Volume 23, Issue 1-2 - Nicolas Hayoz / Rudolf Stichweh (eds.) Variants of Differentiation in the Regions of World Society

The introduction summarizes the analytical perspectives used and the conceptual structures introduced in the essays of this volume. On the basis of the results of this synthesis it proposes four directions for further research: 1. The identification of beginnings of functional differentiation in premodern societies in different world regions. 2. The analysis of conceptual transfers and of the contours of global categories that connect the regions of an emerging world society. 3. The historical-analytical tracing of the differentiation histories of the individual function systems. How do they expand on the basis of the symbol complexes of which they consist? 4. The study of the complexity of a functionally differentiated world society: The multiplicity of function systems, the intensification of interactions among them, the global problems behind the rise of new function systems, the varieties within function systems and the variant structural couplings between them.

Functional differentiation is associated with two salient features of globalization: First, societal subsystems such as the economy, science, religion and politics have become increasingly global in terms of the interconnectedness of their operations across the world. Second, they exhibit global structural similarities, for instance regarding functionally specific role relationships and corresponding formal organizations. However, functional differentiation entails not only more interconnectedness and homogenization but also considerable structural and institutional diversity. In this paper, I distinguish and examine two forms of diversity that emerge as consequences of functional differentiation: Varieties of institutional structures that concern different ways of addressing functionally specific problems, on the one hand, and on the other, the variation of forms of structural coupling among subsystems within a particular local or regional context.

Clientelism as a structure of political expectations is relevant for understanding both the development of states and present-day politics in many segments of the world-political system. It is a solution to three general problems that modern political systems face: the affirmation of central authority over a territory, the mobilization of voters in democratic elections, and the need to provide political careers for individuals. The article illustrates these problems and their clientelistic solution by drawing on the examples of Russia, Greece and Japan. In these cases, patron-client ties function as equivalents to solutions on which systems theory has mostly focused when describing modern political systems: autonomous bureaucratic administration, electoral campaigns based on political programs, and party organizations based on formal membership and ideology.

Populism has been one of the most outstanding features of Latin American politics throughout the 20 th century. By controlling political and economic operations and appealing to the semantic construction of pueblo (the people), populism has succeeded in shaping a regional variant of functional differentiation. This process is analyzed along three phases of Latin American history, the pre-populist age of caudillos , the classic populism in the 20 th century, and the neo-populist period in the 21 st century. The article concludes with a reflection on the consequences of populism for the institutional framework in Latin America.

The study of “Modern authoritarians”<fnote> This part of the title is inspired by Arch Puddington’s Freedom House report on modern authoritarians (Puddington 2017).</fnote> has become for understandable reasons a fashionable topic, particularly in political science. Authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China are of course a challenge for democracies. A more sociological perspective could focus rather on the question to what extent such modern authoritarian powers have realized on a regional level of world society a variant of differentiation which could challenge or even undermine functional differentiation as the main type of differentiation in modern society. The empire could be a candidate for such a variant. But this paper prefers to look rather at how authoritarian regimes are using and misusing organizations and networks to protect their grip on power and to control society, particularly politics. Such power structures may be considered as parasitical differentiation. What in the political world looks like a kind of competition between autocracies and democracies could also be considered as a regional, more or less successful attempt to control and instrumentalise politically functional differentiation, its performance and its effects.

The paper describes and discusses the variant of societal differentiation that evolved under the Soviet regime. The argumentation starts with the conceptualisation of socialism as a program with a universal, function system-exceeding claim for validity. The implementation of the socialist program may be perceived as an effort to create structures which allow complete inclusion in the sense of an all-encompassing political addressability. In this regard, the political leadership tried to set up the society as a hierarchically structured organisation. The example of Soviet agriculture and the structures of Soviet villages, however, show that notwithstanding an all-encompassing degree of organisation, strictly ‘organised’ forms of economic communication coexisted with and were interrelated to ‘non-organisable’ and even ideologically deviant forms of agricultural production by personal smallholdings. Such niches of functional differentiation did not only provide compensation for the inability of the political leadership to cope with societal complexity, but also created connectivity in the world society and could hardly be oppressed without putting the stability of the regime at risk.

