Abstract
Keywords
Introduction
The notion of reflexive anthropology follows Bourdieu's concept of reflexive sociology (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Bourdieu and Wacquant argue convincingly that it is necessary to take a reflexive look at the “unconscious” of sociological research in order to overcome epistemological limitations. At the same time, however, the authors fail to identify scientific research practice as part of a differentiated society that is structurally dependent on the cult of the individual, as Durkheim (1950/1999) and Luhmann (1965/1999) show. To do justice to this insight, reflexive sociology in Bourdieu's sense must be expanded to analyze the significance of the human person for the structure of modern society. Reflexive sociology needs to be complemented by a reflexive anthropology that analyzes the human person and its normative special status as an institution of a horizontally differentiated society (Lindemann, 2018a).
Reflexive anthropology aims to identify the anthropological premises as well as the sacred or normative elements of the modern order and render them objects of study. This also makes it possible to show how Bourdieu's sociology (along with others) is enmeshed in the modern order. Thus on the one hand we need to take up Bourdieu's call for reflexivity in order to strengthen sociology's claim to scientific objectivity (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 36) and, on the other, to develop further the reflexivity that Bourdieu proposes. In order to achieve these two goals, in the following I propose a critical procedure that makes it possible to work out whether and to what extent sociological research unreflectively affirms underlying givens of modern sociation including its sacred aspects.
Bourdieu's understanding of reflexivity is distinctive in that it reflexively focuses on the ‘intellectual unconscious’ of research, which lies in the taken-for-granted concepts guiding research and their practical application. Bourdieu and Wacquant argue that such reflection ought be a collective undertaking of self-enlightenment in sociological research, serving to strengthen the claim to scientific rationality (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 36). The aim is to open up space for reflection and thus freedom for human actors trapped in their habitual constraints, “to denaturalize and to defatalize the social world” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 49) in order to make an emancipatory contribution to overcoming relations of power (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 373).
With this aspiration and its practical implementation in research, Bourdieu contributes significantly to what Smith calls the “sacred project” (Smith, 2014, p. 11) of sociology (in the United States). While Smith focusses on how this sacred orientation operates in sociology in the United States, his insights also apply to continental European sociology. At the heart of the sacred project is a normatively charged “philosophical anthropology” (Smith, 2014, p. 14), according to which while humans are dominated by societal constraints, sociological research ought to contribute to overcoming the domination of humans by humans, in order to open up the possibility for all humans to live more freely and with greater self-determination—if not completely and absolutely.
The insight here is that sociological research makes anthropological assumptions that can be normatively heightened to such an extent that they take on a sacred character. At the same time, sociological research has shown that modern societies develop an anthropological conception of themselves that only recognizes humans as responsible actors and ascribes to them an almost sacred normative special status: human beings are considered to be equal in freedom and dignity (Durkheim, 1992; Joas, 2008; Lindemann, 2016, 2018b; Luhmann, 1965/1999). This leads to the question that I explore in this article: What follows from the fact that the anthropological premises of sociological research affirm the anthropological conception of modern sociation? How can we analyze the cognitively taken-for-granted and/or normatively sacred foundations of modern sociation if the analytical categories of sociology (and of other social sciences) are themselves determined by these taken-for-granted assumptions and/or sacralizations? Following Bourdieu's concept of reflexivity, it is necessary to turn these taken-for-granted assumptions or sacralizations into objects of study in order to recognize to what extent the conceptual presuppositions of sociological research are enmeshed in the way modern sociation understands itself.
The fact that sociology reproduces the anthropological certainties of modern society has been repeatedly criticized. Empirical research on nonmodern societies has led to the questioning of the universality of the notion that only humans can act. Based on this insight, I present a critical procedure that allows us to work out whether and to what extent the general conceptual presuppositions of research reproduce modern anthropocentrism. In a third step, I apply this procedure to the social dimension of order formation and examine the anthropological premises underlying sociological research. I then describe the homology between the anthropological a priori and the modern anthropological self-conception. Finally, I outline a social theory that makes it possible to render the modern self-conception an object of study, and look at how this might affect sociological research.
Who can act?
There has been intense debate in recent years over whether entities other than living humans can be social actors. A strong argument has been made that the assumption that only living humans are social actors is Western and modern and therefore cannot be universalized (castro 1998Castro, 2004; Descola, 2005/2013; Latour, 1991/1993; Lindemann, 2021; Luckmann, 1970). If indeed there are other societies in which animals, plants, or spirits can act, sociology is faced with a choice: either it can take the phenomena that point to the agency of other entities as an unsettling of its own assumptions and rethink its own concepts, or it can continue to assume that only human beings can act.
Applying the Thomas theorem to the question of agency is one way to answer it in terms of the second option. According to the theorem, humans act according to what they believe to be real. “When people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas & Thomas, 1928, p. 572). This argument could be understood constructivistically in line with Berger and Luckmann's theory of institutionalization (Berger & Luckmann, 1991), in the sense that humans form a knowledge of reality that is recognized as valid by all participants within a particular institutional framework. Thus what we have is not an individual but a collective understanding of reality that is firmly institutionalized for all those involved. In other words, following the Thomas theorem, people create a reality where it is a valid truth that gods exists to whom they are subject.
