Observing Society: Meaning, Communication, and Social Systems By ...

structure and agency—a duality that has proven so difficult for sociologists to conceptualize—emerge together in the same instant. There are no communicative structures without actors, and no actors without structures of communication. Society creates “the people” who produce it. The thorny relationship between the individual and society is also neatly resolved by social system theory. Sociology has never been able to explain how participants enter or become part of society. The theory at hand does not try to do so; society is possible because participants never become part of it. At this point, we can only hint at how the innovative positions explained in this book will enhance sociological theory, but this will be fully explained in subsequent chapters.

Finally, we were also motivated to share social system theory with readers because we find sociological theory a fascinating, exciting, and worthwhile intellectual adventure. Without even having a definition of society, sociology has made significant contributions to our understanding of the differences resulting from the the division of labor, secularization, urbanization, democracy, and other social phenomena. Contemporary society poses many new challenges for sociology that cannot be met with the old familiar resources. Sociologists have responded in a variety of ways, producing texts that offer moral guidance, journalistic reports, political commentary, narratives of identity, demographic descriptions, and new and improved interpretations of the discipline's founding writers. By contrast, social system theory offers clear concepts, a promising research agenda, and a cutting edge description of modern society. We believe that the theory can support a sociology that can speak to emerging trends in a more powerful, confident, and authoritative voice. Students are irritated (understandably) by sociologists who address endless contemporary phenomena for which they have no words of their own: globalization, digital media, virtual communities, transnational epidemics, cyberterrorism, chemically augmented personalities, cyborgs, the digital divide, information overload, technological risk management, postindustrialism, and many others. Using the resources of social system theory, sociology can investigate these aspects of modernity on its own terms, building its own self-reference, without resorting to poorly imitating the discourse of other