openness to inclusion of the subsystems. However, and this is part of their function, they cannot institutionalize inclusion. This means that they guarantee that the claim to personal consideration can be enforced in the subsystems. They have a completely different function, which also has an effect on the organizational management of conflict fields in a global world system, as it is precisely not their function to bring about general participation, be it in economic prosperity, political participation, or cultural communalization. More and more we observe the end of the logic of inclusion, thus of full inclusion and modernism. There is no lack of evidence for this. In the areas of exclusion no rights are enforceable. It is actually enough to be born in a ghetto to be excluded from the careers of the subsystems. Integration in a global world system is no longer a growth process, but it will be exposed, probably even more in the future, to a permanent crisis of inflation-deflation processes. Above all, integration based on solidarity will no longer be possible in the long run through subsidization, which has always stabilized exclusions. The alternative is to offer membership participation to those in need of support, that is, to increase employment and the spread of social enterprises. Success or failure in this process is brought about, to use Schumpeter’s term, by “creative destruction.” This means, however, that the imbalances that occur as a result of structural change will not be able to be eliminated on an ongoing basis. What is the vanishing point of positive integration (solidarity) under these changed conditions? Luhmann comes to the conclusion that “exclusion integrates

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much more strongly than inclusion”—a conclusion that changes integration theory in its entirety. In the exclusion realm, only the body counts; that is, one is a member through the functioning of one’s body. The inclusion realm, on the other hand, can integrate through distance, that is, large communicative loops can be established. Generalized respect as a membership medium of integration leads to weak communicative coupling as it allows members to distance themselves from social systems without conflict. In addition, it allows for more sophisticated communication since it does not depend on permanent confirmation rituals and high contact density, which can lead to friction. It also allows it to more easily channel conflicts of interest or bridge them through cooperation. It is precisely this circumstance that makes the inclusion sphere stable and allows selective communication. Contrary to the thesis of individualization, it should be emphasized that although the traditional associations of churches, parties, and unions are losing members, this does not mean that a process of atomization can be observed. On the contrary, an increasing variety of initiative groups is emerging, whose members organize themselves according to special interests, such as, in neighborhood assistance, animal protection, and development aid. The differential order of membership, in turn, does not mean that the members of social systems are not integrated. This is already justified by the fact that social communication takes place via symbiotic relationships.

Stratification Control of the Flow of Resources Social stratification is the blind spot of many sociological research programs. From a sociological point of view, social stratification cannot be systematized by a dominant hierarchy of power and the power elite, but as a prestige regulation that facilitates communication and contact. Social status positions are linked to functional systems, for example, of the economic, legal, and scientific systems. This does not exclude the different distribution of life chances and prestige benefits. For the sociologist, this is a triviality. In this case, if social stratification is no longer dominated by the kinship system, we can also speak analytically of classes that are figuratively advanced, above kinship stratification. Parsons (1977, 326–333) has already systematized this matter. They would be characterized by the fact that they have a high degree of access to the control of the flow of free resources. This is due to their status position in the social division of labor.

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Basic Elites Social stratification and its resystematization is the focus of every membership order and the elites that sustain it. This begs the empirical question: what circumstances and historical situations led to the selection of the elites. In this context, we borrow from Eisenstadt’s article on the riddle of axis-time cultures, which addresses this problem within the frame of reference of the evolutionary universality of the control of the flow of resources (Eisenstadt 2012, 277–293). However, there is another problem that demands attention. The analysis of social stratification is informative only if it takes the base elites into account. They are the supporting strata of the membership order. This must be taken into account in the restructuring of European stratification. It is worth noting that their supporting stratum are the human capital individualists. As a result, orders of difference are increasingly being established in European societies. Below, we first discuss the old European stratification in Great Britain, France, and Germany, and then address the structural problems of European stratification triggered by the transnational division of labor. This again points to the differential order of the next society. The social stratification of the European Union has to take into account the basic elite of human capital individualists. Only then it will have a systematic approach to the political sociology of the European Union.

Old Stratification of Europe European Stratification A look back at the old stratification of modern Europe as a membership order is therefore informative as this contrast illustrates the extent of the restructuring of the European social stratification. The old stratification of Europe has been described in such an ideal-typical way: 1. Great Britain. The membership order and social stratification in Great Britain was a distinctly differentiated community. However, this did not exclude the inclusion of a broad strata as in the inclusion of the working class through social participation. The membership condition, however, excluded immigrants and up-andcomers from the prestige order. In this respect, it is worth noting an internal closing function of membership by national identity and the nation as a community of citoyens (citizens). The membership order of Great Britain is one of differentiated estates in the various social groups. In Great Britain, the cult of the nation is represented by the crown. It complements a pluralistic and at the same time traditionally oriented community formation. Up to the present time, the preservation of national character is typical for Great Britain. The withdrawal from the European Union is a good proof of this despite the narrow majority in favor of Brexit. This is not expected to change. It

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should also be remembered that a large proportion of British elites saw European Union as an economic project, not a political one. British human capital individualists did not prevail over them (Münch 2008, 179–184, 364–366). 2. France. The condition of membership and social stratification in France consisted in a hierarchy of estates and classes. Membership of the nation as a civic community was relatively independent of ethnic-cultural origin. The cult of the Grand Nation, which is reflected in the statement “Vive la république! Vive la France!” was a nation as a community of citoyens (citizens). The working class and the organization of the Communist Party, despite its size, was not integrated into the prestige order of French society after the Second World War. The changed situation of immigration since the 1960s is linked to exclusion areas, which are increasingly triggering a backlash of national demarcation. The membership order of France is a socially stratified membership with strong boundaries between the different social groups. The French nation is a community of free and individual citizens with equal rights. It forms a community that overcomes group particularism. The political unit of the nation is the republic. It is independent of descent. The internal closing function is the expectation of assimilation of the immigrants to the French culture and way of life. Hostile nationalism toward immigrants, however, is not prevented by the French inclusion program. Political equality, in turn, corresponds to a differentiation of privileges and prestige, social intercourse, estates, classes and social stratification as social milieus.9 3. Germany. The membership order and social stratification in Germany consisted of a hierarchically differentiated community, a constant differentiation of classes and stratification, and a constantly tiered participation in public communication. Membership of the nation was a literate construction, and social democracy has been compromised with the constant differentiation of social communication. It was not a membership of a pluralist community. The internal closing function is the ethnic membership. The membership condition is determined by ancestry and the German language, and not by a historically open civil community. The membership order of Germany is a hierarchical membership as an estates differentiation of social groups.10 Changed Situation A reshuffle took place after the Second World War, which resulted in the Keynesian inclusion program of the social-liberal coalition. After Germany’s reunification, a changed situation of the collective self-definition of German collective identity

9

For an overview of the French social system: Münch (1986 vol. 2, 682). On an overview over the German social system: Münch (1986, 846). On the relationship between nation and community und the stratification order of Great Britain, France, and Germany: Münch (1986, 42–91). On the development of civil society in Great Britain, France, Germany, and America: Münch (2010). 10

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occurred through the orientation toward a European legalism. The model for this was the constitutional state and a discourse democracy or the deliberative model of democracy. It is evident that, following the failure of the attempt to establish a European constitution at the European level, this political program will not receive pan-European support in the future. The institutionalization of European legalism and the broad unification of the European legal order cannot be reconciled with the interests of the European national states. This also raises the structural problems of the integration of the European Union and the organization of its political system. This is demonstrated by the Polish case of the change in the appeal of constitutional judges by the political system. However, the excitement about this decision obscured the fact that, for example, in the Federal Republic of Germany, constitutional judges are also appointed by the political system.

European Stratification Structure Transnational Division of Labor and Restructuring of Social Stratification In the meantime, the structuring of European stratification after the Second World War, in the course of Europeanisation and as a result of the transnational economic system can be fully seen. There will no longer be a path to the past, which institutionalizes, for example, the model of the German and Swedish welfare states in the European Union. If we assume multiple modernizations and regionalizations, the stratification and class structure in national societies in different regions of world society is superimposed by a new differentiation in the center, semi-periphery (that is, emerging countries), and the periphery (that is, developing countries). Even before the problem and consequences of globalization to come to the fore, Reich described a fundamental problem of structural changes in stratification in the economic system (1991).11 He points out that the transnational division of labor has already led to a differentiation of employees into symbol workers (analysts), routine workers, and service providers. This differentiation is increasingly taking place in the transnational economic system. His diagnosis was that American products were detached from “American” companies as they were global networks of manufacturing. This also applies if its headquarters are in the United States. Many employees of

11

Reich (1991). He led the Department of Labor under President Clinton in 1992. He retired from service in 1996 as his economic policy program of poverty reduction and training initiatives was not successful. This is to be emphasized, but not entirely surprising, as the political center of the United States has not been successful under any president with its economic policies. Those who take these programs too seriously ignore not only the structure of the American political system, but also the structure of American society. The most successful was the New Deal, a world war economy of the Second World War. The phasing-out model was the political program of the “Great Society” from 1963 to 1969 under the President-in-Office Lyndon B. Johnson, which has not been continued.

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American companies, for example, are no longer Americans: 40% of IBM employees spread across the corporate network. It should be borne in mind that the proportion of the production of the directly employed employees is not high. The production chain is supplemented by supply contracts, licenses, and joint ventures.

Level of Education and Income From this point of view, national companies have no chance of the future. This has meant that income is increasingly dependent on educational attainment, resulting is an income imbalance. The qualification of the symbol analysts consists in “abstraction capability,” “system thinking,” “experimentation,” and “collaboration.” These skills cannot be easily imitated, but are acquired through appropriate training. The associated differentiation has a dramatic effect in stratification, as it is also placed in a local differentiated position. These social groups are detached from routine workers and service providers trained in the US and retreat into enclaves. They may assume civic responsibility, but members of this social group are retreating from the public to private institutions. Reich estimated the situation at the beginning of the 1990s to such an end that four-fifth of employees have a problematic economic existence, while one-fifth of them look to a rather “rosy” future. This did not happen immediately as the country recorded in the 1990s the longest sustained economic growth within a decade under the so-called Clinton era.

New Stratification Structure Differentiation of Stratification At the actual stage, empirical research shows that a new stratification structure is available. The change in this stratification also explains the observed shortcomings of the political organization and political parties of the European Union and the renewed career of populist parties and social movements. The new stratification is differentiated into: 1. A global elite, a national elite and a local underclass (Münch 2011, 53–56, 54). 2. This differentiation is repeated at the national level in such a way: (a) At the top one finds the transnational elite, which is at home in the metropolises and has global networks. (b) The middle class in the advanced metropolises, whose own social status is under threat, tends to be pessimistic. This distinguishes them from the old middle class of the welfare state. In contrast, the middle class of the emerging regions tends to be optimistic.

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(c) The new underclasses in the old centers are increasingly excluded as their members cannot meet the new conditions of competition (Münch 2011, 54–56). 3. The main conflict, for example, in the European Union, is between the model of social integration of human capital individualists, national interests, and distributional policy. The distributional interests of the national states, for their part, depend on the influence and use of the organizational power of the social groups in the European institutions. It should be noted that the power struggle between the institutions is intended to create a highly unstable political and social order in the EU. Recast Functional Differentiation For the analysis of the structure of multiple modernities and glocalization, it is important to keep in mind that segmented and layered differentiation does not disappear through functional differentiation and is not just a differentiation within functional systems. The very opposite is the case. The three forms of differentiation are linked by border structures and enter into a larger, more tense relationship of the struggle for the flow of free resources, which is also influenced by social movements and the organization of interest groups. This probably leads to varied levels of patronage and clientelism. The different modernizations of the regions form a symbiosis with the functional differentiation of the economic system. The segmental differentiation of the state organization is transferred from the intervention state to a new function, the competitive state, by the expansion of the economic system. It transfers economic rationality to national functional areas. This triggers a shift of social stratification into a global elite, a compressed national middle class, and a fragmented underclass. Only if we recognize this and systematically take account of it can we understand and explain the peculiarity of multiple modernization and glocalization. This has initiated structural changes so that non-economic functional systems, such as, science, education, politics, and religion, are increasingly dominated by economic rationality. In the process, this changes the organization of the political system as the new competitive state is dependent on the transnational economy, which in turn changes its function from the intervention state to the competitive state. However, this does not preclude protectionist measures.

Hegemonic Liberalization Structural Anomaly The permanent conflict that is to be expected in the European Union is between the increasing individualization and self-organization of the members of society in free

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associations and the continued existence of the segmentation of the European political system in national states. This will also lead to a difficult-to-bridge differential and anomalies between modernization winners, modernization tolerances, and modernization losers. The losers include the underqualified people. This scenario gives the national state the new task of bringing about the integration of the marginalized groups. This task cannot grant a collective welfare. Münch concludes from his research that the integration of the economic system of the European Union, the social integration of European society, is changing further from the basic plant. It will lead to a structural change in national societies, as their collectivist integration (community order) is increasingly unshaped and superimposed by individualistic integration. This is close to the semantics and institutional order of constitutional liberalism in the United States. Openness, plurality, and institutional individualism of social communication are the components of this model of social order. These structural changes lead to greater competition, with a reduction in communicative distances, which increase the shortcomings of the social order within the national states. The consequence is the formation of a structural anomaly in social communication. When it comes to modernizing Europe, a fundamental problem is whether it is on the way to a semantics and the institutional form of constitutional liberalism. This concerns above all the future and the transformation of the welfare state. In the course of the transnational expansion of the European economic system and its integration into a global economic system, market opening will further promote the exchange of goods, services, people, and capital. As a result, the networks of the modernization elite are expanding. It consists of mobile members of the company who are endowed with appropriate human capital. It is not a traditional property and educational elite. Empirical research has shown time and again that the support layer of European integration has a higher level of education as well as professional status and a higher income. The expansion of negative integration by this social group is increasingly initiating a conflict with the positive (solidarity) integration of the welfare state. Although it has been repeatedly called for the European economic system to be able to establish an appropriate welfare state, social policy remains left to the national states and it is not clear that they are standardized. It must also be assumed that the German welfare state cannot be transferred to the European Union. This also applies if, from the German point of view, this is repeatedly demanded in the political system. It may be obvious to highlight the significant differences in member states’ economic performance, institutions, and cultural traditions. In this respect, the social integration of the European Union will not be a collectivist preservation of ownership and prosperity. The outcome of this conflict is not yet clear.

Human Capital Individualism However, the changed situation cannot be explained by the problem of the existing indebtedness of the welfare states and in return for the establishment of experimental

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fields of neoliberalism, but rather by a structural change of solidarity integration, which is brought about by transnationalization, human capital individualism, and the inclusion of the members of society through higher education. It is to be agreed that the mobile elites and their mission models are increasingly gaining ground. This initiates a hybridization of the mission models (Münch 2008, 367–369). The research increasingly shows that the mission statement of human capital individualism and, with it, the level of education in the European countries has grown. Human capital individualism is a new condition of membership of social systems and participation in social communication. This is also the case-law of the ECJ (European Court of Justice), which promotes internal market integration. Above all, the German and French traditions will have to adapt to the changed conditions of social communication. For them, this will mean a change of mentality that has already been undertaken by their economic and scientific elites. According to Münch, the structural changes in European society can only be adequately understood if it is recognized that the social order of European integration follows a cult of the individual as the program of a global culture of the entrepreneurial member of society. This institutionally leads to an approximation of constitutional liberalism and individually a new membership condition of participation in social communication. It is “the new subject culture of universal entrepreneurship” that replaces the employee culture of the twentieth century and bourgeois entrepreneurship of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Münch 2008, 379–380).

Changed Thinking Requirements The fundamental conflict of European modernization is that a Europeanization of the economic, legal, and political systems has been initiated, in which the European Court of Justice has the role of guaranteeing individual rights. At the same time, national disintegration is a trigger for counter-movements of re-nationalization. We should assume that the counter-movements of the collectivist tradition will continue to draw boundaries with liberal constitutionalism in the future as the feelings of belonging and the worlds of origin cannot be Europeanized. This limits the prevalence of human capital individualists in European society (Münch 2008, 214–21, 258–66). In his analysis of European research, Münch concludes that the present political and cultural guidelines do not enable us to understand European modernization adequately. The conflicts of interest groups, which at the national level are seen as the mutual distortions between centralism and group particularism, republicanism and liberal democracy, strong state and political federalism, liberalism and antiliberalism is also repeated at the European level. The concepts of state, nation, republic, representation, and legitimacy are unsuitable for the design and organization of the political system of European society. They are due to history and solutions in the course of the formation and consolidation of the European national states. The modernization of the old Europe followed different development paths in Great Britain, France, and Germany, which cannot be merged into a common

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Europe. European society will not be able to produce the same homogenization as in the national state. This will usher in a paradigm shift in politics. Hegemonic liberalization as a membership order refers to the transition to the next society. It structurally changes social differentiation, as it puts all social systems and social communication under the pressure of the liberalization program. It also replaces national welfare democracy and the participatory national social partnership. This changes the structure of the political system, as it promotes the governmentalization of the state and the transfer of its exercise of power to non-governmental functional areas. The governance of political parties is then less and less supported by the power of the law in a territory and is no longer supported by state sovereignty. Instead, it consists in the observation of social communication and the effect of the policy instruments. As a result, institutional competition enters the center of social integration marked by both inclusion and exclusion. Functional problems, such as employment and professional qualifications, play a role here, but institutional competition pushes back political decision-making. This will mean that opposition to this political regime will also be less focused on democratic forms. As these changes, collectivist integrations lose their ties. The social integration of European society will therefore not be the integration of European nations in solidarity. Here, it should be noted that the membership order of the European Union is closer to the constituent liberalism of the United States. It can be concluded from Münch's research that the European Union will have a democratic deficit from the point of view of its layout, which cannot be eliminated if we set the standard of national democracy. Clearly, the Europeanization of economics, politics, and law favors constitutional liberalism. This introduces further national disintegration without creating supranational integration and organization of the European Union's political system. Legislation on case-law will shift when it comes to the organization and settlement of conflicts. In this respect, the European Court of Justice will have a relevant role comparable to that of the US Supreme Court.