According to the Thomas theorem, reality is differentiated. On the one hand, there is the reality
If, however, we want to factor in the possibility that nonhuman beings like animals, plants, or spirits really do act, we have to take a different approach. We have to uncover the significance of anthropological certainties we ourselves hold. If it turns out that sociological research works with the unspoken assumption that only living human beings can be considered responsible actors, and that this must at the same time be regarded as a characteristic of the modern self-conception, then it follows that sociological research is no longer capable of adequately analyzing modern society. For if key assumptions of the modern self-conception function as operative conceptual premises, then this conception cannot be studied in an empirically valid way. There are four reasons for questioning our own anthropological premises:
Anthropological premises underlying the analysis of nonmodern societies leads to a distorted representation of how these societies understand themselves and how they structure meaning (see the third section, below). Unquestioned anthropological premises make it impossible to track the development leading to the modern order, because the latter's structure of meaning and conception of itself is presupposed in the analysis Anthropological premises underlying the analysis make it impossible to adequately analyze the sacralization of the human person in its significance for the modern human-based order (see the fourth section). Anthropological premises make it impossible to analyze structural changes affecting the institution of the human person (see the section on Implications).
This reveals the problem that can no longer be addressed within the framework of Bourdieu's understanding of reflexivity: the diverse phenomena of modern sociation are objects of sociological research, while at the same time, sociology is part of the society it studies. Bourdieu cannot help us with the fact that this involvement with the object is at the same time part of the unconscious of sociological research. What is required is a “reflexive anthropology” that treats as an object of study the fact that human beings as equal in freedom and dignity is an institution of modern society.
The reflexive relationship between social theory and a theory of society
Luhmann's systems theory is a particularly sophisticated way of reflecting on the fact that sociological research must be understood as part of the society it studies. Grappling with this is one of the key challenges for a theory of modern society. My proposal for an empirically grounded critical procedure differs substantively from Luhmann's, however. In order to understand this difference, it is necessary to go back to Luhmann's line of argument.
Systems theory treats its reflexive enmeshment with the object in a generalized way. Thus Luhmann analyzes the formulation of his theory of society as an event of societal communication, from which it follows that the theory of modern society is to be understood as an integral part of this communicative order (Luhmann, 2012a, Chap. 1). This makes the insight into the theory's involvement with its object a certainty given from the outset, almost as if Luhmann had arrived at it by deduction:
Society is made up of communicative acts which are interconnected in the structure of functional differentiation. Formulating/publishing a theory is a communicative event which reproduces functionally differentiated society as an event of the scientific system. From this it follows that the formulation/publication of a theory is to be understood as part of society, because it too is a communicative event that is part of the autopoiesis of functionally differentiated society (Göbel, 2006, p. 325; Luhmann, 2012a, p. 1)
Göbel (2006, p. 314) discovers an ambiguity in the claim that the theory is part of its object. On the one hand, the theory could be part of the formation of the object itself, so that the object would, at least in part, also be dependent on the theory. On the other hand, it could also be the other way around, in which case the theory would be dependent on its object and should be understood as part of the object, without, however, being involved in its construction. The theory would have to reflexively grasp its entanglement with the object in order to render this phenomenon an object of study and identify the resulting limitations to its explanatory scope.
First possibility: If it contributes to the formation of the object “functionally differentiated society” to formulate a theory that states that functionally differentiated society exists, this means that the theory itself constructs the object, at least in part. Theorizing is part of the self-formation of the functionally differentiated society and thus a contribution to the autopoiesis of society. This is not to be understood as a fantasy of omnipotence, but rather generalizes the observation that system formation is tied to the system describing itself. This is true for social subsystems as well as for the system of functionally differentiated society as a whole (Luhmann, 1995, p. 444) The “theory of society” (Luhmann, 2012a) is the self-description of society from the perspective of the scientific system and as such contributes to the communicative reproduction of society.
Second possibility: Here the theory is not directly involved in forming the object's reality. Rather, theorizing includes the attempt to hold the object under investigation at a distance, to render it an object of study, while at the same time recognizing that it, the theory, is also a part of the object. This leads to a conclusion that Göbel himself does not draw: if theory is part of the object it seeks to grasp as a really existing object, this becomes a problem to be constantly grappled with. We must always re-examine—including by means of empirical research—whether it is a problem for the realistic understanding of the object that theoretical premises have to be regarded as part of that object. Here I follow Bourdieu's understanding of reflexivity and extend it to include the dimension of a theory of society. This makes it possible to see how fundamental structures of the modern order determine sociological knowledge, especially when it has an emancipatory thrust.
