Differentiation (sociology)

[1]: 95–96 Talcott Parsons was the first major theorist to develop a theory of society consisting of functionally defined sub-systems, which emerges from an evolutionary point of view through a cybernetic process of differentiation.

Parsons maintained that in the course of the general rationalization process of the world and the related secularization process, the value-scheme structure of the religious and "magic" systems would stepwise be "transformed" into political ideologies, market doctrines, folklore systems, social lifestyles and aesthetic movements and so on.

This transformation, Parsons maintained, was not so much the destruction of the religious value schemes (although such a process could also occur) but was generally the way in which "religious" (and in a broader sense "constitutive") values would tend to move from a religious-magic and primordial "representation" to one which was more secularized and more "modern" in its institutionalized and symbolistic expression; this again would coincide with the increasing relative independence of systems of expressive symbolization vis-a-vis cognitive and evaluative lines of differentiation (for example, the flower power movement in the 60s and early 70s).

The breakthrough of rock music in the 1950s and the sensual expressiveness of Elvis would be another example of the way in which expressive symbolization would tend to increase its impact vis-a-vis other factors of system differentiation, which again according to Parsons was a part of the deeper evolutionary logic, which in part was related to the increased impact of the goal-attachment function of the cultural system and at the same time related the increased factor of institutionalized individualism, which have become a fundamental feature for historical modernity).

Instead of reducing society as a whole to one of its subsystems, such as Karl Marx did to Economics or Hans Kelsen did to Law, Luhmann based his analysis on the idea that society is a self-differentiating system that will, in order to attain mastery over an environment that is always more complex than it, increase its own complexity through a proliferating of subsystems.

[2] "Religion" is more extensive than the church, "politics" transcends the governmental apparatus, and "economics" encompasses more than the sum total of organizations of production.

Every rank fulfills a particular and distinct function in the system, for instance the manufacturing company president, the plant manager, trickling down to the assembly line worker.

This type of system tends to necessitate the lower ranks to initiate conflict in order to shift the influential communication to their level.

Again, citing the automobile firm as an example, it may be "functionally differentiated" departmentally, having a production department, administration, accounting, planning, personnel, etc.

[1]: 100 It is exemplified that in Segmentary differentiation if a segment fails to fulfill its function it does not affect or threaten the larger system.

From another perspective also characteristic of Marxist thought, the term "bourgeois society" is meant to signify that a politically defined ruling segment is now replaced as the dominant stratum by the owners of property.

Both theories make the understandable error of "pars pro toto", of taking the part for the whole, which in this context means identifying a social subsystem with the whole of society.

The error can be traced to the dramatic nature of the emergence of each subsystem and its functional primacy (for a time) in relation to the other spheres of society.

For functional primacy need only imply that the internal complexity of a given subsystem is the greatest, and that the new developmental stage of society is characterized by tasks and problems originating primarily in this sphere.