Welfare Pluralism Münch's societal-theoretical studies of the structural changes in functional systems introduces a new version of the theory of social integration. The national welfare state is increasingly becoming a welfare pluralism. Transferred to the constitutive structures of world society, it can be assumed that no convergent evolution occurs and that its regions develop evenly. This leads to the problem of structure of the legal system of world society. Although there are formal similarities in it, for example, the separation of criminal and civil law, there are broad differences between the individual regions that persist, for example, the extent of the legal structure of social communication in China and Japan. Human capital individualism is a new condition of membership of participation in social communication, which leads to the de-solidarization of national welfare cartels. This includes making collective identities more abstract and switching

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participants in social communication to cognitive orientation. They have to learn faster and hold on less to the counterfactual. This can be explained by the fact that the members of social systems no longer belong to a single collective. Weak social integration, which allows for reflexive loops, is stronger than forced membership in collectives. However, this can also lead to the eruptive assertion of collective identities. However, European modernization and its membership condition should not be generalized. There are different models of modernization in contemporary societies that do not follow the Western pattern, such as China, India, and Russia. A historical counterexample to Western modernization was the modernization of Japanese society in the second half of the nineteenth century. Further progress in the understanding of the structural change of European society in the course of the restructuring of the functional systems can be expected if research on Europe is oriented toward the paradigm of an integrated social theory, with well integrated insights of different research strategies. This, in turn, leads to legal theory and sociology of law. For an appropriate research program, we recommend membership sociology. This sociological framework from theory of society should prove fruitful.

Chapter 21

Research Foci of Membership Orders

Initial Situation Update The new design’s “third research program of multiple modernities, membership and globalization 2016” with the focus on “Glocalization” and “membership order” assumes that current societies are increasingly in a situation whose social regulatory framework is to be described as beyond liberalism, welfare economics, and national state. This does not mean, however, that the national organizations of the political system are disappearing or are completely insignificant. However, they have strong opponents, such as the World Bank and rating agencies, but also non-governmental organizations and new social movements.1 However, this does not exclude investment programs by the economic system, as evidenced by Chinese modernization since the 1990s.

Placement of the Observer If we start from the reference problem of world society as a society of societies, the observer must be set up in different positions. The standard Western view cannot be generalized, as we should assume different economies. The economic system of the twenty-first century has a different structure in East Asia, China, Japan, and India. The analysis of the membership order is a different relationship between the interpenetration zone between economic growth, the governance of the political system, and redistribution. This also addresses the spread of the macroeconomic conditions of the World Trade Organization (WTO), largely based on the economic policies of 1

For the classification of social movements: Preyer (2018b, part IV XIII).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_21

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the United States. It is not advisable to speak of a “globalization of the twenty-first century,” since there will probably be no Western hegemony of economic exchange (trade), the financial sector, and international institutions. The difficult problem is to recognize the changed (new) trends of the twenty-first century, which cannot be predicted. Nederveen Pieterse agrees that the East Asian changes in economic and social exchange have dissolved the “old center-periphery relations” (Nederveen Pieterse 2018, 14–15). This also explains why the institutional organization between the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 1990 is and is likely to remain unstable.

Structural Change in Functional Systems and Their Institutions From the Present to the Future The research of the next society does not jump into the future and observe from there, the way of the contemporary society to the next society. It is already recognizable in the structural change of the functional system. The changes in the political system, the economic system, and the legal system are to be emphasized. In addition characterizing theses are set up, which are explained. We should not assume that a global social order will be institutionalized. On the contrary, we should assume a multipolar order determined by the constitutive structures of world society. The new structure of the economic system is that it is expanding at the national, regional, and local levels. As a result, different networks are formed, which do not unify societal communication and which cannot be controlled by the organization of the political system and its participants. With regard to the legal system, we should assume that different legal systems go hand in hand with the constitutive structures of world society. This is already true of Western societies, if we compare, for instance, US and British law with French and German law. But it is also undeniable that there are new legal institutions. The fundamental problem is that without law there can be no society. But this says nothing about what kind of legal system it is. The sketches made prove that the way to the next society can be recognized from the present society. This leads over to the changed connectivity of societal communication through modern communication technologies.

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Political System “Global Governance or World Drift?” Thesis The problem with structural change in the political system is the change in the sovereignty of state organizations, citizenship, participation rights and the reorganization of the welfare state. The reorganization of the welfare state concerns the redeployment of welfare state regimes from consumerized to productive social policy. With regard to the political system of world society, it must be assumed that the constitutional democracy of Western society and its cultural program cannot be generalized as in the case of the modernization of the Maoist membership order in China. It is worth mentioning a very fundamental problem in political sociology to which much of political science is often blind: the fact that democracy and dictatorship are not mutually exclusive as in a state of emergency. It is no longer controversial among sociologists and political scientists to note that the expansion of subsystems has increasingly changed the political system and its organization. The problem is its reorganization. This concerns the emergence of global governance with its particularly problematic requirement for its institutionalization. It is difficult to estimate what its organizational design looks like and how successful it will be. Willke pointed out the problem succinctly: “Global governance or world drift, that’s the question here” (Willke 2002, 190).2 According to Guéhenno (1994), the order of the political system of world society is fragmented into multicenter empires without a center of power. Based on Willke’s approach, a global governance regime of a heterotopic societal communication should be an ideal-typical order of a society that aims at globality and seeks to implement governance on the basis of federality and subsidiarity in a partially globalized world. (Willke 2003, 58, authors’ translation)

Willke calls this a heterotopic social order (Heterotopia) as an alternative to a forcibly united global society and a merely evolutionary, principled struggle for survival of all against all in a Brave New World. A heterotopic social order requires the implementation of the principle of subsidiarity to define the new tasks at this level, and federality requires added value (welfare gain) through the provision of an additional level of control. The first point includes, for example, the prevention of wars and negative externalities as well as the promotion of cooperation by setting binding standards.3

2

On the control regime: Willke (2003, 10–68, 59–60). Willke relies on Keohane and Nye (2000, 1–13) and he characterizes this control system as a supervision regime. 3

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What Global Governance Means National states cannot fail to deal with global problems that are no longer territorially limited and regulated, such as liability issues, the protection of property rights, and the prosecution of pornography. Global governance does not mean a world government, a world parliament or a global policy. It is not a transfer of the national representation model to an institution of the political system of world society, but an “indirect policy” (Willke 2002, 31). It is a question of dealing with new systemic crises, such as environmental damage, financial crises, migratory flow, Ebola, and COVID-19 on a global scale. They must be classified as “global” because they can no longer be limited regionally. From Willke’s point of view, this system of governance, if it is to be effective, no longer has to be oriented toward democratic demands, such as the right to participate, majority democracy, and the party system. The obvious difference from the international political system is that it will no longer have the legitimacy bases that we are familiar with from the national state. In the membership system of world society, there is no single dominant actor who could take on global governance tasks. It is not to be expected that transnational governance systems can be institutionalized on the model of standard- and procedural-driven legislation (Willke 2002, 196–198, 205–206). Any control regime, whether local, regional or global, will only be usable under the conditions of the knowledge economy and the knowledge society and will only be able to achieve control effects if it is affected by the illusions of a power-supported, normative enforcing certain futures and instead switching to managing cognitive expectations and generating knowledge-based control systems. (Willke 2002, 198, authors’ translation)

Modern democratic constitutionalism will not be transferred to the political system of world society. It should be recalled in this context that as early as the 1970s Luhmann pointed out an instructive fact: The peculiar combination of law and politics, precisely in its particular capacity, was a mis-specialization [..] which, for the time being, at least, cannot be transferred to the system of world society.

Global governance is a model of order which assumes that globalization in particular will not lead to the spread of Western cultural legitimacy of civil rights and a corresponding inclusion program. This were institutionalized in the organization of the classical national state. The evidence suggests that they are alien to the cultural traditions of the emerging and new economic centers, for example, in Asia. The elites of these societies will continue to struggle to promote and establish an autonomous democratic system of Western proportions, that is, democratic constitutionalism and an open civil society. It cannot be ruled out that such a development will not occur in the future.

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Multi-Level Democracy There is a growing view among sociologists, political scientists, and economists that the model of society that is coming our way will establish a system of governance that will continuously change the framework conditions of the economic system through political cooperation at the global and European levels. However, these are changes that are not determined by an end goal. This model is called a global multilevel democracy (Münch 2001a; Willke 2001, 2003). As a result, the task of social integration will no longer be guaranteed by transfer payments, but will be handed back to smaller units. It is precisely the loss of the control monopoly of national states and the welfare state that opens up new scope for a redefinition of democracy at the level of cities and municipalities. This is also justified by the dynamics of the economic system since in the competition between locations, the regions and their structural policies will be decisive instead of the nation as a whole. Economic policy must adapt to this. Location competition also means that these regions must be attractive as places to live. If we assume, for example, that universities are freed from the paternalism of the ministries of science and education and enter into open competition, then their integration into the region will take on a new weight in view of the necessity for local support. This will lead to closer networking between universities, companies, and cities, which will not contradict their scientifically global orientation and operation, but complement it and thus open up market interests. As such, we cannot rule out that the modernization of cities in the last 50 years will be less disfiguring. This restructuring is an imperative of the changes that are coming our way. For Europe, for example, this will be reinforced by the transfer of decision-making powers to Brussels as we should not assume that a homogenization will be brought about in Europe comparable to what happened in the national states. It has always been a problem in their history. It cannot be assumed that national representative democracy will disappear completely. However, its reorganization in a multi-level model of local democracy, supranational coordination, and global cooperation is becoming apparent. Global governance is a favorable prerequisite for this. We do not know the future. It has always already begun. It cannot be achieved by any form of control. One thing is clear, however: political control under the condition of the next society, whether local, regional, or global, will only be successful if it has freed itself from powerbased control and the normative forcing of future conditions. Social policy, too, will have to learn that it must place itself strategically. The fundamental change in the areas of political control consists in the fact that in the developing organizational systems of the subsystems, for example, the economy and science, the state organizations is only one participant among many others. This means, however, that the classic function of the political system, that of standardizing and enforcing regulations in the public interest, can no longer be enforced in and through these organizational systems and their digital networks in a binding manner in the social systems. State power can no longer be exercised assertively in these networks. As a result, the

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medium of power is no longer capable of consistently effecting the acceptance motives of collectively binding decisions.

Economic System Expansion of the Economic System Thesis The problem of structural change in the economic system is economic transnational globalization (transnational division of labor), the free capital market, ongoing migration, global corporation, and the new demarcation among social systems. Economists, sociologists, and political scientists stress that the structural change of the economic system is to be characterized thereby that the empirical research shows that participants in transnational economics have not been drawn into the drift of a “race to the bottom” that, for them, entails rising poverty, more inequality, and the disintegration of social standards. The crucial point is that the structure of the economic system has changed (Münch 2011). This does not exclude the opposing processes of foreclosure (insulation) and over-control attempts. The research focus should highlight the “new trade geography” and what follows from the multipolarity for the economic system and its internal expansion. Welfare pluralism is expected to restabilize, without convergent evolution, as the membership condition of the regions do not develop evenly. There are also fractures that cannot be easily bridged. It should be stressed that the extension of the economic system through the border condition of the national states does not cover all economic activities. As has already been mentioned, the word “global” also misleads vis-à-vis globalization. With regard to the economic system, this can be described in such a way that the intersystem process of communication between the members of the system consists in communication technology networking without the expansion of the economic system into a comprehensive economic area. Social and economic research assumes that a global economic system in its structure and function consists of the segments of economic sectors, regions, and states. The structure of this economic system is described in such a way that multinationals form “decentralized internal networks.” This means: These networks are organized by semi-autonomous units, by country, markets, processes and products .. Each of these units connects with other semi-autonomous units of other multinationals in the form of ad hoc strategic alliances. And each of these alliances, or networks, is a hub of subordinate networks of small and medium-sized enterprises. These networks of production have a transnational geography: each productive function finds the right location in terms of resources, cost, quality and market access; and/or it connects to a new company in the network that is in the right location. (Castells 2001, 130, authors’ translation)

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Origin of Die New Structure An inclusion-exclusion mechanism dominates according to competitiveness and resources, for example, the qualification of employees, technical know-how, collective intelligence, and information processing. This economic system was created not by markets, but by a combination of markets, governments, and financial markets (Castells 2001, 157–172). It was thus created in an interpenetration zone between the subsystems, through which the communication systems overlapped more extensively, structurally and thereby restructured. But a global economic system is not structured in such a way that the old national state and supranational institutions would no longer play a role in it. It is worth remembering that a global economic system always operates nationally, regionally, and locally. At the same time, its system process is integrated globally via the digital networks, without it being unified or else it could be controlled by these networks. The expansion of the economic system will continuously increase the perception of the comparative cost advantage of companies and growth will take place in global (transnational) production and distribution chains. This leads to new employment structures, including wage dumping. We are now recognizing the opportunities and risks posed by the transnational division of labor. Economic globalization is creating new social-political conflicts and tougher distributional struggles. It should be noted in this context that the demand for a foreclosure strategy of the anti-globalization opponents, and thus the renunciation of participation in the global division of labor, would lead to a loss of prosperity and an impoverishment of the states involved. However, this does not preclude the launch of withdrawal strategies from the transnational division of labor in economic policy. It should also be noted that the economic use of technological innovations creates new moral and ethical conflicts that can no longer be regulated by conventional morality, such as in the application of genetic research for medical diagnostics and transplantation medicine.

Labor Market It is important to realize that in the next society, the restructuring of the labor market will not prevent disintegration. It is also brought about by it. In this respect, we must assume that in the not foreseeable future, even if the labor market develops favorably, the innovations that are reshaping it will not be able to eliminate an employment gap. The only chance of compensating for these structural deficiencies is probably if, for example, the labor market for non-profit service refers is enlarged by various civil society associations and non-profit enterprises. It is precisely the loss of the national state’s monopoly on control and its power to control that opens up new scope for the reinterpretation of democracy at the level of cities and municipalities. This is due to the structure and dynamics of the economic system as it is the regions and their structural policies that will be decisive in the competition between

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locations, and precisely not the nation as a whole. Economic policy must adapt to this. Part of the location competition for investments is also that the regions are attractive as a place to live. If we assume, for example, that universities are freed from the paternalism of the ministries of science and education and enter into open competition, then their integration into the region will take on a new weight for them, as they will need local support. This will lead to closer networking between the university, companies, and cities, which will not contradict their scientifically global orientation and operation, but complement it and thus open up to market interests. It cannot then be ruled out that the modernization of cities that we have witnessed in the last 50 years will be less disfiguring. This restructuring is an imperative of the changes that are coming our way. For Europe, for example, this will be reinforced by the transfer of decision-making powers to Brussels as we should not assume that a homogenization will be brought about in Europe comparable to that which took place in the national states. In its history, it had always been a problem as well.

Legal System Legal Communication Thesis The problem of structural change in the legal system is the new transnational courts, the new legal institutions and regulations and their consequences for national legal and political systems, as well as the continued existence of primary and secondary legal systems and the associated legal systems. We should not assume that the legal systems are unifying (Krawietz 2012, 73–101). The legal membership medium has a limited scope in its enforcement. It can be assumed that the interpenetration between the legal system, the political system, and the economic system through the interpenetration zone of the Constitution, as we know it from the history of modernization of Western society, does not mean that any has general validity. It does not apply, for example, to Japanese society and not to modernized Chinese society since the 1990s. The members of the legal system communicate as decision-makers and the selfreference of the legal system is the decision. The theory of reflection of the legal system must therefore be based on the primacy of decision. It is a decision that is structurally dominant in legal communication. It must not confuse with the individual decisions of the members of other functional systems to which this structural formation does not apply. In this respect, the self-description of its function and performance as decision-making communication and its organizational implementation must be carried out.

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Decision Focused System By decision, the legal system thus performs its self-reference. It is enforced in the history of law and system by the prohibition of the denial of justice. While Roman law and medieval law granted legal protection only for certain defined actions (action, writ), it has become a matter of course in the transition to modern times that any action must be answered by a decision, even if this is not expressly required by law (as, for example, in the famous Article 4 of the Civil Code). Only with this proviso that jurisprudence must be granted on his/her own responsibility could the judge be dismissed from the old Reichsaufsicht (imperial supervision) into political independence. (Luhmann 1993b, 310–311, authors’ translation)

Only then can legal communication establish itself as a special type of communication that has access to the motive force of the communication participants. We do not have to deny that the structure of the legal system of the “society of societies” has formal similarities, as in the separation of criminal and civil law, but there are wide differences in the legal structure of the social communication, for example, in China, Japan and South America. In China and Japan, litigation does not represent the typical rules of the difference.

The Future of Law In the next society, the question of the future of law becomes more acute. This is urgent because, in this context, law is organized on a national state basis, but it can only with difficulty guarantee the increased need for regulation. This also affects the validity of legal norms, which are becoming increasingly temporalized. In an extended communication system, expectations of the law change, and the law in turn is unable to meet them. This probably explains the problems of standardization, not only in environmental law, but also in the legal protection of the welfare state. Thus, law becomes a risk for those affected by it. The rationality of law is also affected by this as it is linked back to the rationality of the legislator. Meanwhile, the impression is growing that law does not easily become more rational as a result of this structure. The problems presumably lie in the fact that, although society cannot exist without law, its global reduction of uncertainty is no longer successful, that is, cannot be guaranteed for all subsystems. This makes law itself a problem. It is not necessary to deny that there is a need for legal regulation in a global world system, but the sociological description has to find an approach to the inclusion-exclusion problem, as well as to the membership codes and their operationalization, and to separate it from the classical question of social integration as well as the question of the possibility of social order. It must also be clearly realized that the structural overlap between the legal and political systems through a constitution will have no chance of institutionalization in a global world system. The resulting situation in the relationship between law and society still requires a more thorough analysis. We are probably in a situation in which the legal form of “subjective rights” no longer provides the unity of law and society. This concerns the

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recognizable limits of liberal legal theory. One will probably not be able to avoid agreeing with Luhmann that consensus is not a condition of the validity of law. Therefore, it has to be explained how “social voting instead” is solved. This addresses the evolution of norms of competence and the procedures restricting them. For the evolutionary differentiation of the legal system, the position of the courts in the legal system is fundamental.