I sketch out this procedure below, drawing on the distinction between three levels of sociological theorizing: social theory, theories of limited range, and theories of society. This distinction was initially developed in the German theoretical debate following Simmel (1908/1983) (Lindemann, 2009, pp. 19–26), but has also been taken up recently in Anglophone sociology (Vandenberghe, 2023). To clarify the argument, in the following I address the distinction between the formal-universal and the historical a priori.
The importance of empirical research in clarifying the relationship between social theory and a theory of society
Sociological research is structured by the relationship between empirical research and sociological theory. This relationship is different depending on whether the theory in question is a social theory, a theory of limited range, or a theory of society (Lindemann, 2009, p. 19ff). The relationship between theory and empirical research is shaped by the problem or question being addressed (Anicker, 2017, p. 83ff).
Social theories address the question of the possibility of social order, providing insight into the practical conditions under which order is possible. These theories thus contain assertions about a general order-forming force and its practical conditions of efficacy. Examples are: human beings who act to (re)construct order, human practices that (re)construct order, communication that effectively (re)constructs order. A social theory formulates general statements about how the formation of order can be studied empirically, what is to be regarded as a sociologically relevant empirical phenomenon, and how phenomena are to be descriptively recorded and analyzed. Different core concepts emerge depending on how the ordering force is conceptualized, including, for example: action, interaction, practice, and communication. In that they define what is to be considered a relevant phenomenon for observation, social theories predetermine their subject matter (Barth et al., 2018) The fact that social theory contains preliminary decisions about how something can appear as an empirical phenomenon gives it the character of a universal a priori: its formal assumptions claim to apply to the analysis of all historically occurring types of order.
Theories of limited range are implicitly or explicitly based on assumptions about an order-forming force and answer the question of how concrete, empirically observable orders are formed. Conceptualizing the order-forming force following rational choice theory, for instance, makes it possible to provide causal explanations for the formation of concrete empirical phenomena. Interpreting the order-forming force in terms of communication or symbolically mediated interactions makes it possible to meaningfully reconstruct social order formations, which allows for other kinds of explanations (Przyborski & Wohlrab-Sahr, 2014, p. 364ff). Regardless, however, the theory addresses the problem of how ordering structures are actually formed. Depending on the type of structure in question, theories of limited range may refer to the micro, the meso, or the macro level. Examples include the structures of human relationships, structures of prejudice or power such as those that characterize racism, market structures, or the structures of sociotechnical constellations. These structures are regarded as contingent, that is, they have been formed by the actions of social actors or by means of communication, and can thus also be changed by means of action or communication.
Theories of society ask whether it is possible to make assertions about the connection between the different structures that have been empirically identified. The theory of differentiation makes this connection in the form of assertions about different forms of societal differentiation. Another possibility would be to establish a connection by providing an answer to the question of how the products of social labor are appropriated. Modern society could thus be described as a “capitalist society” (Marx, 1857/1993) or a “functionally differentiated society” (Luhmann, 1995, 2012a, 2012b). The aim here is to grasp as consistently as possible the connection between heterogeneous, empirically identifiable structures. Barth has pointed out that, compared to other types of sociological theories, theories of society are characterized by their special kind of reflexivity: they reflect on the fact that their assertions are formulated under the very conditions that they are intended to grasp, and consider this fact to be a constitutive component of the formulation of assertions within a theory of society (Barth, 2022, p. 28). Theories of society thus contain a reflection on their practical conditions of existence and thus implicitly on the types of theory to which they necessarily remain indebted. Since theories of society are based on theories of limited range, which in turn always contain assumptions deriving from social theory, we can ask whether or how such assumptions are replicated in a theory of society, that is, whether there is a homology between social theory and a theory of society.
The critical procedure
Drawing on this distinction between types of theory, I thus formulate a general critical procedure following Barth (2022, p. 30ff):
explicate the social theory; identify unsettling phenomena; determine whether premises based on social theory are replicated in the (provisional) theory of society, preventing them from being recognized as empirically relevant phenomena; change these premises (a brief outline of a new social theory is given in the fifth section); elaborate a modified theory of society based on the revised social theory (for this step, see Lindemann, 2018b).
This goes beyond what Barth proposed by including an empirical criterion: the experience of becoming unsettled. This is an important criterion for the application of the critical procedure, which comes to bear when assumptions made by social theory, such as those I described at the outset, become unsettled by empirical phenomena. If, for instance, a social theory answers the question of how social orders are possible by pointing to human actors who act, interact, or communicate, this social theory will be unsettled by ethnological and historical research showing that there are orders in which nonhuman actors such as spirits, animals, or gods also function as order-forming actors.
It is important to distinguish between unsettling and falsification (Lindemann, 2009, p. 29). Falsification is possible if the empirical evidence that challenges the theory is not itself determined by this theory. In other words, the empirical evidence must be independent of the theory it falsifies. A social theory, therefore, cannot be falsified because it is the conceptual assumptions of the social theory that determine what is captured as an empirical phenomenon. Researchers can always interpret the empirical findings in terms of their social theory. I demonstrated this above in relation to the Thomas theorem for anthropological social theories. If there are societies in which nonhuman actors appear, this can always be reconciled with the assertion that only living humans can act by applying the Thomas theorem.
