Luhmann’s selective adoption in non-sociology fields undermined his standing in sociology.

Evidence

Within these countries and Anglophone academia generally, Luhmann is much more likely to be included in law, political science, German literature, art, media and cultural studies or business management programmes than studied as a social theorist in sociology departments. Not surprisingly, there is a tendency among these non-sociological disciplines to treat Luhmann’s writings selectively, in ways that throw light on their specific intellectual concerns, paying little or no attention to his vision of a sociological enlightenment or even to the general theory of communicative function systems that underpins all his accounts of the operations of different communications media and different social systems. There is little doubt that Luhmann was pleased to see his ideas influencing so many different academic fields. Yet the pay-off for such success has undoubtedly been a substantial decline of interest in his work within sociology, and in Anglophone countries an almost complete neglect of – and in some instances marked hostility towards – his general social theory. Significantly, in the five years before his death in 1998 he was much more likely to be invited overseas to speak at law conferences and seminars than at sociological or social theory events. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 34

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant to why systems-theory concepts like ‘trust as complexity reduction’ reach the reader through secondary Anglophone interpreters rather than Luhmann’s own full theoretical apparatus.