The Structural Change of Communication Systems by Social Networking and the Modern Communication Technology Intermediate Sector As members of social systems, we already have the experience in our everyday lives that social communication is structurally changed by globalization, expansion, compaction, and acceleration of communication, thus unleashing it. However, this does not rule out their collapse. Participation in a digital media network enables the worldwide exchange of information without being controlled by a community order or state organizations. Communication via the digital media network is locationindependent and takes place in real time. It is to be expected that digital virtualization changes not only our concept of the social, but also of the concept of history and consciousness. We experience a globalized society above all in a global user interface and a media flow of information. This is followed by the question around the extent to which globalization of communication will lead to homogenization, heterogenization, or polarization. This relates to their connection to cultural hybridization. There is much to suggest that structural hybridization is being evaluated (Greig 2002, 225–243). Modern communication technologies are the intermediated sector, which creates new forms of economic cooperation, organization, communication structures, and mutual social observation. In this regard, Axford (2018) is to be approved. Modern communications technology is a medium of translocal communication independent of simple interaction systems. It is only through this sector that a communication system spanning differentiated membership systems with special conditions of participation is created. This technology continuously develops delocalization that changes and restructures all social systems. In this respect, it is first of all helpful to speak of globalization in the sense of an expansion of the subsystems as well as a “mobilization of society” and of glocalization in the sense of incorporation of global processes into local differentiations (Robertson 1995, 28–29). Glocalization is the interconnection of local, regional and national cultures with the global, which is increasingly brought about by the new media. Global is introduced in local, regional, and national cultures and the local is made accessible globally. This broadens social exchange. It follows, however, that local worlds can no longer sustain themselves, but are in interaction with global economic exchange,

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global power relations, global communications, and information flows. This process takes place through a media interpretation process. Even the media representation, for example, in the news, is a selection; that is, an interpretation for global addressees who do not participate in their construction. The internet is a digital communication and interaction system beyond one’s control. It should be emphasized that the special feature of the expansion of the subsystems is their support through digitalization and their technological realizations as a new means of dissemination.

Digitalization of Communication Systems The digitally supported expansion of communication systems introduces the relevance of the performance of the scientific system through the dynamics of knowledge-based transactions. This goes with the changing requirements and the organization of knowledge acquisition with regard to collective intelligence. Willke highlighted this: The second driving dynamic of the knowledge economy [..] and the globality of knowledgebased transactions unfolding in it is closely intertwined with digitalization. Digitalization and the new data and communication technologies based on it, on the one hand, and digital networking technologies on the other, thereafter, fundamentally distinguish the current manifestation of globalization from earlier phases of the economic interdependence, which has certainly existed in history. (Willke 2002, 167, authors’ translation)

The structural change of communication systems and their technological implementation has an impact on economic change, the political system, but also on the restructuring of collective identities. A particular problem is the analysis of so-called “global institutions” (organizations), for example, political and military alliances, the fragmentation of hierarchies, and global investment. Another related reference problem is the change in the scientific system in the competitive state. Münch resystemizes the reorganization and over-steering of the education system and the scientific system by the competitive state. It takes place in an interpenetration zone between the professional complex, the political system and the differentiated education and scientific system. The competition order introduces a new definition of the situation of education, which it is increasingly emptying and deprofessionalizing by conventional standards. Professional guidance as the cure of diseases, legal advice, socialization through education and pastoral care (Parsons: fiducary system) is replaced by technical standards. In the process, their sacral ethos is profaned. This goes on to say that education research is subordinate to policy purpose programs (Münch 2018). However, there are also the new problem areas that should not be downplayed. Any technological innovation also leads to criminal innovations, such as child pornography and suicide groups on the Internet, as well as the threat of viruses and hackers. The analysis of the dimensions of globalization also mentions the new relevance of urban sociology as cities and the metropolitan region are the social place in which macro-sociological processes are focused (Sassen 2007).

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Collective Identities, Social Structure, and New Social Movements Membership Order and the Structure of Social Integration Society as Collectivity With regard to changed collective identities, the centers of social systems, and their symbolizing as the subject of sociological research, it should be noted that Eisenstadt assumes that society is a collectivity determined by a membership condition accompanied by membership requirements as prerequisites for participation in social exchange. This is indeed his macrosociology. There is therefore no society without the collective identity of its members. It is the divided point of view of the collective affiliation of the members of society, even abstract, in the simultaneous differentiation of membership systems and membership order. A special case of collective identity incarnation is sporting events and their organization such as the Olympic Games and especially football matches. When we describe the major events of football from the point of view of the political system, they are the staging of national collective identities. They articulate the latter as a difference. It is also a reflection of the membership psychology of the members of society. For Western societies, this includes the self-evident nature of human rights. It determines the collective identity of the members of an open community of citizens. In this respect, collective identities are not residuals, as modernization theorists repeatedly assumed in the 1950s up to contemporary sociology as in the scholarship of Myrdal (1944). They do not disappear into socio-structural evolution and modernization. The cult of the individual (Durkheim) is also to be interpreted as a collective ideal and not only as an individual perfection as it goes along with the invitation to be “more and more of an individual.”

Macrosociology What can we infer for social integration from macrosociology? If we assume that macrosociologically every society is a collectivity, then there is a limit to membership. At this level of macrosociology, the membership order of a society is a self-substitutive order. There is no equivalent for it. Eisenstadt’s macrosociology harmonizes quite well with the membership theory of the membership order of societies. This also addresses the criticism of the concept of world society. World society has no membership order in the singular, but it consists in a differentiation of membership order of its regions. Its constitutive structures are not at the disposal of the members of the social systems. However, the analysis of the constitutive structures has to include the grassroots elites and the struggle for the flow of free resources. We cannot help but notice that through the constitutive structures every society has an independent inclusion-exclusion order.

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Collective Identities and Political System Coding of Collective Identities Collective identities and ascriptive solidarity have not disappeared in socio-structural evolution. They have become more abstract (Parsons: value generalization), yet primordial coding has survived. Eisenstadt’s analysis of collective identities is not a traditional interpretation that classifies them by natural property. He analyzes them as constructions and imaginary entities. The basic feature is a similarity relationship. Eisenstadt and Giesen distinguish between the primordial code (gender, generation, kinship, territory, language, and race), the bourgeois code (implicit and explicit rules, traditions, social routines), and the transcendental or sanctity code (the relationships of a collective subject to the sacred and sublime of collective identities). Collective identities and their stabilization are generally marked by the distinction between member and non-member (that is, foreigner). This does not rule out the possibility that outsiders can become a member or that members may become strangers as through excommunication. Collective identities are linked to the division of labor, social status, and ethnic groups. The distinctions made are to be classified as ideal types. The empirical collective identities always combine different components of coding (Eisenstadt and Giesen 1995). However, the construction of collective identities and the selection of the membership condition are not without ongoing tensions, conflicts, and contradictions. From a sociological point of view, these identities concern the marking and selfperception of social membership and communication, which goes along with the self-selection of social systems as determined by membership. It has the function of recognizing the limits of social systems through membership markings. In the West, there is the central conflict between idealized citizenship and membership in a primordial community, local community, the state, and the nation.

New Social Movements The research focus on the transformation of collective identities concerns the weakening of the function of the Western national state, its cultural dominance, and the governance strategies among states in the political system (Willke 2014, 2016). At the same time, we are observing new types of social movements, diasporas, and minorities, such as, feminist, ecological, fundamentalist, and peace movements on top of a structural change in the national state. The combined effect is the formation of a special collective identity of their members. Together with them, municipal religious movements with an anti-modern and anti-Western attitude appear in the global scene. They oppose economic, cultural, and political globalization with violent strategies. There is now a global struggle between the members of the indigenous and commercial Western collective identity. This struggle proves the

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fragility of the traditional social order and institutions and their changed institutional reshaping through the influence of social movements. Clearly, collective identities, their construction, reinterpretation and memory are the connection between the structure of action and communication, culture as a selfobservation of social communication, and the social structure of membership systems. They determine the social order and its ongoing self-irritation, but also the charismatic activities that are related to the self-description of social communication. This refers to the changed role of intellectuals who have lost their right to a monopoly of interpretation. It is replaced by the communication of the spokespersons of interest groups in the mass media. It is, of course, subject to the typical organizational and technical limitations of the media.

Collective Identities and Political System The transformation of new collective identities including those of minorities and diasporas, for example, Muslim Chinese, Korean, and Russian minorities in the new Baltic and Asian republics, along with new social movements are relevant in contemporary societies. This also has consequences for the hegemonic model of the nation state. The new social movements have changed their orientation toward ethnic, religious, and local identities. They exist in Western and non-Western societies and at the same time in Europe and the United States. This has already triggered another “politics of identity” that enters into political communication. The change of orientation comes along with a new particularism. A case in point is the anti-globalization movement in the United States over the last 15 years. In Western Europe, however, there are also such social movements that distinguish themselves through the superimposition of foreign as a result of the extended exchange. They are forming in nearly all European states, for example, networks of the so-called “extreme right-wing parties” with their political rhetoric directed into the past, as in the notion of the local original and its idealization. With regard to this redeployment, the main focus of the research is the problem of destructive Jacobinism as a component of modernity, which resonates in the religious orientations of presentday social movements.

Chapter 22

Outlook: Changed Basic Situation, Self-Irritation, and Learning

Time Dimension This brings the next society into the spotlight as it changes the structure of social communication. The resulting problems will not be possible as total solutions. There will probably be no strong structural integration of the social system and the functional systems. But the next society cannot begin; it has always started. It eludes planning, as every future continues the distinction between the present future and the future present, and every future is only achievable in the present. If that were not the case, time would collapse. The obvious structural problem is that modernization has created a permanent problem of the social integration of the local, regional, national, supranational, and global. In the border traffic of these social systems, we are currently seeing the fault lines between the social groups that have met and their origins. Participation in communication is differentiated into a multiplicity of social systems and organizations. However, it eludes a consistent formal organization. Still, the next society will not be a society without justice. Legal theory should therefore learn to use its social-theoretical guidelines.

Regulatory Limits The changed basic situation, which goes with functional differentiation and subsystem evolution, concerns the non-regulatory nature of the complexity of the social system by the functional systems. This is what we should call the ongoing self-irritation of social communication under this condition. No formal organization, but also no communication, will absorb the social unrest of functional differentiation. The partial system-specific communication is therefore threatened by the disaster from the plant. However, it is only through the irritability of social systems that they can lead to greater complexity. The evolution of subsystems, which © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_22

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unusually increases the complexity of the social system, can increase the internal disorder of social systems and at the same time immunize themselves against them. In this respect, irritation is nothing more than a variation of limitations on what can be achieved in the system-system reference.

Self-Irritation However, the functional system cannot learn without self-irritation. The scientific system simultaneously increases and destroys knowledge. The knowledge gained through it no longer has an Aristotelian nor a Cartesian basis. The condition for participation in this system is to learn the methodological approach to uncertainties. At the same time, the economic system is programmed to devalue its services, either through price collapse, unemployment, and the surplus of capital that is not invested. The condition of participation in this system is to learn how to deal with self-induced risk. The political system is programmed to be ineffective, as it cannot cope with the need for decision-making through democratization and is blocked by a flood of laws. The condition for participation in this system is to learn how to deal with election successes that cannot be controlled. The legal system is becoming increasingly overwhelmed by expectations that it cannot meet. The question arises as to whether law is applicable at all. In addition, changes in the law become the norm. A state of affairs is set that it is almost impossible to guarantee a factual freedom of contradiction, which can be balanced by contradictions in the time dimension of the decisions. The condition for participation in this system is to learn that justice is a formula for contingency. The adolescent generations are faced with an expansion of their life expectancy without a clear cut. They have something to learn that is impossible to learn. It is not only the expectation of an uncertain future, but the handling of the loss of defined biographical processes. The irritations that this entails can be explained by the fact that the enforcement of political democracy, the moneydriven market economy, scientific research, which is not restricted by dogmas, the increase in subjective rights, access to the free mass media, and educational programs for all members of society are precisely not mutually complementary and cannot be supplemented; moreover, social communication cannot be finalized and has no final state.

Redeployment The interdependencies and dynamics of the functional systems elude a calculation. If they are met with the necessary major simplifications, disappointments will inevitably arise. This does not rule out the possibility of overcoming the disappointments and irritations that go with it. However, functional differentiation can only be maintained if the interdependencies between the functional systems are interrupted.

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This establishes a new boundary in social communication. The functional systems can therefore multiply their own disorder and at the same time be able to insulate themselves against them. It follows that function-specific communication can no longer speak on behalf of society. It can only irritate communication. In doing so, we have crossed the line with the next society. It may also turn out that functional differentiation is no longer worthwhile and that its rationality benefits become implausible. However, social communication can only be restabilized by recursion. This applies to the future evolution of all functional systems. Recursion, however, cannot negate the time dimension, but takes place in time. To the extent that social systems can only reproduce and restabilize themselves through time-related communications, this also includes the unavoidable difference between the present and the present future.

Part V

Membership Order of Chinese Society Without Solidarity Integration

Keywords China’s modernization
Collective integration
Social structure redeployment
Prosperity integration
Cultural and political program
Modernization without harmony

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Introduction: Theoretical Approach Reference Problems Analyses of China’s modernization often lack a unified sociological analysis and the appropriate analytical frame of reference for their systematization. Based on the empirical research of the “multiple modernities membership research program,” the following problems of Chinese modernization are to be assumed: 1. The research program of the ProtoSociology project “China’s modernization” 1 2. The relevance of China’s social construction as well as the cultural and political program as a background of Chinese modernization 3. China’s modernization since the 1990s 4. The current cultural and political program of the political center, as well as, 5. The challenge to the further expansion of China’s economic system Social construction is therefore central to the analysis of integration/non-integration as well as inclusion and exclusion in the Chinese membership order, as it determines membership status in Chinese social communication. The social construction as a condition of membership is thus the restabilizing selection in time, which determines the membership conditions. We can also speak of the membership order as a structure of social communication. The structure is an increased selection, which determines the expectations of the members of the company. It is not available to the member of society and limits the margin of negation.

Deviation from the Western Development Path China’s modernization can neither be explained by the classical theory of modernization nor as a variation of the historical Western modernization path: 1. There was no variation of Western culture and its value system as a combination of “universalism and individualism, rationalist, and instrumental activism.” 2. The membership order was not an orientation toward an “institutionalized individualism” (Durkheim-Parsons tradition). 3. There was no solidarity integration as a matter of welfare (Keynesian Membership Order). 4. China does not institutionalize the membership order of civil rights inclusion program as fundamental human rights, such as the freedom of the individual, speech, assembly, and associations; that is, political, social, and cultural rights that are institutionalized in Western constitutions. The components of these rights

1

To the Publications: https://uni-frankfurt.academia.edu/GerhardPreyer/China's-Modernization On China’s modernization and its future: Preyer and Krausse (2014, 2017), Krausse (2015).

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are institutionalized in Western societies at the same time in an “overarching community” (Marshall 1964) and legitimize the social status of stratification as a “legitimate inequality” (class prestige) (Parsons 1977, 321–380). It should already be mentioned at this point that the orientation toward the Western human rights program prevents access to the modernization of Chinese society. It should be emphasized that from the Chinese point of view, human rights are not something that belong to human nature, but something that can be acquired and lost. There is no common basis of understanding between the members of Western and Chinese society on this front, prompting them to talk past each other. 5. There was no social revolution, but a conquest and a reorganization of the political center similar to what was seen during the French, Russian, and Mao’s revolutions.

Alternative Research Program An analytical reference framework of research is needed for the ideographic, idealtypical, and structural analysis of Chinese society, the preparation of predictions of future changes, and the application of scenario technology. It is helpful to distinguish between the need to: 1. Systematize Chinese modernization and its functional imperatives 2. Systematically compare Chinese modernization with other modernization paths 3. Uncover the “deep structure” of Chinese society and to find out its relevance for further modernization The “Multiple modernities membership research program” distinguishes different modernization paths and compares their structural points of view. The foundational core of this research program is: Modernization does not reveal any “evolutionary potential” that exists in all societies, and special modernization paths are not to be generalized. Modernization is a reorganization of membership conditions and membership orders, that is, the inclusion-exclusion order of a society in the differentiated subsystems and their organization.

The research program resystemizes special conditions and structures that are useful for the predictions and scenario projections of modernizations in the short, medium, and long term. It should be stressed that the research program does not adopt normative, ideological, and generally cultural models of modernization. In particular, the claims of Western interest groups of “moral entrepreneurs” and their orientation toward “normative cosmopolitanism” and the demand for the institutionalization of “global civil rights” consider it unrealistic and confusing. The various empirical research of the “research program of multiple modernities and membership” suggest that China is not taking the path of modernization toward a Western modern society and a highly developed “harmonious society.” With the recasting of the theory of social integration as a membership order of social

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communication, we also have access to the modernization of Chinese society since the 1990s and the reorganization of this modernization, which we are currently observing. This is a test case for this resystematization of the concept of integration in sociological theory—something that has to be addressed with care.

Chapter 23

China’s Modernization

Redeployment of the Social Structure Triggering Modernization The modernization of China is another case type of the versions of multiple modernities. Chinese modernization since the early 1990s was triggered by the political system and was independent of external influences. In other words, Chinese modernization was not necessarily the result of a revolutionary social movement or an intervention coming from outside, but favored—a grosso modo—by post-“Cold War” shifts and the accompanying expansion of economic exchanges within a more globalized economic system.

