Insecurity, Uncertainty, and Social Complexity: Systems Theoretical Remarks on Societal and Individual Level Incertitude

Abstract

This chapter surveys the relationship between societal- and individual-level incertitude by applying the concepts of complexity and contingency on both levels of analysis. By relying mostly on the work of Niklas Luhmann, the author claims that incertitude is a necessary condition of social evolution. Functionally differentiated societies maintain order by reducing the complexity of challenges at the expense of the reproduction of complexity in the form of novel challenges. The specific form of objective insecurity and related perceived uncertainty, observed on both societal and individual levels, is related to the rupture of the social mechanisms responsible for complexity management. Individual-level uncertainty is largely caused by the insufficient complexity-reducing capacity of social subsystems, which are unable to process the surplus of complexity resulting from ongoing social evolution. Thus, the complexity of challenges not channeled by them “trickles down” to lower-level social systems (organizations, protest movements, and interactions) and lastly, to individual actors. For individuals, “descending” complexity occurs in the form of personalized challenges filtered by their specific social and biographic conditions. While individual actors are forced to continuously make decisions and to maintain a reflexive and proactive attitude in their conduct, at a societal level, complexity reduction follows the path of parallel processing (functional differentiation). Individuals remain bound to a serial and strictly temporalized manner of problem resolution. For individuals, contingency and complexity have an additional existential dimension, since they do not “process” complexity but are doomed to experience it and to respond to it in a specifically human pragmatic manner.