Another criterion for allowing oneself to be unsettled rather than sidestepping the challenge posed by the empirical evidence is to refer to the theory of society in question. Researchers should allow themselves to be unsettled when it becomes apparent that there is a strong homology between the assertions of social theory and those of the theory of society. This must be determined for the question of agency. The critical procedure is not applied arbitrarily as an abstract thought experiment, but is tied to two conditions: (1) the appearance of empirical phenomena that unsettle sociotheoretical assumptions and (2) the replication of sociotheoretical assumptions in a theory of society. In order to expose itself to being unsettled in this way and thus reevaluate its own theories, it is useful for sociology to enter into intensive dialogue with related disciplines such as anthropology, history, or religious studies. This allows for empirical experiences of difference that provide the motivation to revise social theories and thus make possible a transformed view of the modern order within which social theories and theories of society have been formulated. The aim is to improve the analytical tools of sociology, leading to a more realistic theory of modern society, which in turn allows for the articulation of a more pointed sociological critique of society.
Explication of the social theory grounded in anthropology
Sociology is defined by its analysis of human society viz. the sociation of human beings. Thus the human being is the prerequisite of sociological research. Action theory assumes human actors to be the decisive order-forming force. The anthropological premises used in research therefore determine how societies are studied (see Honneth & Joas, 1988) All in all, the anthropological a priori does not contain any definite assumptions about human nature, but rather about “anthropological constants,” such as “the openness to the world and the plasticity of the instinctual structure” (Berger & Luckmann, 1991, p. 67). According to these premises, human beings are understood in a threefold way: first, as biological living beings seeking their own wellbeing, second, as beings who develop a technical and cultural order including an understanding of themselves and their relationship to their environment, and third, as moral beings who have a value in and of themselves (Lindemann 2018, Lindemann 2024b). The first two aspects are particularly relevant for action theory, while the third is more important in the context of a critique of society.
Action theory, with its explicit anthropological foundations, is a good example of the effects of the anthropological a priori. Michael Mann (1986, 1993, 2012, 2013) wrote a comprehensive history of the sources of human power from the perspective of action theory, covering the historical development of human-made orders from those first recorded to the present day. He bases this impressive historical work on a lean sociotheoretical, anthropologically rooted premise, which could serve as a prototypical example of the above-mentioned understanding of the human being as a biological living being that creates technical and cultural orders. According to Mann, humans are embodied and restless beings whose drives or purposes are not precisely defined. Human beings are restless, purposive, and rational, striving to increase their enjoyment of the good things of life and capable of choosing and pursuing appropriate means for doing so. Or, at least, enough of them do this to provide the dynamism that is characteristic of human life and gives it a history lacking for other species. (Mann, 1986, p. 4)
The drives for the attainment of ends are not given by nature, but vary according to the means by which they are attained. Thus, for instance, there is the drive to secure one's life and to obtain food. How this drive is actually realized depends on how the objective can be achieved. If fertile land is available, human beings may strike on the idea of becoming sedentary and cultivating this land, but there is no natural drive to lead them to do so. Humans rather use their environment to achieve their ends. Since their actual motivations are determined by the means of achieving their basic ends, Michael Mann's analysis of society focusses on the instruments of power with which these ends can be achieved. He presupposes that human beings are driven to achieve their ends in ever more comprehensive and better ways (Mann, 1986, p. 6). Society develops because human beings are never satisfied with the given state of the instruments of power, but always strive to develop new and more comprehensive ones, involving ever more people and ever greater spaces. “History derives from restless drives that generate various networks of extensive and intensive power relations” (Mann, 1986, p. 15).
Mann sees humans as indeterminate beings capable of forming very different social orders, about which he makes no normative judgments. He is concerned exclusively with the dynamics of societal development toward ever more comprehensive instruments of power.
Even if we accept Mann's anthropological foundation, however, a closer look at his argument finds it to be less convincing. They (humans, GL) seek sexual relations, usually with only a few members of the opposite sex; as they desire to reproduce themselves, these sexual relations usually combine with relations between adults and children. For these (and other purposes) a family emerges, enjoying patterned interaction with other family units from which sexual partners might be found. (Mann, 1986, p. 14)
Human beings have a sex drive and a desire for procreation, which is why, Mann contends, social relationships have always also encompassed those between adults and children. In order to achieve the presupposed purpose of reproducing, a means is found: the formation of families. Historically, however, there have been societies that knew about the means of “family formation” before knowing its purpose: the fact of biological human reproduction is a relatively recent discovery. Human beings lived together for long periods of time, shaped their lives, and thought that women became pregnant because the wind blew in a certain direction or because the spirits of their ancestors had entered them. So it cannot be that all human beings have always had the objective of procreating and have created families to achieve this purpose. Now it could be objected that we know from biology that this end is an objective one and it is irrelevant whether those involved know that they are fulfilling it by their actions: they would always be fulfilling it on an unconscious level in any case. But if the end is objective and unknown to the participants themselves, Mann's model becomes significantly less consistent. It is based on the idea that human beings set their own ends and are always looking for new means to achieve them. Thus a means in Mann's sense can never be a means to an end that is unknown to the participants. Creating a family would therefore also have to be a means that serves an end set by the participants themselves.