First Thesis The center of the political system via China’s CPC (Communist Party of China) triggered a regionally limited “open market policy” through privatization, liberalization, and demand for Western investment. The result was a change in interdependence between the political and economic systems. At the same time, the other subsystems within Chinese society, such as the scientific and legal systems, continued to be dominated by both the political and economic systems. Here, an astonishing fact of Chinese modernization is worth emphasis: the ability of the Communist Party of China to preserve the social order of Chinese society. From a sociological point of view, this meant maintaining the membership order of Chinese society.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_23

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Next Step Over the last decades, the Chinese economy has been partially integrated into the transnational (global) economic system. Its economy has been a driving force to the transnational (global) manufacturing process. The country’s new economic policy is designed to promote the transition of the Chinese economy from manufacturing to a “creative industry.” This is intended to reposition the Chinese economy in the transnational (global) value chain. At the current level, the consumer market is falling behind in comparison to economic size. At first glance, China has the third largest consumer market after the European Union and the United States. However, if we put the size of the population in relation to the size of the economy, incomes are significantly lower compared to the other two consumer markets in per capita terms. An increase in consumer demand requires a higher per capita income, for example, not only from manufacturing but also from a “creative industry” coupled with a sustainable environmental economy. What is the next step for China’s modernization after the last 30 years? Future initiatives will invariably revolve around higher investments in modern technology and its economic use, continuation of exports, growth in domestic demand, and further reorganization of production into a transnational division of labor. It should be noted that without further market liberalization, future economic growth is bound to experience trouble. Yet, should these further restructurings take place, tensions and even dislocations in Chinese society are to be expected. The hypothesis, however, is that these faults will not destabilize Chinese society.

The Political Center as a Pacemaker Modernization and Integration Through Internal Stabilization China’s transformation from a planned to a market economy has caught the world’s attention since the beginning of the 1990s generating fears and expectations from experts and casual observers. In retrospect, a consensus exists from both the West and within China that sees the country as a new world power leveraged by economic success. People keep asking, “What do the Chinese intend to do and what political program do they intend to follow?” The question is somewhat misleading as it premises Chinese expansion to an intended program that may not exist. It is misunderstood that the Chinese strategy is to be systematized rather than adapted to dynamic areas of action. This is not contradicted by the fact that economic development has already settled the fact that Western economies are increasingly dependent on China. China’s economic modernization takes place as a gradual transition toward a market economy while alternate from agrarian to industrial economy. This seems to be a key of success by some authors and also as a corrective for current Western

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economic policies (Naughton 1999; Heilmann and Perry 2011). With the end of neoliberalism, a number of experts have identified a politically driven economic system as a model for addressing the shortcomings of Western economies. These conclusions, however, overlook the initial situation of economic modernization, its structure, and the resulting problems. China’s modernizations have been followed by the opening up of its political center and the gradual introduction of a market economy. As a result, the country’s political center is increasingly dependent on the success of the economy, as its very stability depends on it. The following motto aptly sums this up: Do what succeeds, but you have to be successful. Economic success thus becomes a social policy program. This may be good for long distances, as long as there is something to distribute. However, when competitive conditions become more difficult as a result of an onset of scarcity, there is a problem for the political center. The construction of the New Silk Road must also be addressed in this situation and the very importance of this project can no longer be doubted in China. It also increases self-observation in Chinese society and, at the same time, is used rhetorically as an example of the innovative capacity of the Chinese model. It is therefore not a coincidence that Chinese foreign policy is guided by the primacy of economic policy. By this we recognize an immunology typical of Chinese society, which provides social communication with negations. Self-monitoring of membership integration is adjusted to success and failure. It does not work like a determined automaton. The selfmonitoring is a selection that is reinforced by itself and at the same time carries with it strong exclusions.

China’s Economy and the Global Economic System There are quite a few voices who believe that China’s economy is on its way to dominating the global economic system in the twenty-first century. However, this expectation overlooks the framework and structure of the modernization of the Chinese economy. In the process of undergoing these modernizations, a large consumer goods market has emerged, which increasingly has its own dynamics compared to the internal market in the United States. The modernization of China’s economic system was carried out by supporting the political center. It favors opening up and the promotion of foreign investment. The structural link between economy, politics, law, and science led to a special construction of the Chinese economic system. In the start-up phase, synergies were exploited in such a way that planning and market prices coexisted. This enabled state-owned enterprises to generate additional income from the additional production. The additional income from the market price was further distributed as profit sharing or employee incentives. This initiated a rationalization of the production processes and a restructuring of employment relationships. One of the innovative solutions of Chinese modernization is that competition has made the most of the scope for innovation. Meanwhile, state subsidies were maintained to ensure business planning. The economic changes in

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modernization restructured the economic, organizational and their processes to allow for new room for maneuver in which the dynamics of change gained new momentum. What we find incomprehensible about the transformation of China’s economic system is that it has activated and exploited its own potential for it. The aim was not to generate as many raw materials as possible in order to advance the transformation, but to reclassify the existing prerequisites, using the tried and tested (Naughton 2007). China’s effort to build up a free trade zone (that is, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP) is currently the latest step to foster its economic position in Asia. The Chinese political center follows the strategy of economic integration without political, legal, or social integration as well. In essence, the integration in RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) fosters Chinese economic and political influence while building a long-term program to reduce traffic costs while fostering intellectual property rights. The traffic cost reduction is based on membership. The economic integration of China in the world also includes expanded trade relations in Africa and central Asia that, in turn, reconfigures complex world economic systems. China seeks for new trade and investments markets, which can be influenced by the Chinese. This ambition does not mean abandoning trade relationships towards the United States or the EU. Instead, China has added to its economic system a new non-liberal center. The consequence of the sets of development described above is that Chinese society already forms a special membership in the society of societies. Typical for the membership is the inside-outside at the same time. China’s gradual but committed integration in the economic system is juxtaposed by its political center’s determination to stay closed. In other words, while seeking entry into the WTO (World Trade Organization) and more integration into the world economic system, other levels of integration such as a deeper political integration or legal integration were cast aside. It should be stated that the Chinese political center shies away from direct involvement in international conflicts preferring to follow a non-involvement policy vis-à-vis state sovereignty as an international paradigm.

China’s Institutionalization of Conflict Distinctions It is one of the peculiarities of Chinese modernization—over the past three decades—that the legal system has not been particularly important for modernization. Conflict processing occurs at the interaction level, in contrast to inside and outside. The design of individual freedoms, wealth rights as well as objectification are less of a goal of the Chinese legal system. Indeed, the center of the political system in Chinese society has primacy over its legal system. The legal system can track all persecuted conflicts from actions that are not at odds with the political system and the center. In the interpenetration zone between the political and legal systems and the establishment of interpenetration zones to further functional systems, the political objectives of the center are given

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priority. This process is such that the claims of the political center are pursued before those of the legal system. This weighs up the arguments in favor of the orientation and stability of the political center and not the consistent legal regulation of conflicts of action, hence preventing fractures of social communication (Liebman 2014). An additional point worth emphasizing is that Chinese society is not a conflict society. Conflicts, as already observed by Max Weber, are not regulated by generalized claims of the communication participants. Instead, they are to be observed within social systems, as well as in networks, or at the margins. At the external borders of social systems, the observer notices that conflicts are ignored or are excluded. Such events then remain in the environment as a diffuse noise of what has always been there. In the areas of conflict that take place over the threshold of perception, a heated event can be observed again and again. The change in China’s legal system with the extension of formal law over the past three decades has not gone so far as to bring about a further change in the membership order (status-prestige order). On the contrary, it seems that the status prestige order is maintained. It can be observed that the Chinese legal system is supposed to legitimize the primacy of the political system. In the border areas, the political center has created its own bodies for conflict negotiations. This applies to the clarification of corruption incidents by institutions of the Chinese Communist Party. The classification of economic success in the status order of Chinese society is not changed by the formal legal order in favor of individual equality rights or welfare rights.

Collective Integration Through the Myth of a Success Story Political Center and Economic Growth There is probably no Chinese who doubts that China is great and is currently renewing its glorious history. This is the identity program constructed and promoted by the political center. The collective identity “all under one sky” restabilizes and synchronizes the consciousness of the populace. As a result, social communication is at the same time stabilized against potential crises.1 Chinese society as a regional society should not be limited to the demarcation of the political system as the identity program also goes beyond political borders to include foreign Chinese. The observation of Chinese society as a regional entity allows both to sharpen the external internal border with regionally neighboring entities as well as the differences in Chinese society between different groups, regions, and ethnicity. For all internal differences and stabilization over differences,

1 To a program of this membership order in demarcation against the western modernizations: Zhao (2021).

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it can be assumed that Chinese society is an operational bracket, which is closed by self-description and identity program (Ong 1997). The Chinese economy anticipates and reacts to a possible shortage of raw materials in the future. This is a crisis scenario that affects large areas of society, including those beyond the economic system. With the anticipated shortage, new votes have to be taken, which can be implemented via the political center. The stability of the political center depends on the program of continuous growth and thus on the option that more can be distributed in the future. It therefore lacks alternative strategies to respond to such a scenario. The objective of the political system is continuous unlimited growth. Here, it is worth emphasizing that China’s economic modernization does not follow a global expansion drive, nor can it be a model for the Western economic system and its transnational expansion, as it is oriented toward a national state border, which it considers to be based on the political center. The Chinese economy is in an exchange process with the global economic system and is expansionary in terms of its resource policy in Africa. However, the reconnection of economic policy is based on the political center, which is guided by economic success as a form of new legitimation. This is not a hegemonic economic strategy, as it would jeopardize the stability of the political center.

New Problems The peculiarity of China’s modernization of the transition from a planned economy to a market economy and its gradual participation in economic globalization should not lead us to establish a Western economic order. China’s economic system will have to face its own problems. In doing so, it can draw on its own strengths and the results of its modernization. In the end, this need should not necessarily be a cause of alarm for Europe and its economy, but it should prompt due attention and alertness for the necessity to change and adapt. With the economic changes of the past 30 years, China has undergone a major upheaval in society. Contrary to the expectations of Western scholars, this neither led to a collapse of the political order by the Chinese Communist Party nor the establishment of a constitutional democracy. China’s modernization since the early 1990s also did not initiate an overheating economic cycle that ended abruptly in an economic crisis. Clearly, the changes did not follow the prophecies or the political expectations of Western politicians. As such, what explains these puzzles and what can be expected for future changes in China? Looking back, we cannot fail to see a promising approach in relation to Chinese modernization. The beginning of the market opening was not a radical cultural revolution, but one adapted to local conditions. As a result, it did not endanger the stability of society through large-scale experiments and faults. Indeed, the transition of the economic system was only triggered by the opening up of the market. The achievement of China’s political system includes its skills and success in providing flexible solutions under a stable political order. This also allowed for individual and

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institutional planning certainty in the areas affected by the changes, thereby increasing the scope for pooling resources (Guthrie 2006).

Chapter 24

Stabilization in Difference

Welfare Integration Political Program What is the mystery of Chinese politics? It is formally dictatorial by Western standards, as it is not shaped by a competitive democracy. At the same time, however, it does not have a planned economy and has thus given up the control of all areas of society. How can the constitution of the Chinese political system be described? It was no longer the utopia of the new socialist man according to Mao’s MarxistLeninist interpretation that had to be followed. This comprised the abandonment of a Stalinist modernization program of Chinese society. The economic system took over the increase in economic prosperity, and the political system, for its part, had to ensure the transformation of the Chinese economy. It must be stated that the incomprehensible thing about political organization is how a planned political economy could open up the market without fundamentally calling into question newly acquired freedoms. It was characteristic of the Communist Party’s statepreserving orientation that it proved sensitive to global change during economic modernization and was ready for innovative solutions to market opening. Here, it is worth highlighting what these innovative changes consisted of. The start of Chinese economic modernization included a willingness to experiment with model experiments in locally limited areas.

Non-Controllability In the new program of modernization, the political center was guided by the principle of governing the ungovernable. This principle means letting the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_24

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unregulated follow its change and use it for itself, instead of forcing an order in a mess that cannot be ordered. China’s political system is not a dictatorship per se. This also applies if the collectively binding decisions are not taken through a democratically elected government. The organization of the Communist Party has a very different function. At the beginning of the 1990s, it consisted primarily of ensuring the social order and, at the same time, abandoning a far-reaching over-thetop lifestyle. This paradigm shift was due to the abandonment of an ideological vision and its dissemination by the communist elite. This allowed larger groups to be released into self-responsibility. In this respect, we are witnessing a contrary social change, which consists in the fact that a far-reaching relaxation of the state regulations has been initiated, but at the same time the national state order could not be called into question. This also applies to the admission of criticism. It was tolerated, but it was not allowed to call into question the political primacy of the Communist Party. The stability of China’s political center is proof that sensitivity to the social environment has also been achieved through other mechanisms. There is therefore no need for a democratic consensus among the elected parties in a political market, but the pursuit of objectives and the political regulation of social changes can also take place differently. It is characteristic of Chinese modernization since the early 1990s that the political center has responded to the demands of a new marketoriented economic system, in which it allowed a new economic elite to be introduced and integrated into society.

Protest Without Disintegration It is to be expected that an expansion of protests and forms of protest will accompany the modernization of China. However, this is not expected to initiate a transformation of the political center. Instead, they will lead to situational adjustments or differentiated changes in the sense of a model character to the protests. In this context, internal competition is to be expected, which does not favor a protest movement against the political center. At the local and regional levels, provinces and municipalities will increasingly compete more closely with each other for the best problem-solving alternatives. It is to be expected that the elites in China’s economic and political system will continue to shift over the next few years. However, one should not conclude from this that the political system is structurally changing, for example, toward a constitutional Western democracy. The mutual benefits of this interdependence between the political and economic systems should not be misunderstood to the point that economic elites are dependent on the political elites. On the contrary, it must be assumed that there is a structural dependence which can be explained by the function of the economic and political system. “Prosperity for all under one heaven” could be the credo of China. Prosperity is seen as the orientation that cannot be applied to Western morality and its expectations of justice. Everyone has access to it, but it also

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excludes many. Instead, the social integration of Chinese society and its membership order does not consist in a solidarity-based integration of the damage limitation of the Western welfare state, nor does it seek one. On the contrary, negative integration strengthens the immune system without the strong partial social integration of the members and their strong symbiotic attachment to the collapse of Chinese society.

Social Integration Without Solidarity Integration Symbiosis of Business and Politics The finding of a lack of descriptions of the future according to a Western model of Chinese modernization is a consequence of the consideration from the perspective of Western modernization processes. The cultural modernization program was utopian and had the dark side of Jacobinism. This approach remains on the surface and reveals a deeper analysis of the structures of Chinese society and the integration of its members. This has also corresponding consequences for the updates of the problem analysis and the expected systemic states. China’s social modernization is characterized by an interplay between the modernization of the economy and the political center, as well as the special orientation of the scientific and legal systems with regard to other parts of society. These connections of the subsystems are established over networks and also interrupted by them. The interplay of the political system and the economic system creates an interdependence, which consists in the fact that the political system depends on the success and thus growing standard of living with a view to increasing access to resources. At the same time, the economic system depends on the stability of the political system, which requires simultaneous expansion of market liberalization and its governance by the political canter. However, at the current stage of the political center’s programs, this liberalization is carried out half-heartedly. This applies regardless of the perceptible rhetoric of the representatives of the political center and the Chinese chambers of commerce—a subject that requires special analysis.

In the Typhoon The challenge for China’s economic system in the future will be to continuously generate additional resources without being able to draw on the growth strategies that have been developed so far. It has to restructure to such an extent that, despite declining resources such as energy and raw materials, shrinking market expansion, and rising costs, it can still provide additional resources that will lead to the maintenance and a rise in living standards. In this respect, the economic system is responsible for a social policy task that is outside its functional limits. The functional boundaries are a system requirement of the political system with which the economic

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system is linked. The legitimacy of the political system lies in the success of the economic system, whose changes it has only indirect influence over, in which it brings about further openness and at the same time leaves it to the forces of selfdesign. What is the vulnerability of the crisis, the pressure for change, and the solution for China? China’s modernization ambitions place new demands on Chinese society. They result from the internal changes and from the adaptation requirements that are brought to Chinese society from the outside. This concerns the changes that are constantly being triggered by the global economic system in the country and the demands and expectations of Western policies. From an internal point of view, the question arises as to how stability and change can be reconciled. This can trigger short-term modernization conflicts. The growing integration of the participants into the Chinese economic system also promotes further ongoing internal migration. The economically prosperous cities in the coastal regions attract rural populations from central provinces. This internal exodus is reaching unimaginable proportions as 39% of the Chinese population still belongs to rural areas and are cut off from modernization efforts (World Bank 2020). A high percentage is expected to flock to the cities in the near future. Within a few years, cities will grow into metropolises of millions. This places new demands on infrastructural measures such as housing, housing distribution, job creation, transport routes, the supply and disposal of waste, as well as individual and collective coexistence. For the latter, the question arises as to which units and which demarcations are formed or how the traffic between the demarcations is communicatively shaped. The previous Neighborhood Committees and the administration, which carried out conflict resolution, is no longer suited to execute this function. This was only possible as long as freedom of movement was restricted and access to housing was strictly regulated. It is obvious that new forms of regulation can be found for this purpose. The use of new technologies seems to provide initial indications of how to maintain control. Social scoring as an observation and evaluation of social action and communication enables positive and negative sanctions. However, this must not be judged from a Western point of view. The members of different Chinese groups and ethnic minorities in the country have by and large a collective orientation. The positive social points are beneficial for them for their own betterment. In this respect, there is no conflict between individual interests and collective governance. Western critics often fail to recognize that this access to motive force is a technological variation of neighborhood collectives. They are consisted of mutual observations and communications, which included not only access but also motives, while serving the supply and privileges to be granted as in housing arrangements.

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Social Integration Without Prosperity for all Difference Instead of Consensus Among the facts in need of explanation, we must address how the membership regulations in China are largely different but can still cope with conflicts and upheavals. This also addresses the future challenges of its political system. It will probably be in a situation where the expansion of China’s modernization efforts, such as the creation of new cities, the development of infrastructure, the growth of the agricultural area of central China, and the expansion of action, is slowing down or even declining. In this scenario, it is to be expected that the political elite will not seek new solutions, but apply strategies that have been successful so far. For instance, local responsibility ought to take precedence over central responsibility, situational solutions trump model solutions, and the diversity of problem-solving is favored over a one-size-fits-all solution. This is associated with a positive assessment of differences, and they are the ones that are the solution to the problem. This will reinforce negative integration and act as a test case for the strength and dominance of the primacy of abstract collective integration as Chinese. The strength and dissemination of the collective identification of the Chinese with regard to the macro- and micro-order is often not sufficiently taken into account from a Western point of view. It can be assumed that the political system will continue in the future to attempt to bridge the differences mentioned above through domestic political program of strengthening the Chinese collective identity and emphasizing their uniqueness. To that extent, the collective identity policy of the Chinese membership order will take precedence. China will be a “Great China” in the self-description of the political system. This favors national-oriented political rhetoric and programming. However, this does not just address domestic politics, but also political self-expression to the outside world.

