Social Systems
Social system is a central term in sociological systems theory. The term draws a line to ecosystem, biological organisms, psychical systems and technical systems. They all form the environment of social systems. Minimum requirements for a social system is interaction of at least two personal systems or two persons acting in their roles. The first who formulated a systematic theory of social systems was Talcott Parsons where it was a part of his AGIL paradigm yet the social system is only a segment (or a "subsystem") of what Parsons calls action theory; however, Vilfredo Pareto had used the term, "social system," earlier but only as a sketch and not as an overall analytical scheme in the sense of Parsons.
Jay Wright Forrester describes three counterintuitive behaviours as important: causes from symptoms are often far removed in time and space, identifying leverage points, conflicting short + long-term consequences.
Read more about Social Systems: Approaches of Parsons and Luhmann, Social Systems and Digital/online Worlds, See Also, Literature
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or systems:
“The demonstrations are always early in the morning, at six o’clock. It’s wonderful, because I’m not doing anything at six anyway, so why not demonstrate?... When you’ve written to your president, to your congressman, to your senator and nothing, nothing has come of it, you take to the streets.”
—Erica Bouza, U.S. jewelry designer and social activist. As quoted in The Great Divide, book 2, section 7, by Studs Terkel (1988)
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)