This article studies the layered coexistence and mutual shaping of three forms of differentiation (functional, segmentary, hierarchical) in rural Uzbekistan, a region of world society that, since 1991, is undergoing tremendous processes of socio-economic transformation and change. More precisely, we analyse the evolving governance of land, water and agricultural support services (knowledge & advice) in the Uzbek province of Khorezm, where currently three types of farms utilise various social practices to navigate a complex and partly opaque environment marked by various forms of differentiation, each posing different opportunities, threats and coordination mechanisms (institutions). In doing so, the article builds on Rudolf Stichweh’s considerations of world society’s structural patterns, its ‘Eigenstructures’ as well as Niklas Luhmann’s conceptualisation of world society’s autopoietically closed function systems. Based on ethnographic research, we argue that the mobilisation of patron-client relationships, a complex system of coercive reciprocity and a trilogy of formal, strategic and discursive practices are widely employed to cope with the coexistence of an undermined layer of functional differentiation and reaffirmed/reinvented segmentary and hierarchical identities. We argue that the skilful navigation by local actors between these different differentiation forms and their demands, embodies a short-term adaptation strategy that is likely to hamper a (re-)crystallisation of autonomous functional domains. Hampering functional differentiation jeopardises long-term change adaptation.

This article highlights the territorial and functional embedding of world regions within a functionally differentiated world society, as well as the heterogeneity between different (local) practices of functional differentiation within world regions. Its argument proceeds in two steps. In a first step, it discusses the distinction between regional variations of functional differentiation versus regional variations within functional differentiation as an important tool in order to characterize specific variations of structural patterns. In a second step it turns to the Middle Eastern case, arguing that while at first glance this may be a candidate for a regional variation of functional differentiation, a closer look reveals that it has been characterized by a very specific variation within functional differentiation for quite a while. The article concludes by using these observations for some thoughts on the functional differentiation of world society more generally.

Policy development planning using legal and monetary mechanisms has proved to have little success. Due to this experience, resistance to modernisation has been explained by factors such as “tradition”, “culture”, “mentalities”. But such explanations have remained more or less tautological. It is therefore proposed to replace them with a single factor that could be called a “social construction” of causality. After decades of research on causal attribution and perception of causal relations, it can no longer be assumed that relations between causes and effects are objective facts of the world, on which true or untrue judgements are then possible. Rather, it is about an infinity of possible combinations of causes and effects, which can only be used extremely selectively if a connection of certain causes with certain effects is to give some cognitive or practical meaning. In other words: causality is a medium of loosely coupled possibilities, the use of which requires the formation of relational forms, i. e. a firm coupling of certain causes and certain effects. Prospects of successful action as well as observing the intentions of others depend on such a selection of forms. These are social constructs, but their construction is not included in the causal scheme like a meta-cause, as it were, as the cause of causality itself. Rather, the creation of form serves as a “blind spot” which makes it possible to see and use causality. If a society is accustomed to locating causality in personalised social networks and to expect success or failure from the use of this specific form of causality, it will be very difficult to change these conditions if equally handy causal forms cannot be provided as a substitute. More money and more legal norms will only serve to test and confirm the effectiveness of the network’s contacts.

This article highlights the differences in the civilizing process in China by examining the development of sport. Focusing on the problem of violence, it shows how the evolution of forms of differentiation caused the decline of the violent game jiju and the rise of the elegant game chuiwan as China transformed from a strictly stratified mendi rank society to an open gentry society of greater functional differentiation. The development of the entertainment industry of cuju rather than a function system of sport documented an idiosyncratic literatization. This resulted from the structure of the first post-aristocratic society as a meritocratic commoner society. The unique yin/yang dual structure as a compromise of functional differentiation with hierarchical order brought about a paradoxical domestication of violence.

In this paper, the author discusses the concept of differentiation between the center and periphery and its structural effects within larger society. The author goes on to illustrate how the process of globalization – and increasingly intensified contact with the functionally differentiated “center”– does not always promote functional differentiation in every local society outside of it but can instead destroy the evolutionary potential existing therein. To this purpose, the author focuses on the changes of love semantics in late-19 th - and early-20 th -century Japan. Caused by the dominance of civilization semantics that corresponded to the relationship between the center and periphery at the structural level, love semantics were re-moralized, losing their power to create an autonomous sphere for intimate relationships free from societal authorities and powers such as morals and politics.

The existence of religious diversity is mostly taken for granted in today’s world society. Despite all apparent differences, however, world society theory proposes the hypothesis of a single function system of religion. At the same time, in the case of religion a process of semantic unification is highly disputed. Until recently, such debates had not paid much attention to the “translingual practice” (Liu) that has produced “religion” as a global category over the last two hundred years. Drawing on recent studies, this article traces some semantic transformations in regard to “religion” in 19 th and early 20 th century Asia and highlights the importance of three contested distinctions connected with “religion”. It also relates these semantic changes to recent debates about the differentiation of religion in theories of secularization. Any visibility of regional differences in the religious system of modern world society should be understood as the result of the emergence of this global category. Such a focus on semantics highlights the way in which speaking of “religion” as a specific instance of “culture” in world society becomes possible and “religion” becomes observable to itself and from the outside only as a result of these transformations.