It gets even more complicated if we turn to ethnological studies. In
Here it becomes difficult to distinguish between ends and means. If we are to believe the ethnographic analysis, the clan exists and is to be preserved (Strathern, 1988, p. 111ff). In other words, the clan is the end and human beings are the means to the end. But it is difficult to say who sets that end. We would have to include the ancestors among those entities setting ends here, as they are an integral part of the clan without whose participation the clan could not continue to exist. The ancestors appear both on the side of the end (they are active members of the clan) and as a means (their sperm is important for reproduction).
I take the encounter with ethnographic or historical material as an unsettling of the anthropological a priori. Any social theory can immunize itself against empirical challenges of this kind by tailoring the phenomena to its own a priori assumptions. Following the Thomas theorem, the argument could look like this: the way human beings perceive the environment is determined by “ideology” (Mann, 1986, p. 23f). This is because human beings perceive the world not only with their senses, but also with categories and concepts. The set of categories and concepts by which we perceive the world is the ideology of an existing order. Applying this to the reproduction phenomena found in New Guinea shows that the meaning structure of the phenomenon does not match the meaning structure of the analysis. According to Mann, only human agents can set ends and utilize means. The clan and the deceased ancestors must be placed on the side of categories and concepts. These entities are not real actors, but rather the mental constructs of the living human beings involved. The humans believe that these constructs really exist, but Mann, the sociologist, knows better. There were no acting ancestors, and neither the ritual nor the ancestral semen (the river water) ever really made anything happen. The meaning structure of the phenomenon is thus distorted by the analysis.
There are problems within the framework of any meaningful order, thus, for instance, a bride introduced to her new clan does not become pregnant. Problems like this are always solved by supporting the “incorrigible propositions” of the participants (Mehan & Wood, 1975, p. 12). This is as true for New Guinea as it is for modern couples, who sometimes have problems having children, even though their sexual behavior is in accordance with biological knowledge. And yet pregnancy does not occur despite the fact that everything seems to have been done according to the demands of biology. These problems exist in every order, and every order has explanations for failure that support the validity of that order's fundamental propositions. The introduction of sperm into a woman's body does not always result in pregnancy, even if it is done correctly and at the optimal time. This is true for the sperm of living men as well as that of ancestors in New Guinea. In the event of failure, there are always explanations to support the incorrigible propositions, which may or may not be anthropological in nature.
We can generalize this observation: whenever phenomena deviate from the meaning structure of modern phenomena, a distinction is made between a layer of actual reality (“human beings” who perceive and construct the world with the help of concepts and categories) and a layer of reality that is real only for the actors, who believe, for example, that their ancestors intervened into the present with their actions. The sociologist concedes that the participants seriously believe that all this is real, but he knows better and therefore does not need to concern himself with the meaning structure of the phenomenon. Thus Mann, and with him all of action theory, adopts the attitude of a friendly psychiatrist. He observes his patients hallucinating and readily concedes that they believe in the reality of their hallucinations.
Taking the “human being” as a research perspective distorts the meaning of the observed phenomena in two ways. For one, only humans are considered to be morally relevant actors; other possible actors in the field are analyzed as mere beliefs. Second, the purposive actors are seen to be individuals; the possibility that groups, including deceased ancestors, can be regarded as morally relevant actors is ruled out.
The homology between the anthropological a priori and the modern anthropological self-conception
By means of the critical procedure described above, we made explicit the sociotheoretical assumptions of the anthropological a priori and identified unsettling phenomena with reference to anthropological research. Now we have to determine whether these sociotheoretical assumptions are reproduced in the (provisional) theory of society, which would prevent them from being recognized as empirically relevant phenomena. This would be the case if the threefold understanding of the human being, described above, is found to be a feature of the self-conception of modern society.
Research on the structure of modern societies
To answer this question I refer to the theories of society put forward by Durkheim and Luhmann, which I have taken up and developed further (Lindemann, 2014, 2018b, 2024a). According to Durkheim, the division of labor is a decisive feature of modern society (Durkheim, 1930/1964). This structure includes new positions for human individuals, who are no longer part of only one subgroup or only one form of labor. In advanced forms of the division of labor (family, professional groups, etc.), individuals participate in social labor in different ways and belong to different social subgroups, and it is assumed that they are capable of fulfilling different moral obligations in different situations and subgroups. The more advanced the division of labor is, the more a society is dependent on individuals being capable of performing different kinds of labor in different subgroups, which requires of the individual the ability to handle a variety of role expectations in an individual manner. The notion of the individual person thus becomes a structural necessity for modern society. This is the basis of what Durkheim calls the “cult of the human person”’ (Durkheim, 1992, p. 69).
