Ecological Limits to Growth

Claim rejection and overcoming ecological limits to growth?

SCHIMANK, Uwe, 2005. Differenzierung und Integration der modernen Gesellschaft. Wiesbaden: VS Verl. für Sozialwiss. Beiträge zur akteurzentrierten Differenzierungstheorie / Uwe Schimank, 1. ISBN 978-3-531-14683-6.

The functional differentiation of modern society constitutes a specific autonomy of its differentiated subsystems – and this polycontextuality gives rise to integration problems. The genesis, structural dynamics and consequences of this connection between the form of differentiation and problems of system and social integration as well as ecological integration, which characterizes modernity, are the subject of the contributions in this volume.

Contents:

1. actor constellations and differentiation dynamics – a theoretical frame of reference. –

2. polycontextural society. –

3. code – performance – function: on the constitution of social subsystems. –

4. Luhmann's analytical anti-humanism. A bisected theory of modern society. –

5. social subsystems as actor-fictions. –

6. the lack of actor reference in systems-theoretical explanations of social differentiation. –

7. the evolution of sport into a social subsystem. –

8. subsystem evolutions and actor strategies. The two sides of the structural dynamics of modern society. –

9. differentiation dynamics – some progress figures of decoupling and linking. –

10. functional differentiation and system integration of modern society. –

11. specific consensus of interests despite general disagreement on orientation. An integration mechanism of polycentric societies. –

Functional differentiation, organization, and integration of modern society. –

13. functional differentiation and social inequality. The two theories of society and their conflict-theoretical linkage. –

14. social integration problems in the mirror of sociological contemporary diagnoses.