Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Trotta)
What can sociology contribute to modern legal theory? This was one of the central questions that continued to preoccupy Niklas Luhmann, the great sociologist who also held a law degree and was a former civil servant, throughout his scholarly career.
Now his book, Contingency and the Law, written presumably in 1971 and almost completed, offers a captivating glimpse of Luhmann’s first attempt to provide an answer to this question.
Luhmann shows how the clarification of the premises of a sociology of law, as formulated by systems theory, allows for a thoroughgoing reinterpretation of established problems in jurisprudence. At the centre of this ambitious undertaking stands the concept of contingency, the basic fact of the existence of alternative possibilities in social intercourse and the resultant uncertainty in the formation of expectations, which make the law necessary. A systems theoretical legal theory no longer sees the productivity of the law in terms of its ability to combat injustice but rather in its ability to generalise and thus make the coordination of more highly complex constellations of justice/injustice, and hence a more complex social reality possible. From this perspective, the function of the law lies in the counterfactual stabilisation of the expectation of expectations.
Contingency and the Law not only shows that Luhmann was fully conversant with the juridical debates of his time, but also demonstrates the heuristic value of contingency theory in affording a perspective that can get away from juridical dogma.
»Theme: theory of society; duration: 30 years; costs: none« – so ran Niklas Luhman’s infamous answer at the end of the 1960s in regard to his research project. The...
Korea (Saemulgyul)
Every organisation, as stolid as it may be, experiences a certain shock when a new manager or director is about to take over. Water cooler gossip increases, every advance in knowledge is...
English world rights (Polity), Netherlands (Boom), Korea (Theorie Publishing), Turkey (VakifBank)
Spanish world rights (Herder)
Korea (Ghil); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Trotta)
English world rights (Polity), France (Diaphanes), Korea (Theorie Publishing)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish rights / Latin America (Prometeo), Chinese complex rights (Wu-Nan), Italy (MIM), Turkey (Edebi)
Poland (selection; Academicon); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Trotta), Japan (Keiso Shobo)
The classics of sociology had regarded the sociology of religion a vital part of social theory; also, and especially, when faced with modern society, supposedly created so far removed from...
English world rights (Stanford UP), Spanish world rights (Trotta), Italy (Franco Angeli), Korea (Theorie Publishing), Czech Republic (Karolinum); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese complex rights (Business Weekly), Japan (Hosei UP)
English world rights (Stanford UP), Spanish world rights (Herder), Chinese simplex rights (The Commercial Press), France (Exils), Italy (Quodlibet), Denmark (Reitzels), Korea (Saemulgyul), Japan (Hosei UP), Estonia (Eksa); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Russia (Logos), Croatia (Breza)
Under the title Art as a Social System, this book offers a series of publications that serve the elaboration of a theory of society. The entire undertaking – Theory of Society...
English world rights (Stanford UP), Korea (Hangilsa)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Herder), Chinese complex rights (Wu-Nan), Italy (MIM), Japan (Hosei UP)
English world rights (Oxford UP), Spanish world rights (Herder), Chinese simplex rights (The Commercial Press), Chinese complex rights (Wu-Nan), France (Pu Laval), Korea (Saemulgyul), Japan (Hosei UP), Czech Republic (Stredisko); previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Brazilian Portuguese rights (Martins Editora), Italy (Giappichelli), Croatia (Breza)
In this important book Niklas Luhmann - one of the leading social thinkers of the late 20th century - analyses the emergence of »love« as the basis of personal relationships in modern societies....
English world rights (Polity), Chinese simplex rights (East China Normal UP), Chinese complex rights (Wu-Nan), France (Aubier Montaigne / Flammarion), Korea (Saemulgyul), Turkey (Livera)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Peninsula), Portuguese rights (Difel), Italy (Pearson), Sweden (Liber AB), Japan (Bokutakusha), Poland (Scholar), Czech Republic (Prostor), Hungary (Joszöveg Mühely), Romania (Tact), Croatia (Naklada MD), Serbia (Zoran Stojanovic), Slovenia (Krtina)