Luhmann's insight that societies differentiate into different contexts of action supports this point. These contexts of action may include politics, law, economics, and so forth, each of them with different requirements for action and their own attendant expectations. Luhmann's view of the position of the human individual in relation to these contexts of action is similar to Durkheim's: mediating the different role requirements is the task of the individual personality. In other words, the individual human person is structurally significant for Luhmann as well. In this sense, Luhmann also treats the institutionalization of the dignity and freedom of the individual as a structural necessity for the formation and preservation of functional differentiation (Luhmann, 1965/1999; Verschraegen, 2002).
Luhmann's and Durkheim's concepts of differentiation can be integrated into an overarching claim if societies are understood as being differentiated into subgroups (e.g., families, organizations, professional associations, and so forth) as well as into contexts of action. Each of these contexts follows its own logic of action, for example, politics (maintaining or gaining power), economics (creating profit), or science (producing true statements). Since subgroups and contexts are not hierarchically related to each other, it is useful to speak of “horizontal differentiation”’ here (Lindemann, 2018b, p. 7, 2018a, Chap. 2). A closer look at the historical record also shows that the circle of morally relevant actors is only limited to human individuals in societies that are differentiated in this way (Lindemann, 2014, 2016, 2018a, 2018b).
The special normative position of the human individual, which Joas calls “sacralization” (Joas, 2008), also underpins the structures of modern society in another way. Durkheim and Luhmann point out that social subgroups (Durkheim, 1992, p. 64) and contexts of action (Luhmann, 1965/1999, p. 197) have a tendency to fully absorb the individual. Durkheim calls this a tyranny of subgroups, whose claims on the individual must be suppressed by the state. Luhmann focuses exclusively on the political system, which, he argues, has a tendency to completely absorb people's horizons of experience. I would add here that other fields of action, such as economics, show a similar tendency toward the complete absorption of the human individual. This, however, jeopardizes the structural condition for the existence of horizontal differentiation, which is why social movements continue to emerge in modern society, invoking the ethos of human rights in their moral criticism of such tendencies (Lindemann, 2018b, p. 13ff, 2018a, pp. 353–409).
Identifying the homology
As the above makes clear, societal differentiation renders the individual structurally necessary. Moreover, human individuals stabilize existing subgroups or contexts of action and can form new ones. It is in this sense that human individuals are to be understood as an ordering force: it is by means of their actions and their communication that they form and stabilize subgroups and contexts of action. This gives them a special normative status, which is expressed in the ethos of human rights. Within this framework, human beings are understood in three ways: as natural beings seeking their own wellbeing, as beings capable of forming different cultural orders and self-conceptions, and as moral beings entitled to freedom and dignity.
This anthropological understanding is universalized in the theory of action, which understands the human being as an order-forming force in a general sense. According to this theory, not only the subgroups and contexts of action in horizontally differentiated society, but in general every institution, every power network, all concepts and categories, as well as every social self-conception that has ever been formed can be explained in terms of the human being as an ordering force. As we can see, this amounts to a simple reproduction of the modern self-conception.
If, however, we want to be able to see the human being as an order-forming force that has developed historically, we need a different social theory that develops a more abstract understanding of what is meant by an order-forming force. Based on that, we can then look at how the modern understanding of the ordering force developed historically, and can examine whether and to what extent the understanding of the order-forming force, and thus also society's conception of itself, is currently changing.
A new formal-universal a priori
A new social theory must meet the following requirements: it must allow us to distance ourselves from the modern understanding of the order-forming force, the threefold human, and to understand it as an integral part of a historically evolved order. Phenomenological realism provides a good way of seeing different accounts of reality as equally valid, in that it assumes that the world in which we live is always the provisional result of a process of explicating the structures of different dimensions of meaning: embodied selves are located in spatially and temporally constituted relations of touch and, mediated by symbols and technology, explicate for each other and for third parties those states of affairs that the participants in a given life context must experience as real. This argument combines Helmuth Plessner's theory of natural artificiality or mediated immediacy (Plessner, 1928/2019, pp. 287ff, 298ff) with the theory of the explication of states of affairs (Schmitz, 1977, p. §222, in particular p. 402).
This expanded theory of excentric positionality takes the place that so far has been reserved for the anthropological a priori. It does not a priori limit the circle of possible personal actors to humans, nor does it contain any preference for individual actors (Lindemann, 2019). I have set out this social theory in detail elsewhere (Lindemann, 2019, 2021); what follows here is a rough sketch. Drawing on Plessner, I focus on the distinction between the ways in which centric and excentric positionality relate to their environment.
