Cultivate the Social Systems Theory

“What reality can be grasped, when observing our society with the social systems theory? Furthermore, what future will be made based on this understanding?”

This is the fundamental question of the course of Social Systems Theory. The classroom was full with over 150 undergraduate students desiring to creating the world. Even though Prof. Takashi Iba has been teaching this course for over 5 years, this year is quite different from other years.

Until last year, the main focus was that students understand Social Systems Theory, proposed by Niklas Luhmann. However, this year, Prof Takashi Iba embraces the three main objectives of this course.

1. Studying a sociological theory, Social Systems Theory, proposed by Niklas Luhmann

2. Understanding what’s happening in the information society

3. Learning about the media for social change

If he teaches only one of them, the class can be replaced in other colleges. How he creates his own originality is that he combines three of them. In addition, he takes advantages of having this course at SFC (Keio Shonan Fujisawa Campus). Studies are including Biology, Economics, Governance, Linguistics, Sociology, Computer Science, and so on. Since our campus is unique in terms of a variety of students from different academic background, this course helps students studying many different fields to understand the society and come up with their own visions toward the social change.

Here is the contents of this semester.

#1 Introduction

#2 Emergence of Communication as an Event

#3 Media and Code for Communication

#4 Modern Society

#5 Autopoiesis and Structural Coupling

#6 Voice and Exit for Social Change

#7 Scenario Planning: Learning by Making Stories of Future

#8 Pattern Language, part I: Media for User Participation

#9 Pattern Language, part II: Way of Organizational Change

#10 Creative Collaboration: Value Creation through Communication

#11 Open Collaboration, part I: Collaborative Innovation Networks

#12 Open Collaboration, part II: Open-Source Software Development

#13 Open Collaboration, part III: Wiki and Wikipedia

#14 Exploring Philosophy of Social Change

We really look forward to seeing how the students will react after the course ends.

Social Systems Theory 2012 #1

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