Reflexive social mechanisms multiply complexity but carry serious transition costs

Evidence

The social mechanisms of cognition, norm-setting, learning, trust and the institutionalization of expectations of behaviour are, in their elementary, nonreflexive, forms simply not adequate for the constitution of highly differentiated social systems, the circumstances of which are so complex that it pays, indeed becomes essential, to make such social mechanisms reflexive. In this form they are applied to themselves and thus intensified in their effect. Once their reflexive form has been institutionalized it offers so many advantages, and adapts the social system to itself to such an extent, that it becomes virtually impossible to return to a simpler state. Reflexive mechanisms extend the potential for complexity of society and thus the prospect that the social system, in which they are institutionalized, will endure. They have, to be sure, serious dysfunctional consequences, particularly in periods of transition. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 248

Categorization

• XREF: The core definition of reflexivity — a mechanism applied to itself — anchors the reader’s comparison of Luhmann’s system trust with Giddens’s account of how expert systems institutionalize trust reflexively (trust in trust). — connects to: Social transformation depends on care networks plus formal mobilization structures — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 443
• DEFINE: Defines ‘reflexive’ mechanisms as mechanisms applied to themselves, the conceptual hinge for the chapter’s title ‘Trust in Trust.’