Selves positioned centrically exist in relation to their surrounding field and perceive it in terms of lived field conditions (Lindemann, 2021, p. 167), which affect the self insofar as it experiences these conditions as an invitation to act. The nature of this experience depends on the state of the self. Is it hungry, thirsty, tense, anxious, in pain? The self-experiences the surrounding field, is touched by it, and is invited to take action, based on its own experienced state. At the level of centric positionality, the experienced state and the relationship to the surrounding field are determined by natural givens. And yet how centric selves experience themselves and their relationship to the surrounding field is not completely determined. Natural givens (e.g., drives) constitute a framework within which learning can also occur. Thus, for example, by which other bodily selves a concrete self is touched in a motivating way, such as predator, prey or conspecifics, is predetermined. There is no neutral contact, only contact by relevant selves or other stimuli. But how the relationship to the environment is actually constituted is also shaped by learning. These learning processes are also always mediated by the self's experience of its own state. The experiences and events that touch a self in a motivating way cannot be determined in advance.
Excentric positionality means that this relational structure is reflexively related back to itself.
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The result is that the self is at a distance from the execution of its relationship to the environment, that is, it is at a distance
from its experienced states, from its perception of its surrounding field, from the relations of touch it experiences with other selves, and from being invited to act by environmental field conditions.
At the level of excentric positionality, the natural certainty of the centric relationship to the surrounding field no longer applies. There are no fixed rules for how embodied selves relate to themselves, to the environment, and to other embodied selves. In the social dimension this means that it remains open by which other embodied selves a concrete self is touched in a motivating way. As we saw above, the historical variability of whether or not there can be relationships of touch with ancestors or other nonhuman beings presents a problem. According to the theory of excentric positionality, this is determined by artificial institutional forms. Personal relationships only being possible between humans is a special empirical case. If other constellations are empirically identified, for example, if deceased ancestors are among those with whom participating selves exist in relations of touch, it would be a different case, which is regarded as equally possible and realistic. This includes the possibility that ancestors or spiritual beings such as angels are involved in a historically determined explication of reality.
With regard to the second problem, the theory of excentric positionality considers it indeterminate whether embodied beings experience themselves as part of a group related to other groups or as individuals who can enter into different relationships. Thus Plessner in the social dimension does not start from the human being, but from a “social undecidedness relation” (Lindemann, 2019). Accordingly, for personal selves in Plessner's sense, first, it is undecided who belongs to the personal circle of being (the boundaries of the social are contingent), and, second, whether personal selves experience and relate to each other as dividuals (parts of a group in relation to other groups) or as individuals. By using the social undecidedness relation as a premise for empirical research, we obtain a formal a priori assumption that makes it possible to analyze the clan relations described above without distorting their meaning (Lindemann, 2021, pp. 281–294).
The social undecidedness relation designates a triadic constellation. Embodied selves exist in relationships of touch and are reflexively related to the fact that this is the case from the perspective of third parties. In such triadic constellations, institutions are formed that mediate the relationships of embodied selves. In other words, the formation, stabilization, or change of symbolic-institutional orders is operationally performed by third-party constellations. Starting from this more abstract understanding of the order-forming force, it is possible to reconstruct different ways it has been understood historically without destroying its meaning. We can place the modern anthropological understanding on an equal footing with others which also include nonhuman persons.
The theory of triadic constellations draws on theories of the third that are used to conceptualize the emergence of social institutions, without, however, adopting them in a straightforward way. This is because the theory of the third in theorists such as Berger and Luckmann (1991), Habermas (1981/1985), Luhmann (2014), and Simmel (1908/1983) presupposes a modern understanding of individuality. In contrast, the theory of the social undecidedness relation begins with triadic constellations, in which, however, it can remain undecided whether an institutional preference for a more individualizing or a more dividualizing form of sociation will prevail.
In terms of social theory, this leads to a fourfold understanding of order: the selves involved in triadic constellations with the institutional order as the fourth element. Events become meaningful only by way of a reflexive reference to such an institutional framework of interpretation. 2
Implications of a reflexive anthropology
In conclusion, we can summarize briefly: we were in search of a sociotheoretical position of observation that does not conceptually rely on the human being or the sacralization of the human person. It is only from such a position of observation that it is possible: (1) to treat the fact that orders are formed by human beings as an object of study; (2) to analyze this as a historically contingent fact; and (3) to replace the normatively charged positive anthropology of sociological theory with a reflexive anthropology. The assumption that orders are formed by human beings and that human beings have a unique normative position, which we take for granted, appears from this perspective as one possible kind of order formation, alongside which others can also exist. This renders an important aspect of the intellectual unconscious of sociological research an object of study and moves from a reflexive sociology in Bourdieu's sense to a reflexive anthropology. The aim remains the same as with Bourdieu: to strengthen sociology's claim to scientific objectivity.