No welfare Program of Damage Limitation However, China’s increase in wealth, under the specific conditions, can only mean that prosperity is created for participatory groups. A broad welfare program, as implemented in the Federal Republic of Germany, is not to be implemented and expected in the country. As a result, the number of modernization winners as well as losers will increase while the gap between them widens as the old solidarity is lost and new solidarity emerges. It can be seen from the present perspective that the intellectual and political elites are not developing a new social utopia that will be the model plan for political objective and its economic implementation. According to the Chinese social model of order, the political rhetoric of the harmonious society emanating from the political center serves to describe the collective identity of the Chinese in their demarcation without levelling the lines of conflict. It is worth

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mentioning, however, that the goal of a “harmonious society” under Xi Jinping is not a unification, but a harmonious accommodation of a “diverse” society. Therefore, an asymmetric relationship, such as that of modernization winners and losers, is not contradictory in China since from a Chinese point of view, the asymmetries in the wealth gap maintain the country’s social order. This, in turn, shows that negative integration triggers strong bonds, supported by the collective identity of the members of Chinese society. Even if we take into account the self-evident asymmetries mentioned above, the “harmonious society” is also an inclusion program for motivating Chinese for further modernization. This is true even if we should assume that there will also be many losers in the short to medium term.

The Current Cultural and Political Program Current Political Program In the meantime, the Chinese social construction as well as its cultural and political program changed from Deng Xiaoping’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics” to the current political program that includes and incorporates the rhetoric of “China’s dream” via “prosperity” for all,” a “harmonious society,” “spirituality,” and the “new nationalism.” Some call it the “Beijing Consensus.” In this frame of reference, Buddhism is no longer the enemy of the political center, but is tolerated as preserving the state. Mao’s cultural revolution destroyed most Buddhist monasteries. This is associated with structural changes in membership conditions in Chinese society. However, we should not conclude from this that the social integration of the members of Chinese society will increase and be transformed into a general prosperity of individual members in China along with a welfare state. We should assume that the prediction of the further modernization of Chinese society is not to be made by the premises of the West, and not also by the normative view on the future of society from the political center. A normative perspective, which does not take into account the Chinese social structure, overlooks the special conditions of further modernization. The hypothetical prediction of China’s future must take into account the structural aspects of China, and the social model of order of the political center as prerequisites.

Self-Description The self-description of the political center lends itself to highlighting a far-reaching difference from Western individualism. This concerns our “second thesis.”

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Second Thesis The self-description as a “harmonious society” without the institutionalization of Western constitutive democracy is in turn a legitimation of the political center for the further innovation of the social structure and a variation of membership terms. It must be kept in mind that the so-called “harmonious society” is not a Western individualistic inclusion program. It is oriented toward the primacy of the membership order of the collective of Chinese society and is not an individual selforientation of the individual members in the sense of the cult of the individual (Durkheim). This is one of the main differences compared to western social construction, its cultural and political program of individualistic expectations of inclusion and the historical paths of “Western modernization.”

Chapter 25

Modernization without “Harmony”: Main Conflicts as Immune Events

Main Conflict: Triggering Immune Events Why should we not expect a “harmonious society” for the further modernization of China? The above-mentioned challenges are expected to generate conflicts and upheavals in the social exchange of subsystems and their stakeholders. Yet the resulting ruptures are unlikely to destabilize China’s membership order. The main conflicts are immune events that trigger the self-observation of social communication. The re-observed orientation to the Chinese self-descriptions, however, has a blocking effect in terms of the analysis of the membership order of Chinese society as a realization. There are four problem areas to highlight, each of which has a major conflict. They are the zones of triggering immune events. 1. Further economic growth and, with it, greater prosperity through the expansion of consumer demand, is likely to be a challenge to the political system. The realization of this political program requires that the political system allocate more resources to ensure economic growth. This program must then be independent of the stability of the economic situation. This is a limitation of options and planning, as the policy program excludes austerity and cost reduction. It is therefore to be expected that, in an economic crisis, there will be a reduction in welfare measures and also a reduction in prosperity, as managing such economic crises requires the release of resources. Main conflict: As a result, the political system, in principle, cannot guarantee general prosperity in the future. 2. Another challenge of ongoing modernization is captured in the following question: How can resource gains and resource utilization be achieved as they shrink or become scarce? © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_25

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This applies not only to ecological resources, but also to the fight for financial resources, innovation and time savings in increased competition. Main conflict The possible success of further modernization is economically uncertain and eludes planning. 3. From 2021, the Chinese economic policy is expected to carry out further deregulation. This is the program’s priority for the long-term modernization and redeployment of the social structure. The program provides for further deregulation of state-owned enterprises and state banks, which finance the commercial enterprises. We should expect a further more or less large market opening with regard to the admission of private companies and the removal of trade barriers for foreign investors. Main conflict: If we assume that the next step in modernization is based on the program of further deregulation, there is a conflict between the Chinese social construction and the political program with the changed demands of a large number of affected Chinese as well as Western cooperation partners. This conflict deregulates, multiplies, and reinforces the margin of negation in China’s membership order without destabilizing them. On the contrary, this is a continuous restabilization in the time dimension. 4. It is also worth mentioning the more general problem of the migration of the Chinese population with the next step of Chinese modernization. It is to be expected that a further wave of migration from rural to urban areas will occur in the coming years. It is worth noting that between 130 and 250 million Chinese have migrated from rural to urban areas in the past. Main conflict: With the expected migration, not only do employment and a place to live become essential for this segment of the population, but also the nature of social relations between newly exposed groups. These changes will probably no longer be manageable with the traditionally constituted social systems of Chinese society, such as the kinship system and the organized collectives based on the socialist model. However, one should not expect a catastrophe of social order. China’s social history also includes major upheavals. They were solved by adaptation to this fault and by standstill. For the self-description that went with it, displacements and transcriptions are typical.

Conclusion What does China’s future mean without harmony as a stabilizing medium vis-à-vis conflict? The Chinese social construction as well as the cultural and political systematization is not a social construction of the Western social status function and the roles it

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endures. Western problem-solving strategies are not to be expected. In our research project, however, we assume that the Chinese socio-cultural-political background and the new political rhetoric of the “Beijing Consensus” and the “harmonious society” are also not a suitable orientation for coping with the expected challenges of continuing Chinese modernization. In this context, it would be instructive to refute this assumption. However, the idea is not so difficult to understand that the self-description used by the political center as a “harmonious society” can be distinguished from the successful solutions to problems. The confusion between the two leads not only to errors, but also to delusions of self. It cannot be ruled out that China’s modernization, as it skipped Western modernization, will continue directly with a version of the hybridized postmodern society. It is therefore obvious to compare it with Japanese modernization, which after the failure of its imperial experiment, turned into a hybridized society. However, the socio-structural differences between the two societies must not be overlooked. The analysis of Chinese society requires a research program that is no longer oriented toward Western modernizations and their damage limitation. This continues the reclassification of sociological theory to the sociology of the next society.

Chapter 26

Outlook: Further Modernization

Political Center The further restructuring of Chinese society is not expected to follow a master plan and is not controlled by the “Communist Party of China” in general. China’s modernization was not triggered by bourgeois social movements, nor by economic and social-state-oriented movements, but was initiated by an ongoing opening of the planned economy by the political center. In this respect, we should assume that the further modernization of Chinese society must address: 1. Exchanges between the political system and the economic system, as well as the progress of exchanges between the economic and scientific systems 2. Further integration into the transnational (global) economy 3. Agreements with national states and organizations of the international political system as an indispensable condition for the success of further modernization If this view is approximate, then we have to ask ourselves what is the peculiarity of the membership order of Chinese society. This refers back to their typical, non-Western modernization.

Typical Features The membership condition and order of Chinese society are to be characterized by the following: 1. A strong collective orientation of the great and unique China without a strong social integration of the differentiated areas of action that overlap through social networks 2. Strong negative integration through competition between regions and their differentiation © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_26

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3. Strong participatory and symbiotic integration within the membership groups and their ethnic differentiation This means that it can compensate for more immune events (negations) than is usually assumed for Western societies. The membership conditions do not have a social-state and welfare-state inclusion program. This also applies to the Hong Kong conflict, which most Chinese oppose. From their point of view, the Hong Kong Chinese are simply ungrateful. The political center has a special function in this process, which contributes to the restabilization of the differential order in China, while promoting investment programs. From a sociological point of view, it should be taken into account that the struggle over the flow of released but scarce resources will never come to an end. This draws limits to the social integration of the members of societies that cannot be eliminated. This applies not only to China, but also worldwide. We now have evidence that we no longer live in a “good society,” as the German sociologist Karl Otto Hondrich stated in his studies on the contemporary German welfare state, its restructuring, and renewal (Hondrich 2001b, 14–33). This is also instructive for the future of Chinese modernization.

Part VI

Sociology of the Next Society: Redeployment of Sociological Theory

Keywords Postmodernism · Political system · Economic system · Legal system · Flood of scandals · Populism · Next society · Socio-structural semantics · Inhomogeneous social structure

Chapter 27

Postmodernism, Differentiation of Institutions, and Structural Change

Research Priorities The updating of the problem situation of globalization research and the “Third research program of multiple modernities, membership and globalization” sets the research priorities of the research situation. The changed research situation is characterized by the fact that the leading research priorities are globality, transnationalism, multiculturalism (hybridization), and decivilization (Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Sternberg 2016). Socio-structural change triggers both changes and conflicting processes. This structural change has already changed Western modernity as postmodernism and posthumanism are making themselves felt in all social spheres by changing cultural orientations and the self-definition of the members of social systems. Above all, the correction of the concept of world society must be emphasized. World society is not a social system that can be reached through communication. Its constitutive structures consist of regional companies. The return of the concept of society is motivated by the analysis of the constitutive structures of the “world society.” If we start from the sociology of membership, these constitutive structures are to be described as regional societies with changed center and periphery relations. The research program of the sociology of regional societies and their media observation and self-observation initiates the redeployment of sociological theory. It is worth noting that the research programs of sociological theory are increasingly based on the fact that people are now living in a mobilized society, which covers economics, politics, solidarity, and culture. It concerns the new stratification structure and the differentiation of membership conditions in regional companies. The constitutive structures of world society are, for their part, formed by national and transnational stratification. This changes the reference problem of the analysis of social stratification as a prestige order of social membership communication. The analysis of the associated changes and the structural conflicts have already begun a reorientation of the theory of social integration. The structural problems of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_27

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contemporary societies cannot be solved globally. This is what sociological theory should be prepared to address.

Social Order and Social Integration Let us recall the changed initial situation that characterizes contemporary society. This should always be kept in mind as a common thread. Updating the problem situation of globalization research and the “Third Research Program” sets the main areas of research in the research situation glocalization, transnationalism, multiculturalism (hybridization), and decivilization. The problem introduces a reformulation of the classical theory of social integration in the tradition of Durkheim and Parsons. From the perspective of the sociology of membership, this means that the conditions of participation in the large functional systems are redefined. This will also lead to failures that inevitably occur, such as institutional anomy, political extremism, and disorientation. They will arise because modernization and socio-structural change elude political planning and the realization of a predetermined target state. Globalization is forcing a change in social systems and structural differentiation of institutions so that they can adapt to the horizontal and vertical problem requirements. Voting on the other functional systems from the point of view of the political system can only be about building bridges to a multi-level democracy beyond liberalism, welfare economics, and the national state. This requires a change in political sociology, which should no longer be naively oriented toward demands for democratization, as Western constitutionalism is not a necessary condition for the reorganization of membership orders. This means a reallocation of the theory of social integration to a “regime of pluralism” (Münch) and a “heterotopic order” (Willke). The more the basis of the claim of ethical and human rights of social groups is broadened, the more powerfully scarce goods and the rules of difference of interest groups beyond the welfare state become noticeable. This is most evident in terms of the scarcity of ecological resources. The knowledge of water is already a scarce commodity, which has to be dealt with accordingly. This addresses the functional imperative of an environmental economy, although we do not know how to reconcile this imperative structurally with economic and political constraints, let alone with the demands for solidarity of special communities. We are already realizing that the structural problem that goes with it is that the basis of entitlement of the welfare system is increasingly changing. The Third research program of multiple modernities, membership and globalization 2016 and the Robertson Glocalization, Axford’s, Steger’s Theory of globalization, as well as Eliezer Ben-Rafael’s and Miriam Ben-Rafael’s multiple globalization have abandoned the organizing principle of modernization as Westernization and the dilemma between universalism and particularism. The redeployment in sociological theory is thus more extensive than many sociologists assume. The change in the shape of sociological theory is due to the structural change that goes hand in hand with globalization, glocalization, and hybridization. This will

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probably also have consequences for the reinterpretation of the Western modernization process.

Chapter 28

Functional Systems

Political System Individualistic Inclusion Program Due to the competition of the national states in the political system, morality, ethics, and law can no longer be harmonized. The political system of expanded social communication is increasingly differentiated into spheres of influence without a global center of power. Imperia is not at sight. The more social communication is network-like, the faster the political community crumbles. The institutionalization of subjective rights and the enforcement of the center culture against the periphery have stabilized the inclusion program of functional differentiation and made the members of society independent of their group of origin. This was the evolutionary innovation of the individualist inclusion program, the unity culture, and the collective identity of the national state. However, the groups of origin have not disappeared in the European national state either.

Control Regime The organization of the political functional system of social communication will not be a global governance regime of the political system of world society as a society of societies that transfers the structure of the national state to the global political system. From the present point of view, it is described as a multi-level democracy. The development of the political system after the Second World War occurred as the political tasks became more and more extensive and the expectations of politics increased. At the same time, these expectations were increasingly difficult to meet. All Western countries are affected by this, which in turn, led to the anomaly that the power of the political system depended on an expanded power creation. This © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_28

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changed the political strategy of the incumbent parties in that way as the increase in the performance of political programs and the exercise of political power had to be based on an increase in influence, commitments (value-binding), and appropriate financing in order to pursue their interests. The structural challenge of the political system is that power inflation has increasingly taken place. This was the result of a flood of legislative initiatives and laws that were becoming less and less able to regulate while having an increasingly constricting effect. There is much to suggest that the state’s control function must be changed from vertical to horizontal control: all tasks and services that the social subsystems can solve and deliver must be left to them and not the task of politics. This is especially true of the modernization model of the continental European tradition, which tends to react with state over-control and takeover to selforganizations, be it insurance associations, self-help organizations, private reform, and alternative schools. With the exception of the United Kingdom, a competitive society has not prevailed in them. The competition is already taking place between regions, local communities, businesses, and social groups. This requires a different system of political governance with regard to the design of the political framework. As a result, the social-structural conditions of welfare state integration have already changed.

Welfare Regime The fundamental problem of welfare-state integration and damage limitation is that the success of the welfare regimes after the Second World War has obscured the changing situation of the relationship between the functional systems. This also applies to sociological theory. The social policy of the welfare state cannot be applied to the changed situation. This applies both to the legalization of the working relationship, which is increasingly given to company-specific regulations. But this change initiates also the increasing de-solidarization of the parties in the political system. Another problem reference is the transnational legal regulations of conflicts in the political and economic systems because they cannot be institutionalized globally. In this respect, there will also be a gap that can no longer be bridged between the trade union advocacy and human resource management. A unified European social policy is not to be expected, whatever the inclusions and exclusions in the new welfare state may be. The structural problem of all welfare regimes is that they have increasingly legalized the claims for inclusion and thus overwhelmed the efficiency of the legal system.

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Research Priorities The changed conditions of inclusion and exclusion are the focus of research when the national state loses its integrative function and inclusion becomes a formality. The problem reference of the research is the question and the investigation of which institutional models of political conflict regulation emerge that are not based on power-based decisions. The problems of social policy will increase as the transition from inclusion to exclusion becomes more fluid. The political system comes under constant pressure through its inclusion program and its impact, which it itself is hardly able to handle. We should always consider that the political system cannot control other subsystems. Here, there is a problem pressure from the demands of various kinds, which it itself cannot process. This leads to attribution problems, as the effects on the legal, scientific, and other social systems can no longer be clearly calculated. In this situation, the research focus also includes the analysis of the impact of the formal organization of the political system. Their independence also explains that their mode of operation cannot be characterized by political intentions. Formal organizations operate environmentally blind. Overall, this problem leads to an analysis of the relationship between functional systems and formal organizations that provide them with the capacity to discriminate. It is also a question of whether the self-description of the political system as a state will continue. Perhaps, from an external perspective, we should switch it to the political system and its formal organization.

Economic System Labor Market On the condition that economic exchanges are broadened, the Western welfare state is being put on the defensive. National integration and economic globalization are becoming increasingly difficult to coordinate. Local communities are becoming less and less able to distinguish themselves from the transnational economic system and its markets. This triggers new social-political conflicts. As companies are guided by comparative cost advantages, employment structures are changing. This exacerbates industrial action, as it also encourages wage dumping. Whether it will be run by trade unions in the future remains to be seen. At the same time, ecological distribution conflicts arise, as over-exploitation of natural resources takes place through the production, transport chains, consumption, and leisure behavior. The transnational labor market ends the conservative welfare state’s inclusion program and the continued increase in participation in national prosperity, as the national locational advantages are no longer extended to all segments of the respective economic system. The fundamental change is that productivity gains no longer

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guarantee an increase in employment and tax revenues. This will create a wider skills gap in the labor market. Not everyone can compete for qualification. The problem arises that the low-skilled are no longer able to find employment. The structural change that is already visible is that gainful employment will no longer be the center of social integration. In this respect, a change of mentality will take place. In assessing these changes, one must not be misled by the political rhetoric to the contrary. The opening up of the market and the associated competitive pressure swell will no longer be reversed in a transnational economic system, but will be further exacerbated. This also explains the political and economic defense strategies of the interest groups of the national states.

