- Title
- A critique of social applications of autopoieis
- Creator
- Juniper, James
- Relation
- International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol. 1, Issue 3, p. 137-151
- Relation
- http://iji.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.88/prod.65
- Publisher
- Common Ground
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2006
- Description
- Maturana and Varela’s notion of autopoiesis, initially developed to provide insights into the biology of living processes at the level of the individual cell, has been adopted by a number of social theorists, including Niklas Luhmann. In Life Itself, Robert Rosen set out a similar, and equally comprehensive argument about what he sees as the inadequacies of reductionist modes of materialist analysis that are based on mechanism. This paper presents a philosophical critique of those social theorists who, under the influence of Luhmann’s work, have adopted autopoietic frameworks in their analysis of social phenomena. This critique is primarily directed at Maturana and Varela’s arguments that autopoietic ways of thinking call for a transformation in the epistemology and ontology of scientific analysis: one that properly accounts for cognitive processes of self-organisation and self-reference. The paper argues that, in this regard, Rosen’s arguments provide an alternative and more credible framework for analysis that is more congruent with other critical (i.e. Foucauldian and Habermasian) strands of social theory.
- Subject
- autopoiesis; regulation; governance; biocybernetics; systems theory; metabolism-repair systems
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/927840
- Identifier
- uon:10265
- Identifier
- ISSN:1833-1882
- Language
- eng
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