Despite this analytical shift in perspective, however, it is extremely difficult to take leave of the human being in our research practices. Research in the social sciences remains a component of the modern understanding of reality, which grants human beings a special position as described above. Even a reflexive anthropology will not be able to completely distance itself from this in practice. Taking into account that nonhuman beings can also appear as order-forming actors would mean ruining our own reputations as serious scholars if we were to conduct interviews with, for example, spirits or ants. The same would be true for researchers who claim to have conducted participant observation in hell and expert interviews with devils. In order to study such phenomena, it is necessary to keep to humans who can tell us about their experiences with otherworldly beings. On the one hand, a reflexive distancing from modern assumptions is necessary, but this cannot be directly applied to research practice as long as research in the social sciences wants to remain an intelligible part of modernity (Block, 2023; Lindemann, 2021, p. 313f).
Nevertheless, depending on the research question, the attempt to distance ourselves from the human being as the decisive order-forming force may have implications for empirical research. In some cases, it will not be necessary to incorporate the methodology of reflexive anthropology at all; in others, a reflexive preamble to the presentation of the research may suffice. In a final category, the incorporation of reflexive anthropology may be crucial. I describe this last case using the examples of empirical research on violence, the question of actor status and social critique.
In sociological research, violence is understood within the framework of the anthropological a priori, according to which violence is perpetrated by humans against humans (Collins, 2008; Popitz, 1986/2017; Reemtsma, 2012). There is a debate about whether to use a narrow or broad concept of violence. A narrow concept of violence focuses on physical violence (Collins, 2008; Nassauer, 2019), whereas a broad concept includes structural or cultural violence (Galtung, 1969; Galtung & Fischer, 2013). Either way, violence is defined from the observer perspective, based on the anthropological a priori. This automatically introduces a normative judgment, since within the framework of the anthropological a priori, violence is morally problematic in and of itself. Hence violence should never be used against human beings, and violence must be stopped in order to maintain and stabilize social order. This is the implicit message of all the works on violence mentioned above.
By contrast, applying the method of reflexive anthropology and taking the theory of the social undecidedness relation as a starting point fundamentally shifts our perspective on violence (Lindemann, 2021, pp. 231–273; Lindemann et al., 2022). “Violence” is now no longer defined from the perspective of the observer; instead it is a matter of reconstructing what is understood by violence in the respective field of research. This becomes immediately clear when we consider that, due to the social undecidedness relation, it is an open question who can exercise violence as an actor. I have shown elsewhere that the understanding of violence varies greatly depending on whether humans, animals, plants, spirits, the dead, or gods are treated as morally relevant beings (Lindemann, 2018b, 2018a). Research conducted from the perspective of a reflexive anthropology is never limited to analyzing individual incidents of violence, but rather always considers the social context in order to reconstruct the broader framework that determines, first, who is an actor capable of using violence, second, what is understood as violence, and third, whether the violence exerted was legitimate. Thus empirical research requires a “theory-of-society perspective” (Lindemann et al., 2022) as the most comprehensive context for these questions. In the case of the study of violence, this opens up entirely new research questions about the relationship between violence and the formation of social order in general (Barth, 2023; Fröhlich, 2024; Lindemann, 2018a).
Reflexive anthropology is also highly suggestive when considering the question of the actor. This is a broad field of research, dominated by ANT (Latour, 1994, 2004, 2005). As far as I can see, ANT does not address the normative aspects of the actor status of human beings. Susan Leigh Star's rejection of the extension of Latour's actor concept makes this clear. Star recognizes that Latour's move is a normative relativization that makes it impossible to continue participating in the sacred project of sociology viz. of modern society. She presents her reasons for not following Latour under the heading “Why I am not a Nazi: Realism and Relativism in Science and Technology Studies” (Star, 1995, p. 9). Within ANT it is not even possible to understand what this critique is about (Lindemann, 2011). Only by taking into account the fact that the human being is an order-forming force, and as such a sacralized being, can we understand what is at stake here. These questions become even more pressing if we look at recent technological developments in the field of AI. The analysis of the attending sociotechnical challenges and their disruptive potential strongly touch on the position of human beings within the modern order. Incorporating reflexive anthropology into research in these areas would be of enormous benefit.
It is also fruitful, if not necessary, to integrate the approach of reflexive anthropology for the purpose of social critique. For only if we understand that and how the institution of the person as equal in freedom and dignity is functionally integrated into the institutional network of modern society can we develop a critique of modern forms of power relations that does not itself endanger the normative institution that makes the critique possible in the first place. Thus a realistic critique of society that focuses, for example, on the destructive dynamics of the modern economy for the environment and the climate must ask whether and how the institution of property ownership and the institution of a “human being equal in freedom and dignity” are functionally related to each other. Is it possible to overcome the institution of property, upon which the profit-oriented capitalist economy is based, without at the same time endangering the institution of the human being as equal in freedom and dignity? Reflexive anthropology deliberately renounces the possibility of justifying social critique in terms of social theory, which, however, opens up the possibility of developing a realistic social critique based on an objectifying analysis of the institutional order of modern society. This would not be possible without an analytical rupture with the sacralizations of modernity and the sacred project of sociology.
At its best, the method of reflexive anthropology could act as a catalyst for our “sociological imagination” (C. Wright Mills). It could productively stimulate both empirical research and a realistic critique of the modern societal order.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
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