Center-Periphery Constellation Structural change is accelerated by the changing center-periphery constellation of the economic system, in which financial service providers occupy a central position through the financial markets. This is in addition to the fact that structural breaks occur in the event of a long-term restabilization of the economic system, which have a highly selective effect on market participants. This leads to disintegration and anomie, which are not eliminated but reinforced by a transnational economic system. The economic elites have already de-solidarized, and their national loyalty to their home society has been lost. They are closer to their partners in the global economic system than to their own employees and to the representatives of the political system. This also applies if more lip service is paid to the public. If the national solidarity of the economic elites breaks down, it will no longer be integrated into the national state. While the national state stabilized the inclusion program of functional differentiation, there are increasing conflicts of inclusion, as the interests of social groups are always difficult to coordinate. Economic growth, national solidarity, and government governance are increasingly falling apart while functional systems are drifting apart.

Research Priorities The structural changes in solidarity integration are the main focus of research if the welfare state can no longer absorb or regulate the economic damage limitation and break up the old welfare cartels. Social integration is not a final state, but a dynamic process. In the conservative welfare state, national solidarity, economic growth, and political governance have mutually stabilized. It is not yet possible to predict what forms of solidarity (helping and damage limitation) will develop in the course of the reconstruction of the Western welfare order. There is no denying that social communication cannot restabilize itself without forms of help as individual and collective damage limitation in order to protect social systems from their catastrophe. But

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they are not the perfection of social communication and have no global reach. It is already apparent that in this changed basic situation, legal communication will no longer bring about social integration, as Durkheim assumed. The legal system has a vastly different function. Social integration cannot be achieved by any functional system. In this respect, a recast of the theory of social integration is needed. Economic transnational division of labor, free capital market, migrations of global corporations, and new demarcations lead to a different membership order than we know it from the inclusion program of functional differentiation. Empirical research shows that participants in transnational economics have not been drawn into the drift of a “race to the bottom” that, for them, entails rising poverty, more internal inequality, and the disintegration of social standards. The crucial point is that the structure of the economic system has changed and will continue to change.

Legal System Law as a Medium of Conflict Propagation We should assume that society cannot exist without justice. It allows the projection of expectations. Only in this way can social communication be restabilized. Law does not, however, serve the harmonization of social communication or social integration. Instead, its function for social communication is the increase in conflict while its performance in the system-system relationship could be described by the restabilization of the regulation of conflict resolutions. Legal communication can negate without compromising social systems in their structure. It is more difficult to continue this theory of reflection beyond the present legal theories. This is especially true under the premise of functional differentiation since in this form of differentiation the disappointment of expectations in the subsystems becomes the normal state. Law, however, is not a medium for consensus-building, but for increasing conflict. It also programs the non-variability of system states of the membership systems. In this context, it is an antibody (among others) in the immune system of the membership system society, which serves to cope with the conflicts and irritations of social communication while establishing a systemic memory. We should take the talk of immune system literally, as legal (social) communication closes itself in selfreferential terms. However, the law and the legal decision-making may also perform other functions. There is much to suggest that in social communication, which is now observable, a different structural and operational linkage between the legal and other functional systems is taking place.

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Differentiation of Legal Systems Luhmann (1974a, b) already based findings on the discovery that in world society the law and the legal system are established as a functional system with its special requirements for its institutionalization. The comparability of the different legal systems consists, for example, in legislation, the distinction between criminal and civil law, the fact that property may be acquired and contracts may be concluded in which legal proceedings apply. This includes Western sensitivity to human rights violations, without these rights having a clear basis of validity and specification. Their observation sets the focus of their injury. However, the different legal systems are not eliminated from Luhmann’s point of view by establishing the differentiation of the legal system at the level of glorified social communication (Luhmann 1993b, 573–574). Moreover, the positive right of the legal system as the allocation of subjective rights is not in a position to guarantee its political enforcement. Luhmann (1993b, 580) therefore tends to systematize the “world law system” in terms of obligations.

Decision-Making Conditions Legal communication as a selective regulation of expectations of expectation is always defined at the same time as a decision-making order dominated by the time dimension. If we consider the concept of legal consequence to be communication theory, it must be referred to the case of disappointment. The description of a communication from the point of view of its legal consequence is an option of an observer who observes communication with a view to an expectation selection. This is an expectation of a special kind, because the selection projects a normalized and decisive expectation in time. This applies regardless of the content of the legal proceedings. Among the functional systems of social communication, the legal system is the only decision-making system that not only normalizes expectations but which has institutionalized decision bindingly by the prohibition to refuse justice. This is the only way it can perform in the system-system relationship. As a communication type, legal communication restabilizes a selection of expectations with a view to an uncertain future in which variations in expectations are limited. The restabilization of legal communication consists in the decision, which sets the law as both changeable and contingent. Law is determined as the projection of the selection of expectations in time. However, the positive or negative selection does not yet determine whether and how the system can change structures and preserve them in the event of a suppressed change. We should at last refrain from the fact that justice is valid by a natural rationality, order of reason, or value. The application of the law can only be established through formally organized social systems.

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Legal communication as a “communication in formally organized social systems” is always at the same time an episode of social communication in accordance with the formal law, which therefore reproduces the legal entity as a membership status of social systems. Only by this marking can legal communication be observed and infringements be attributed, as it presupposes the distinction between communication, action and attribution. This, in turn, allows the handling of the distinction between self-reference and foreign reference.

Formal and Informal Law The modern constitutional state (democratic constitutional state) as an organization of the political system is, as a result of the enforcement of the differentiation of society, organization and simple interaction (functional differentiation) only one organizational system among others. If we start from the separation of the legal and political systems as functional systems, the Constitution is a structural link between the two functional systems. Whether this coupling is evolutionarily viable has to be left unanswered. If we are right in its function of propagation of conflicts, the distinctions between formal and informal law are necessary in legal theory. Formal communication is the prescribed procedures for the case law of the various bodies, the drafting of the contract and the statutes of the law. It is informal by projecting the expectations of communication participants in formally and spontaneously organized social systems.

Weighing Up Some alleged legal theorists and legal experts have caused a lot of confusion with the concept of adequacy of the legal decision. The relevance of legal communication to the decision-making process led in legal theory to the fundamental question of whether the rule of law or adequacy should be given priority in the legal decision by weighing up. Since the 1990s, we have seen a rhetoric of adequacy, especially among some German legal theorists, by weighing up the legal decision. This has a long history and goes back to the German tradition of the state under the rule of law (Rechtsstaat), which was updated into a social-state interpretation, for example, the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. Rückert (2011, 913–964) points out in a case study on legal balancing that it has been used since 1900 and the 1950s to weigh up the various interests in finding justice. The approach of Ernst Stampe was exposed. He argues in favor of “finding justice by weighing up interests” and “social jurisprudence.” The Weimar Constitution already contained the sentence “Property is obligatory.” In the German, in contrast to the American legal system, this also applies to an anti-liberal attitude.

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Rückert emphasizes two currents in German legal history of the twentieth century, the law-loyal balancing of interests in a primacy of the binding of the law (Philipp Heck) and, in the opposite direction, a social jurisdiction by balancing of interests (Ernst Stampe), which liberalizes the binding of the law with regard to the free evaluation of the individual case. In addition to the legal-philosophical and humanistic position of the legal interpretation of the Weimar Basic Rights of 1919 by Rudolf Smend and Richard Thomas at a conference of German constitutional law experts in München in 1927, Rickert refers to the “recognized weighing up” of jurisdiction in administrative law in the use of discretion. It demonstrates the legal scope of the authorization of the planning executive and the judging judiciary to “openly weigh up.”

Decision, Values, and Legal Interests Positive law applies by decision, which can always be different. In this context, it sets itself by its positivity as contingent and changeable. The unit of legal communication is the procedure, as all legal claims must be raised in the legal process. Law can only condition itself through procedures and not through the legal justification. Argumentation provides the system with the necessary redundancy for their selfobservation, which they are at the same time allowed to conceal and not communicate. Legal communication does not operationalize any purpose programs in the sense of final purposes. It would thereby block itself. On the other hand, the partial purposes need not be denied. Value jurisprudence is nothing more than a formula for the reference problem of a standardization of case law, which in turn can only be programmed as a balance of quality. The assumed values do not contain a decision program. This applies regardless of which value theory is assumed, as in objective values and values as subjective preferences. However, the legal requirement for unification and freedom of expression is not achievable in the case-law. Values are to be regarded as redundancy, which corresponds to the distinction of variety as the functiondifferentiated legal system has to deal with continuous variations. Otherwise, it would not be able to perform its function. This also applies to the interpretation of the constitution. It, too, is not outside the law. So-called “higher values,” whichever they are, serve to formulate the decision-making situation and bind the jurisprudence by decision. The weighing of legal interests is based on valuations, for example, the right to life of the mother as opposed to the loss of life of the offspring. A fundamental problem is that the “value relationship” should be taken from the applicable law. It should be noted that it has remained a mystery how values can be taken from the applicable law. Rickert points out that the course set by the Federal Constitutional Court between 1954 and 1958 provides for an orientation toward “just consideration of interests” and “interests worthy of protection,” which is precisely not a procedure that identifies a set of facts, but rather an indeterminate teleological orientation of the

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case-law. A fundamental problem of comparative sociology of law is the primacy of the constitution over private law in the course of the transformation of liberal political control regimes into social-state control regimes and, for example, the German balancing model versus the American delimitation model of constitutional jurisdiction.1 In his historical-critical analysis, Rickert demonstrates the functional change from a non-legal to a fundamental-law, planning law, public-law or even general legal decision-making orientation. From his point of view, both the strictness of the norm and the weighing are to be optimized, but they are to be put into perspective with regard to the areas of law. One thing we should bear in mind is that appropriateness through weighing cannot be a super norm of case law. If it were, the legal system would erode. It would be jurisdiction as it sees fit. There would then be no legal certainty and the law would not be able to restabilize expectations in time. Appropriateness as a super norm of the evaluation of jurisprudence is precisely not a selfirritation of legal communication, but rather a system fever caused by the excessive demands placed on the legal system by external claims.

Localization The enlargement and transnational overlapping of functional systems is precisely leading to the localization of the law and the legal systems. However, this will not result in universal legal order nor the legal community and legal order. If the right of extended social communication is a system at all, it is a system of legal systems. In contemporary society, the confrontation with non-Western civilizations and legal traditions that calls into question Western legalism is a new experience, as in, the Islamic legal order. As far as legal theory, it follows that the adoption of a priori valid and reasonable legal principles and the adoption of a natural right must be abandoned. Natural law, which is also repeatedly revived by legal theorists, has long lost its plausibility. The positive right is valid by decision and can no longer be systematized as a natural right. As long as legal theory does not take this step, it remains incapable of learning. It must be descriptively based on the finding that the legal systems and legal systems present in the membership systems are not a general legal order or a universal system of law. It should also be stressed that individual states are more likely to lose their dominance. In the European Union in particular, European law means that member states lose their legal autonomy, triggering conflicts on an ongoing basis. They will not weaken the position of the courts, but rather strengthen them. However, this will not prevent the inflation of legal communication, as the increased use of the right is in the opposite way. This can be explained by the fact

1

On current legal theory and sociology of law, also with regard to the legal order of the European Union: Maultzsch (2012, 1039–1050, 2014a, b, 53–67, 2017).

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that the acceleration, enlargement, and specific compaction of communication will increase the use of the law. This, in turn, does not rule out a deflationary decline in the use of legal communication.

Research Priorities The problem of the legal system is quite different from the point of view of the system of legal systems, because, assuming global social communication, we have to reckon with very different legal systems, such as traditional, regional, and religious law. The positivity and state enforcement of law, as we are familiar from the systemic history of the political system, the legal system and the interpenetration of both systems, will not be transferred, despite its effectiveness, to globalized social communication and its restabilization. The system of legal systems means a differentiation of the legal systems. It should be noted that there are also different legal paradigms within the Western legal system, such as, the common law of the legal tradition in Great Britain and the United States. If, under these conditions, we ask about the performance of the right to social communication, it can only consist of damage limitation. However, we should not expect that the increase in selfrationality of the law would lead to a conceptual-dogmatic unification of the system of legal systems. Legal theorists can learn something from sociologists on this point as the sociology of contemporary society has already led to the realization that globalized social communication does not produce a hierarchical social order in which there is a peak and a center. There is not much to suggest that legal communication should be unified in a world legal order. The main focus of the research is the study of the different legal systems that developed in the course of structurally different modernization, as in Japan, China, India, Western and Eastern Europe, which meet in the course of the globalization of social communication. The research program is to examine the structure, functions, and mode of action of the law in political, cultural, economic, and social situations and their systemic types. Of particular interest could be the effects of the paradoxes of modern law. Examples include the paradox of legal rationalism, legal individualism, legal universalism, and the instrumentalism of legal design (Münch 1991, 29–37). The main focus of the research is the study of how the legal binding and the social reality of law can be reproduced and thus produced in the first place, or if it should be produced at all. This includes assessing the performance of the new transnational courts, the new legal institutions and regulations and their consequences for national, legal, and political systems, as well as the continued existence of primary, secondary, and legal systems (Krawietz 2016). Therefore, in addition to the formal-legal directives, attention must be paid to the informal and non-governmental, hence social, legal formation. In particular, primary legal systems must not be examined exclusively from the point of view of secondary legal systems.

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For the sociology of law, one could speak of a differential order of law, which will inevitably occur more and more. This is justified by the fact that there cannot be a society without law and that it has to be enforced authoritatively by decision. As such, it is not to be interpreted as a voluntative program of purpose, although there are such ritualizations and self-descriptions, for example, the talk of the will of the people and the legislator. It cannot be operationalized as a purpose program and be functionally adequate as one cannot decide according to this program. The calls for legitimacy and control fade away in the background noise of the system’s constitution, the order from noise. This is not a completely new insight, but a new reason why the control of the social system is not possible. It can only regulate itself.

Chapter 29

An Observation: Flood of Scandals

The Function of Scandals Sociologists largely agree that scandals are a social ritual that is supposed to have a “cleansing” function—and thus preserving the values and norms of larger social units. These rituals work through excessive personalization, as the culprits for public communication are to be found. The scandal is an indicator of the self-observation of membership systems. The purifying ritual of fighting the scandal is supposed to be a correction of individual and collective misconduct that restores the normal state of communication systems for their participants. This is intended to ensure once again that they are granting themselves an advance of trust and thereby repairing the damage to the continuously assumed self-evident expectations. In this respect, one could hypothesize that the observation and communication of scandals is an unintended contribution to social integration in the membership systems, which is its latent function (Merton). However, we are increasingly finding that the cleansing ritual is becoming more ostensibly superficial and the search for scandal is becoming a profiling motive for journalists. It is no longer possible to determine that this is part of the ritual. Moreover, moral self-renewal seems to be increasingly in vain. This is what Münch emphasizes when he highlights the difference between “morality and reality.” Increased competition for customers and voters in business and politics raises the frequency in which illegitimate means of maximizing profit and voting are also used. Thus, the discrepancy between morality and reality, and thus the extent of disappointment and the frequency of scandals, is growing. (Münch 1991, 93–94, authors’ translation).

The Federal Republic of Germany has been experiencing a “flood of scandals” since the mid-1970s. Through the mass media, we are supplied with them on a daily basis. One could almost speak of a “revelation fanaticism,” be it scandals of party financing, environmental damage, and corruption. Our moral expectations seem to be becoming more ambitious as a result, but at the same time the medium of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_29

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communication of information by the mass media and its stagings in this respect also deprive us of a valid examination of the occurrences. Committees are set up, a collection of information is reviewed by interest groups as well as journalists in order to find the culprits with the hope that transgressors can be morally rejected and, if necessary, brought to justice. The moralization and inflation of morality go hand in hand.

Value Fundamentalism The rhetoric of the scandals and the associated irritations are mostly based on fundamental values. From a sociological point of view, one should regard that the requirements for functional differentiation make a fundamentalism of values increasingly implausible. This is not an area of being to which there would be any access. It is precisely from this situation that the helplessness of protests, which is connected with the scandal observation, can be illustrated from a sociological perspective. This does not preclude their multiplication, which results in the tyranny of the powerless. Assuming that values require generally binding claims, the question always arises as to the criteria for their application. From the point of view of the political system, the problem of the impotence of the right to control arises from the orientation to “fundamental values.” Above all, with the so-called “fundamental values” [..] the society itself [..] In other words, fundamental values are aimed at the political system as part of the social system, and aim at the unity of system and environment. They identify the policies that one advocates and promote as a concern of society. In doing so, the language of values, and this is the second relevant distinction, makes it possible to refrain from describing society as a real system in its structures and in the restrictions it imposes. It is not a realistic image of society that is designed as realistically as possible, but a catalogue of undeniable values that forms the framework into which political projections are then formulated. (Luhmann 2000, 360–361, authors’ translation)

In the political system, the rhetoric of values serves above all to successfully overestimate consensus. On the side of the “society as a real system,” values can always be modified opportunistically, and they certainly do not have an unavoidable control function for the large subsystems. Ultimately, this has far-reaching consequences for personalization in the scandal market, as for many scandalous incidents a single person simply cannot be blamed. In the end, for instance, everyone has a “good excuse,” was “not properly informed,” acted “in good faith,” were “victims of intrigue,” and found themselves “at the mercy of constraints.” In addition, we should largely assume that it is precisely for political decisions (including the unintended) consequences that cannot be estimated. This also applies to the talk of “sustainability” that is widespread in Germany, which cannot be guaranteed ex ante. However, this does not preclude people from acting on the basis of this illusion.

