For a post-colonial systemic sociology of the differences within the modern world society

Abstract

The approximations between the epistemological and ontological assumptions of Niklas Luhmann’s social theory and postcolonial approaches have been emphasized and developed in the last decade. In the context of postcolonial theories, the post-foundationalist point of view leads to the deconstruction of hegemonic and eurocentric discourses on modernity, operating a critical observation of cognitive and practical operations that build, in an essentialist register, national identities and cases based on self-(neo)colonialist understandings of the so-called central or developed countries. To the extent that Niklas Luhmann’s social theory starts from very similar ontological and epistemological assumptions, one might expect a deconstructive approach also in his theory of modern society, but until now prevails almost unanimously the perception that the Luhmannian conception of world society is incorrigibly eurocentric. Can this theory of world society not be eurocentric? Relying on more recent and less orthodox debates on this theory, it is argued in this communication that Luhmann’s theory of world society can be adopted in favor of criticism of the hegemonic and eurocentric discourse on modernity.