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Sense of the Scandal Hondrich is an important sociologist whose scholarship sheds needed light on the problem of scandals. His concept of scandal is not psychological or oriented toward the subjective motives of the participants. Instead, it is more functional with a focus on the function of scandals for social systems (Hondrich 2002, 19–20). It is specific to political scandal, environmental scandal, Europe’s scapegoats, and scientific scandals. His contention is that a scandal allows insight into the “deep layer” of morality. In his view, this consists of the “elementary processes of social life” (Hondrich 2009, 91–95). The socially cultivated moral semantics of values and moral principles are thus not based on themselves. The sociological problem to be deciphered is therefore twofold: what is behind the publicly staged collective outrage? With what distinctions can it be observed? Hondrich assumes the course of scandals in such a way that he remembers the meaning of the word in a first step: “Scandalethrone” in Greek means “crooked set square in the trap.” Whatever the intention of the trap, whoever touches the wood causes it to snap. This is a strong cause under given initial conditions. As long as we, as members of different social systems, pursue our interests and realize chances of taking advantage by corresponding status positions in them, we quickly run into the trap of a misconduct. It is attributed to him by his social environment as a moral transgression, and it puts him in an easily attackable position. The next step is “revelation.” It requires the self-observation of the members of social systems. The all-round observation of, for example, high status positions in public offices, interest groups and business enterprises by representative of the mass media is a good prerequisite for this. It is assumed that on the moral market the distinction between “good” and “bad” is staged by their representatives. Success is usually achieved by appealing to “feelings” that trigger an amorphous “indignation.” They are suitable for protest, which is staged journalistically. The revelation and annoyance is followed by “indignation,” which calls for “satisfaction.” But this does not guarantee success and often runs into emptiness. It therefore requires a “collective indignation,” its organization by journalists and by protest groups in order to be successful (Hondrich 2002, 19–20). Hondrich’s sociological interpretation of the scandal states that we should not describe it from the declared intentions of the participants, but rather in the membership-theoretical and membership-sociological reinterpretation of the membership conditions typical of the social system. These can only be guaranteed if the area of the informal and anomalous also allows it. This allows the rise and fall of politicians in the political system or the careers of film giants and managers who may fail due to scandals. With this, however, we are already leaving Hondrich’s reinterpretation and taking up a motif of his sociological interpretation. Hondrich is to be agreed with the example of the “Kohl scandal” in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1990s: Below the political culture and culture par excellence lives a sub-culture of basic moral processes, which should no longer exist. But they do exist. According to modern

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understanding, it should be abolished in the framework of democratic procedures and finely woven formal and informal norms of civil society. From their point of view, the underworld is immoral, which must be forced to its knees, even to be eased. That is why the former Federal Chancellor should name the friends who, behind the back of the law, provided him with money for political purposes. But Kohl fights back. He is adamant that the protection of trust for friends is also a morality and that in the conflict of loyalty, friendship deserves preference over the state of justice. This preference, unveiled by Kohl specifically to dismiss further revelations, becomes a scandalon itself. (Hondrich 2002, 19, authors’ translation)

We recognize that morality is always prone to conflict and that respect is not a single formula. The members of social systems can always address a morally themed issue from the point of view of the “upper world” or the “underworld of the realm of immorality.” It is informative that there is no moral order of social communication that cannot be called into question from a certain point of view. Luhmann agrees that in modern society one can protest against everything and that protest neuroses of the members of social systems are set up, which prevent the connection to further communication. This is something akin to the tyranny of the impotent. Every protest, especially against the organization of the political system, must limit itself as a protest. Self-limitation is achieved through the organization of decisions and the shaping of their connectivity to political communication. It is not done with calls for democracy and legitimacy. The recent protests, for example, in Hong Kong, Venezuela, and Belarus, are an evidence of this. This is true regardless of the empirical preconditions they have and the elite struggles that precede them. The moral outrage is functional since they have to meet the conditions of membership and their regulation in a social system but it can only ever put it into effect formally. Therefore, social systems cannot dispose of the informal process of damage limitation, without which no official morals can be issued. In this respect, morality and immorality have an effect on market of the members of social systems. We repeatedly encounter opposing processes, for example, of dislocation and rehabilitation. However, it remains closed to the self-observation of the members of the social system “How was it actually?” That does not exclude that each member can orient himself or herself on the relevant consequences of action, as any social system about events to be identified by its members has to be restabilized in time. Of course, they are just as little fictitious, like their environment.

Failure of the Cleansing Effect The cleansing effect intensified by the flood of scandals is confronted at the same time with the fact that these very scandals are quickly forgotten. This is exactly what counts for the flood of scandals and journalistic profiling strategies. One always needs a new scandal on the scandal market. This rather suggests the conclusion that the cleansing effect of scandals runs empty and that scandal productions and scandal projections are themselves a ritual of observation in, for example, the media-driven

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political public sphere, which also serve the journalistic profiling strategy. Anyone who suspects a scandal can therefore expect to be rewarded with attention as a matter of course. The observation is informative, as a collective commitment of the members of society differentiated according to membership regulations inevitably fails. A situation of intensified communication of excitement staged by the media settles down in the border areas of factual action and communication systems in which public observation is placed. The communication of scandals may arouse the consciousness of the members of social systems, but they do not reach the outside of the observation of the communication systems in which they participate. But they can disturb them, for example, through protest and subjective derailment. In this respect, the staged scandals can no longer have their cleansing effect. Their function is not integration, but the staging of powerlessness, adolescence, and narrow-mindedness. It is, to put it flatly, the tyranny of the powerless.

Chapter 30

Populism

Problem Identification In current societies, we observe very different social movements, such as, populism with regard to different democratic organizations of the Western political system, the gender movement, which is already institutionalized in the Western scientific system as a research program, gay movements and the lesbian social movement. The research program of postcolonial studies, for example, is linked to both political claims and research strategies in sociological theory. The question “what is common to these social movements and how could they be explained sociologically?” cannot be easily answered. It is striking, however, that the primordial coding is characteristic of them with different assessments, as in gender, originality, language of origin, xenophobia as well as local and national affiliation. But they are also at times hostile to intellectuals and might on occasion represent conspiracy theories.1 There is already extensive research on populism. However, it often lacks a theoretical sociological approach and moves somewhat in circles, as it is often oriented only to the anti-democratic and anti-elitist effect of the populists (Axford 2021; Laclau 2005; Nederveen Pieterse 2018; Steger 2019; Priester 2007, 2015, 185–147; 2016, 69–91) For a sociological analysis, one has to distance oneself from the political rhetoric cultivated by populists. Nor is it so easy to understand what the political rhetoric of the “people” means. Thus, a no less mystical entity becomes thematic in which the mystery of the unification of individual will and Volonté General (Rousseau) is to take place (Luhmann). The political process in Western democracies is certainly not a “transformation of the will of the people into binding decisions” (Luhmann 2000, 266). Western democracy is the choice of decisionmakers. But one should not assume that they represent anything. The political system cannot be characterized precisely by the representation of a popular will 1

On the function of conspiracy theories: Roniger and Senkman, ProtoSociology (2019), on a classification of social movements: Preyer (2018b, Part IV XIII). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_30

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and a popular sovereignty. The semantics of sovereignty have survived. On this point too, we can remind Luhmann that the political system would work even if the people did not exist. According to Axford and Steger, current populism is a reaction to the processes of globalization. In this respect, Axford (2021) and Steger (2019, 110–136) classify it as “postmodern populism.” From this point of view, it can be classified as “postmodern” because it is a reinvention in the digital and global age, accompanied by a change in political communication via social media. Laclau (2005, 13) classifies it as “distinctive and always present possibility of structuration of political life.” This is plausible in so far as the institutionalization of “government and opposition” in the election campaign allows this option to be realized without too many problems, depending on the mood of the electorate. Nederveen Pieterse (2018, 170, 195) has also highlighted that populist social movements are turning against the established political elites. It must always be kept in mind that the speakers of populism themselves are among the elites. One is reminded of Pareto’s approach to elite circulation. However, the talk of what was titled The global rise of populism (Moffitt 2016) has to take into account that “populism” has different meanings ranging from South America’s legalized Perronism to distinct understandings in the United States and in Europe. If we assume a reinterpretation of “postmodern populism” and the state of research, two reference problems should be mentioned: 1. The limits of the logic of inclusion of functional differentiation (Luhmann: end of the inclusion logic) and the overburdening of the welfare state 2. The cultural globalization of the economic one-size-fits-all culture that invariably provokes corresponding backlash from indigenous cultures and social groups As far as item “1,” the changed political communication and the structure of the political system of the Next Society will probably have continuous governance deficits. There is much to suggest that there is a fundamental crisis in political democracy and a post-democratic organization of the political system is on the horizon. We do not know which type of democracy will survive evolutionarily. Item “2” is almost inevitable, since peripheral cultures and traditional status groups are threatened in their independence. This will trigger stronger immune responses that do not raise awareness of problem issues, but act destructively—a point emphasized by Münch.2 This is reinforced by the fact that: The emerging but fiercely opposed structural change in justice (and the welfare state, the authors) takes account of this problem. It moves away from justice in the sense of equal living conditions for all citizens of a nation, while at the same time great inequality between nations for justice as fairness, equal opportunities and equality of performance across all national borders away. (Münch 2001a, 254, authors’ translation)

2

Among the problem areas of the recast of the theory of social integration: Preyer (2018b, 410–434).

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If this characterization of the constitutive structures of world society is true, the fractures of solidarity integration are identified, which are difficult to compensate for by the national states. The breaking point at which postmodern populism is to be placed in sociological analysis is that “global dynamics and local living value” (Münch 1998) can no longer be coordinated. Nor is it a new insight that the interests of the members of society cannot be pursued to a large extent successfully in the political market. This requires a successful organization, the support of a lobby, and skill in political exchanges. Nor is it naive to assume that the organization of the political system will easily ensure equal opportunities in the political market. Even if this organization were to pursue such a program, it would probably not be resoundingly successful. This is where the political rhetoric calls for democracy takes place, but it cannot guarantee it either. Postmodern populism, in contrast to mass political movements connected with Western modernization, relates to the loss of confidence in institutions and to the transnational expansion of the economic system, national collective disintegration, and social upheavals. It cannot be ruled out that this will increase the exclusion ranges. It is to be expected that the differentiated membership conditions of social stratification will intensify. This raises the issue of the recasting of the political governance of the state organization beyond the welfare state. In the case of the national states of the European Union, it will be reorganized not so much by large organizations such as associations and political parties, but rather by a democracy of “constitutive liberalism” (Münch). Clearly, this will not be an easy path.

Emancipation of Populism What stands out about the new and probably even unexpected populism? Its selfdescription takes up traditional motifs, such as a return to something original, a sharpened anti-establishment attitude, a strong simplification combined with an emotionalization, an increasing readiness to use violence, the generalization of particular interests, and a return to simple motifs. What is new about this populism is that it organizes itself through available communication technology and spreads through new social media. As a result, it reaches its target group broadly. It is not too much to say that populism becomes visible through the mass media in the first place. Without the mass media, populist events would be of little relevance and would probably be quickly forgotten. To this extent, the mass media contribute to the motive force and media exposure of populists. Even the ritualized self-criticism of the media representatives does not change this much. The connection with scandalization is that the representatives of the mass media react with a powerless indignation. It could well be that this is a way for both sides to motivate each other. The triggering of indignation is certainly in the interest of the populists, as it gives them more attention. With certain limitations, it can be assumed that the mass media previously had an objective function. This has changed through social media in that, via media dissemination, a new kind of indoctrination and escalation, as in the

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transmission of acts of violence and executions, has been accompanied by a justification of beliefs. It is also new, however, that it not only cooperates throughout Europe, but that radical right-wing groups in the United States also threaten German politicians and foreign political organizations by supporting populist groups. The use of current communication technology increases the spread of populist rhetoric, for example, through the use of bots. The new populism emancipates itself from objective, moral, and respected democratic and humanistic collective values and rejects the social order of Western societies. It should be kept in mind that current populism is creating new political and socio-political actors that are questioning established and organized interest groups. They have not been prepared for this, and it is difficult for them to develop and apply a defensive and neutralization strategies effectively. This changed situation can also be explained by the upheavals in social stratification, for example, in Europe. This also explains why the descending middle classes in the European Union are by and large receptive to this. However, it also addresses the limits of the performance of the political system.

Structural Performance Limits of the Political System We observe a rhetoric in the political system, its border area and populist groups that focuses primarily on the problem of “democratic—anti-democratic” and “non-popular rule of the political establishment.” The populist protests go beyond the “extraparliamentary opposition” and call democratic decision-making into question. Luhmann (2000, 233–234) has pointed out a problem of interpretation of populism, which is understudied in research. He assumes that the shortcomings of the political system’s performance can be explained by the idling of its formal organization. Every functional system cannot do without its formal organization. Through formal organization, the membership systems are equipped with “communication skills.” It consists of the fact that organizations can communicate in their own name (Luhmann 2000, 241). Luhmann’s assumption is that increasingly the organizational selfcontribution of the political system no longer has a positive resonance in its social environment. This results in fractures that can no longer be eliminated by the rhetoric of democratic legitimacy and the declarations of intent of the representatives of political parties. The formal organizations cannot successfully carry out special purpose programs, but can at best adapt them “selectively” to their environment. Examples include the value orientations and normative expectations with regard to welfare state programs, which inevitably lead to disappointment and resentment (Luhmann 2000, 234). This partly explains the anti-democratic effect of populists who, in turn, exploit this rupture for their rhetoric and their mobilization of the social groups that are responsive to it. Western rhetoric on democracy often fails to appreciate that the organization of the political system cannot be changed without a structural collapse. Populists do not lack situations which make their rhetoric plausible from their point of view and which they only need to point out. In the Federal Republic of Germany, a situation appears to be emerging in which the

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population is happy to accept the welfare state benefits, but no longer chooses the parties responsible for them.

Simplified Orientation Postmodern populism can also be interpreted as a response to the complex, non-solvable paradoxes and structural drift of social restructuring of the major subsystems that the new technical communication media favor. It is a social movement in the opposite direction to the widening social questions of belonging together, of positioning in the different social groups, and the uncontrollable fluctuations in the subsystems. Its claim is to offer an orientation in the disorientation by simplification and intensification. Here, one can assume that its function is to provide a sense that consists in compensating for the various paradoxes that have arisen as a result of the third modernity, which evade dissolution by means of simple solution formulas. Thus, populism makes a selection of reference problems of a non-transparent complexity that prevent variations of problem solutions. For the next society, it is to be expected that this phenomenon will accompany us rather than disappear. At the same time, one cannot rule out that a comparable form of simplification may also arise in other forms and in other social sub-sectors, for example, the law through mistrust in the case law, self-justice and vigilante groups, as well as in medicine by the belief in Chinese traditional medicine, homeopathy, and shamanism. This would mean that professionalization, for example, human capital individualists, would be linked to the de-professionalization of parts of the members of social systems that cannot meet the expectations placed on them and are thus falling behind. But post-populism would also be a feature that a rationalization or objectification of the exchange of interests is not to be expected as a social program. This describes the limits in the education and education programs and in the idealized political programs of inclusion, which are not able to realize the expectations placed on them. It is more likely to lead to differentiations, which are not compensated by “lifelong learning” and “promoting by demanding.” These are also programs that inevitably fail, whether due to the necessary motive force and the profile of the job. If we take the approach of postmodern populism further, it is advisable to describe the reduction of institutional trust, the anti-democratic effects, and the assertions of identity through primordial coding with regard to the problematic reference of social integration beyond the national and welfare state and the structural change of solidarity integration under the condition of a multipolar globalization of the constitutive structures of world society. This inevitably occurs in the situation when the national state no longer ensures social balance and collective solidarity, and we have to assume an “imbalance as a permanent state” (Münch) in the course of the structural change of the functional systems. If we assume the changed structure of transnational stratification, the emancipation of populism and its media staging, the structural performance limits of the political system and the encounter of opaque

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complexity of the members of social systems, then we should be prepared for the fact that postmodern populism is not an event of the day but will accompany us for a long time to come.

Chapter 31

Transition to the Next Society

Next Society The transition to the next society is a transition of transitions. It takes place in time and is itself a temporal event with a horizon of the past and a horizon of the future. It does not follow any program. It is also reinforced by the fact that the other subsystems are not to be defined on an environmental design of a subsystem. This belongs to the “sociological enlightenment” as a disillusionment (Luhmann 1970). From the point of view of taking stock of sociological theory, what are the problems of sociological research? The communication technology dimension is of particular relevance in social communication, thus it makes it possible to bridge spatial and temporal distances. The next society will be a society of digitized communication of its members. This has implications for both the economic system and economic exchanges, scientific system and its knowledge and dissemination, as well as to a political system with regard to political conflicts, cultural traditions, legal system vis-à-vis the claim of subjective rights and their political guarantee, in addition to social integration and their solidarity. The social-political problem to be tackled, including the social policy problem, is to limit the optimization of individual interests and their political institutionalization. A central reference problem is the change in the social integration of the collective organization of the welfare state and its institutions after the Second World War.

Glocalization From Robertson’s perspective of globalization theory (glocalization), the basic situation can be characterized by the fact that the conflicts, tensions, and contradictions between the locally bound social systems with their everyday integration into the world and the global are triggered by the dynamics and expansion of social © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_31

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exchange in the political, economic, legal, and scientific system. As a result, the communication systems expand. They are no longer locally or only globally absorbed or restabilized and systemically integrated, for example, by international organizations. Instead, the two processes are symbiotically connected and run across border structures, such as, tourism, mass media, mobility in the economic system, and ecological problems, which cannot be limited meso-cosmically in space and time on the celestial body “earth.” The basic problem of, for example, the European welfare states, is that the collective social integration of national solidarity, state control, and economic growth can no longer be achieved and is giving way to a pluralism of wealth. For the states of the European Union and their political center in Brussels, this requires a redefinition of the steering function of the state organization of the political system.

Constitutive Structures For the reference problem of the analysis of the constitutive structures of the world society, it can be assumed that social integration at local, regional, national, supranational, and global level along with the coordination of these levels will become a permanent problem (Münch 1998, 37). It is therefore advisable to look at the three Western modernizations as they describe the situation that leads to the answers to the decentralization of the world society, its formally-informally regulated membership systems, its structurally changed inclusion and exclusion order and the insight into different modernizations of contemporary societies. The problem-related analysis of the constitutive structures of world society initiates a reallocation of the classical theory of social integration in the tradition of Durkheim and Parsons. From the perspective of the sociology of membership, this means that the conditions of participation in the large functional systems are redefined. This will also lead to failures that inevitably occur, such as institutional anomy, political extremism, and disorientation of members of society. They will occur simply because modernization and socio-structural change elude political planning and the realization of a predetermined target state. Multiple modernizations and localizations are forcing a change in social systems and structural differentiation of institutions so that they can adapt to the horizontal and vertical problem requirements.

Transitional Situation The sociology of the next society beyond liberalism, national state, and welfare state zooms into the structural changes between global dynamics and local worlds in the course of the restructuring of functional systems to its subject (Baecker 2007; Münch 1998). This changes the environmental relationships between society, organization, and simple interaction between those present. This is due to the spread of the

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communication society and its dynamism, the restructuring of the large subsystem and its altered interpenetrations. The transition to the next society is predetermined by the empirically welldocumented mutually reinforcing processes in contemporary society. From an empirical point of view, this means that empirical research on social exchange, which cannot be negated, must be used. This addresses economic globalization and the radical ones that accompany it, as opposed to incremental innovation. It is worth noting that this has already begun the transformation of social stratification through the end of middle-class society. It is to be assumed that this is associated with increasing political fragmentation through a multi-level system of governance and the loss of the political dominance of the people parties in general. But we are also observing a convergence of welfare regimes, which can be explained by the replacement of the collective by individual inclusion (Münch 2009, 135–185). There is therefore a dilemma between the extent of inclusion through professional qualifications and professional success, and the decline of conservative and social-democratic inclusion programs. The way out of the dilemma is probably the political system’s support for voluntary associations. The subject of the research should be whether this is a new version of pluralist corporatism, which brings liberal pluralism together with a social-democratic and conservative corporatism. When we ask for a self-description of the next society, the replacement of Western cultural universalism with post-multiculturalism is obvious. However, it does not float freely, and we have to ask which professional and non-professional groups it is spread by the Internet with its remote effects. We expect a “heterogeneity of the knowledge order” and a “heterodoxia of the religious orders” (Willke 2002). A good proof of the hybridization and transformation of the glocalized multiple modernities are the studies of Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Miriam Ben-Rafael (2019) on the linguistic landscapes of world cities such as Paris, London, Berlin, Brussels, and Tel Avis. In the next society, one is bound to become more aware of divergence than convergence among members of social systems. This is now easy to see when one looks at the conflicts between the membership conditions, such as the “bloody borders of Islam,” and the exclusion areas of ghettos. Those who are in a ghetto usually have no chance to leave it. In this respect, social integration of social communication must be resystematized as a differentiation of membership conditions, away from the Durkheim–Parsons tradition on the basis of the “normative complex,” the “institutionalization of values” (Parsons), or a cosmopolitanism. This applies regardless of what insights we ascribe to Durkheim and Parson for sociological theory. It would be desirable for us to forge an open-minded access to their problem.

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New Function of Technology It is recommended that the study should be cross-examined on the evolution of the social structure and communication systems of members of social systems that concern the consequential problems of membership conditions and the redeployment of sociological theory. Artificial intelligence, as a computer program, will increasingly change rationality parameters. It is not a question of whether it is comparable to human intelligence, but whether it will enter into a function that it will assume the status function of the problem solver. It cannot be ruled out that their implementation in robots as human-robotic is so relevant for the members of social systems that the machines participate in their communication systems. We can also no longer rule out that the social division of labor will take over the tasks of the employees of companies. Estimates in Japan, for example, predict that robots will take over 47% of the work that is done in about 20 years. The communication of the members of social systems with machines will fundamentally change and will enter into unknown symbiosis. The possibility of erotic and sexual relationship with robots is not to be excluded. How will modern communication technology change functional systems? The structural change of communication systems and their technological implementation has an impact not only on economic change, the political system, but also on the restructuring of collective identities. A particular problem is the analysis of so-called “global institutions” (organizations), such as political and military alliances, the fragmentation of hierarchies, and global investment.

Chapter 32

Globalization Research and Socio-Structural Semantics

Reorientation of Globalization Research It should be stressed that the so-called “globality” does not create a homogeneous social structure. In sociological theory, we should distance ourselves from this concept. On the contrary, extensions of economic exchanges, political regulations through international institutions, and tourism trigger internally confused relationships between local social systems and global processes, as in fundamentalism, migration, and problems of self-identification of members of social systems, which may also lose their communication connection to their local reference group. Based on the results of the “third research program multiple modernities, membership and globalization,” it is advisable to explore the changed membership conditions and orders as a basic problem of social order and integration as well as their charismatic dimension of these orders. It can be assumed that the charismatic dimension and social damage limitation cannot be institutionalized in the expanding social system. Tensions and also the dangerous conflicts can be expected between institutionbuilding and its formal organizations, their disintegration, as well as between the creativity of the members of society and the participation conditions of communication. This also applies to their daily commitments in local social systems. They, too, can file their claims. We observe structural change in political communication and the economic system through the processes of the transnational economy and through the transformation of the economy. This is also a change in collective identities and solidarity. However, it is also always associated with a historical component which cannot be negated in the course of progress and which is preserved in the social structure of these societies. The focus of the redeployment of sociological theory is the redeployment of interpenetration zones and their expansion of the intersections of functional systems between economics, morality, ethics, politics, and solidarity. However, enlargement does not rule out its shrinkage.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_32

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New Media and Self-Description Modernity is no longer a project as some sociologists and philosophers once assumed. Sociological theory has been continuously dominated by self-descriptions from the intellectual history of the West before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as, the state-centered society, the distinction between community and society, civil society, the division of labor and the ideologies of social movements. Many sociologists now no longer interpret Western modernization as a project of rationalization. Multiple modernities as a concept has abandoned the research program of the directed effect of rationalization as a structural formation. The latter is not renewed in the frame of reference of multiple modernities. It is the opposite, as postmodernism has been in harmony with multiple modernities since the nineteenth century without the self-description of modernity. There is no evidence of a unified pattern of modernization. Both multiple modernities and postmodernism describe and reinterpret change in the social structure since the early 1960s. A relevant change can also be observed in public sphere, as self-observation of members of social systems runs through the new media. The tendency of this structural change is that the public sector is no longer organized as a civil society. From a sociological and socio-structural point of view, this is a typical American model of social order of the primacy of social communities over state organization. The new media are increasingly influencing the public sphere and are changing this communication system and its symbolism. This is in the way of the world of simulations increasingly negating reality (Baudrillard 1994). In particular, it is necessary to examine in which direction the reinterpretation of the pluralistic and totalitarian tendencies of modernity is changing. The segmental culture is having an increasing impact on the membership order to the effect that it is accompanied by conflicts and tensions arising from the structuring of communication systems through the changed definition of the situation and their symbolic constructions. The organizational and institutional processes change the structure through ongoing restructuring (Giddens), the change of institutions, and the structure of the subsystems.

Change of Meaning One key point of view, however, should be highlighted. If multiple modernities cannot be analyzed with the evolutionary assumptions of classical modernization theory, then the expressions “modernity,” “modernization,” and “modern” also lose their conventional sociological significance. We can assume that this will also manifest itself in the progress of the everyday understanding of the members of social systems.

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In summary, the following must be reinforced. The “third research program of multiple modernities, membership and globalization” provides special access to the analysis of globalization as a “Globalized multiple modernities as multiple globalizations” (Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Miriam Ben-Rafael) and its hybrid order-making. From this point of view, the term “global modernity” in the singular is systematically misleading. Cultural, economic, political, and technological globalization does not initiate evolution into a global society or world society, but to a new differentiation of membership orders. For the sociological theory of contemporary society, it can be inferred that it corrects the traditional self-descriptions of modernity. Modernity does not exist in the singular, plural and it is not universal. Western modernity is a special civilization that spread and shaped through special elites as the bearers of its perfection program. In the course of its spread, however, no universally valid civilization was emulated. On the contrary, we live in the age of global modernity or the next society beyond Western modernity. Western modernization is not expected to happen again.

Chapter 33

Self-Description of the Next Society

Post-Hybridization From the analysis of structural changes, the conclusion must be drawn that globalization and glocalization are changing our basis for understanding. They will increasingly be guided by rules of difference and not by overlapping consensus. Networks and segmental differentiation are becoming increasingly relevant and are restructured the boundaries of membership systems, their status and prestige orders. This is a changed basic situation, which amounts to a different social-structural semantics. Multi-ethnicity (multi-culturalism) as a new phase of globalization that leads to a neo-medieval, nomadic, and kaleidoscopic society and culture. The problem we have already addressed is that we are moving into a situation of posthybridization (Nederveen Pieterse 2004, 74–81). It is worth mentioning that the reshuffling of sociological theory reveals an instructive problem reference of the sociology of the next society and communication theory.

Connection Problem of Communication It should be borne in mind that communication must be systematized even without consensus or any fake basic consensus. Indeed, this is changing the reference problem of communication research. Participating in communications within and between membership systems means that communication is also based on indifference of members of social systems. But this does not exclude sentimental staging’s, especially in formal organizations. The reference problem of any communication is not consensus, but the connection rationality of the continuation/non-continuation of communication. One could make this so acute that only then do communications expose themselves to the observation of their participants and thus are © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_33

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self-observational events. These are events that disappear immediately with their entry. This, in turn, refers to the time dimension and self-conditioning of the membership systems in the time dimension as each communication has a beginning and an end. Communication is, after all, self-determined by the time dimension. It cannot be negated by any communication. The opposite is the case, as the determination of communication through the time dimension also results in new freedom for the participants. They can, for example, plan in the time dimension and precisely this presupposes the differentiation of time into earlier and later.

End of Perfection Ideas Whatever attitude we may develop toward the change of social structures, we are increasingly aware of one thing: the sober insight into structural changes is always also a self-knowledge and a self-observation of society (societal communication), which leads it to other self-descriptions. This communication is only problemsensitive through self-irritation. This includes the insight that not everything can be changed at once. This is due to the fact that any instrumental activism cannot negate the time dimension of the self-constitution of the membership systems and their typical selections of meaning. Yet, it has the freedom to think differently about the “diabolic” and no longer needs to assign the devil the place of the fallen angel (Luhmann 1992, 121). The formulas of the uniform self-descriptions of modern society have failed, such as, the economic society, the legal society and the scientific society and cannot be renewed. In retrospect, this is no coincidence. They could not see that the “logic of perfection” had already collapsed when they were made and that they were subject to the blind spot of the observer in their self-descriptions. In this respect, we should not ask about the self-description of the next society as the self-steering membership system. However, if we want to orient ourselves to something in terms of selfdescription, we should speak of the next society as a diabolical social communication system, whose future has always begun. This is also associated with another esthetic irritation, which takes into account the fact that we can always observe differently. This includes Luhmann’s enduring insight that members of social systems cannot be bound by a single system-environmental design in their experience and actions.

Chapter 34

Outlook: Inhomogeneous Social Structure

Basic Problem: Membership Conditions It is worth reinforcing that what many sociologists call “globality” does not create a homogeneous social structure. On the contrary, extensions of economic exchanges, political regulations by international institutions and tourism trigger internally confused relationships between local social systems and global processes, such as, fundamentalism, migration, and problems of self-identification of members of social systems, which may also lose their communication connection to their local reference group. If we start from the results of the “third research program of multiple modernities” and its continuation, it is advisable to explore the changed membership conditions and orders as a basic problem of social order and integration as well as their charismatic dimension. It can be assumed that the charismatic dimension and social damage limitation cannot be institutionalized in the expanding membership system “society” as a comprehensive social system. The tensions and dangerous conflicts are to be expected between the formation of institutions, their formal organization and their disintegration, as well as between the creativity of the members of society and the participation conditions of communication. This also applies to their daily commitments to local social systems. They, too, can file their claims. We observe structural change in political communication and the economic system through the processes of the transnational economy and through the transformation of the economy. This is also a change in collective identities and solidarity. However, it is always linked to its historical component, which cannot be negated in the course of progress and which is preserved in the social structure of these societies. The “third research program of multiple modernities” and Robertson- globalization have abandoned the paradigm of modernization as Westernization and the dilemma between universalism and particularism. The redeployment in sociological theory is thus more extensive than many sociologists assume. The change in the shape of sociological theory is due to the structural change that goes hand in hand © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. Preyer, R.-M. Krausse, Sociology of the Next Society, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29140-1_34

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with globalization, glocalization, and hybridization. It is informative for the socialconstructive semantics of contemporary society. This will probably also have consequences for the reinterpretation of the Western modernization process. Western modernity is no longer a project, as some sociologists and philosophers assumed. The sociological theory has been continuously dominated by the selfdescriptions from the intellectual history of the West since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as in, state-centered society, the distinction between communion and society, civil society, the division of labor and the ideologies of social movements. In the meantime, many sociologists no longer interpret Western modernization as a project of continuous rationalization of its development potential. Multiple modernities have abandoned the research program on the impact of rationalization as a structural formation of social systems and the orientation of its members. It is not renewed in the multiple modernities frame of reference. The opposite is the case, as the postmodern self-description of modernity has been in harmony with multiple modernities since the end of the nineteenth century. This can be explained by the fact that there is no uniform pattern of modernization. Both multiple modernities and postmodernism describe and reinterpret the change in the social structure that has been taking place since the early 1960s. One point of view, however, should not be overlooked. If multiple modernities cannot be analyzed with the evolutionary assumptions of classical modernization theory, then the expressions “modernity”, “modernization,” and “modern” also lose their conventional sociological significance. They will probably no longer be carried along in the sociological theory. We can assume that this will also manifest itself in the progress of the everyday understanding of the members of social systems.

Self-Knowledge of Society Overall, the conclusion to be drawn from the analysis of structural changes is that the expansion of social exchange and glocalization will change our bases of understanding. They will be increasingly oriented toward orders of difference rather than consensus. Networks and segmental differentiation are becoming increasingly relevant and restructure the boundaries of social systems. This is a changed basic situation, which amounts to a different social-structural semantics. Multiethnicity (multiculturalism) as a new phase of globalization leads to a neo-medieval, nomadic, and kaleidoscopic society and culture. Whatever attitude we may form to the change in social structures, one thing is becoming increasingly clear to us: that is, the sober insight into structural changes is always a self-knowledge of the members of society, which they share with others as self-descriptions. It is becoming apparent that the functional systems are increasingly transforming into hybrid entities. This is a figure switch of social ontology. They are not to be systematized with the traditional sociological basic concepts, for example, starting from a typical media code, and require a different take of the observer’s point of view. With regard to the recasting of the theory of social integration, this

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also includes breaking down the semantic symbiosis between spoken (written) language and reality, so that a communication problem of the members of social systems arises in such a way that they can make one’s connection communications more difficult. But it also leads to new political, economic, and scientific organizational oligarchy. Overall, we should draw the conclusion that Luhmann suggests to us that as long as the members of social systems still pursue a future orientation, there is also a place in the time dimension from which we “critically observe” and defy the “good arguments.” According to Luhmann, this is symbolized in the old European tradition in the devil as the fallen angel and has been “understood as freedom to evil.” Whatever the behavior, we can always think about it differently in the modern society and also judge it differently. In sociological theory, we can see that the symbolic and the diabolical are inseparable and that the distinction between them is the guiding orientation of the social communication of the members of social systems. This is the good news for sociology of the next society, as it no longer bases its members on a uniform of social communication and a corresponding selfdescription. We can always observe differently. The system’s membership and participation in the communication systems of the functional system can claim universal relevance. We can see this when we observe membership communication from the environment. The completion of status positions and social roles, such as, the legal system as a judge, lawyer, prosecutor and lawyer, observes social communication from the point of view of law. Only when the participants in legal communication observe the legal system from the social environment of the legal system, the attachment to legal communication is relativized. In this respect, legal communication can also be seen from the economic, scientific, and the political system. This does not rule out the possibility that we can observe social communication, describe it and elevate it to the object of aesthetic experience, even from an esthetic point of view. We attribute the experience to the environment, which cannot be negated for experience and action, communication, and non-communication, as well as membership and non-membership. In the next society, the relationship between choices of meaning, membership conditions and their programming, as well as trust in system rationality as a fundamental problem of social order, is undergoing structural changes. It has no ultimate foundation, as the time dimension dominates social membership and participation in communication. Therefore, it can only transfer the improbable into probable in terms of projected future consequences, thereby multiplying limitations (options) that are contingent as time-dependent constraints and which can only be small-scaled by system formation. This is the only way to take advantage of a temporalization of complexity. This will also apply and be valid in the next society.

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ProtoSociology – Vol. 15 2001: On a sociology of borderlines. Edited by Gerhard Preyer and Mathias Bös. – Vol. 16 2002: Understanding the social I: New perspectives from epistemology. – Vol. 18–19 2003: Understanding the social II: Philosophy of sociality. Edited by Raimo Tuomela, Gerhard Preyer and Georg Peter. – Vol. 20 2004: World-system analysis: Contemporary directions and researches. Edited by Richard E. Lee and Gerhard Preyer. – Vol. 24 2007: Shmuel N. Eisenstadt: Multiple modernities—A paradigm of cultural and social evolution (collected articles). Edited by Gerhard Preyer. – Vol. 26 2009, 27 2011: Modernization in times of globalization I, II. – Vol. 28 2011, 29 2012: China’s modernization I, II. Edited by Georg Peter und Reuss-Markus Krausse. – Vol. 32 2015: Making and un-making modern Japan. Edited by Ritu Vij. – Vol. 33 2016: The borders of global theory—Reflections from within and without. Edited by Barrie Axford. – Vol. 34 2017: Meaning and publicity. Edited by Richard Manning. – Vol. 35 2018: Joint commitment: Critical essays on the philosophy of sociality of Margaret Gilbert with Her comments. Edited by Gerhard Preyer and Georg Peter.