Raf Vanderstraeten
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 254183 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Raf Vanderstraeten |
| PRENOMES | Raf |
| SOBRENOME | Vanderstraeten |
| ASSINATURA | VANDERSTRAETEN R |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4155-2499 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 68 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 218 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 68 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1999 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
The pressures of functional differentiation
The idea of functional differentiation is central to the framework which Luhmann developed for observing and analyzing the complexity of modern society. He analyzed its key social systems as functionally differentiated and specialized systems, such as the economy, politics, science, law, religion, or education. The modern family, however, is often defined as a multi-functional institution. It is seen to fulfill and integrate different functions, …
When the Whole Is Less Than the Sum of Its Parts
We analyse how changes in the structural coupling between the family and the school reshape education as a social system. Education ‘naturally’ seems to belong in the family, but organized schooling has increasingly gained social legitimacy and status. Families and schools are both seen as the primary agents of socialization and education, but the value of family education is now increasingly measured in terms of the children's school achievement…
Quo vadis Web of Science? The expansion and selection criteria of the Social Science Citation Index
Web of Science has rapidly expanded its coverage of the scientific literature in the past decades. We analyze the selection criteria applied in its databases, especially the Social Science Citation Index, and discuss how changes in the coverage of the scientific literature inform us about changes in the kinds of research that are being valued and prioritized. Scientometric data are presented for the period 1997–2023. These data show that ‘applied…
Nation-building and mass education in Chile
This paper looks at the arguments that were used to further mass education in Chile. As the plausibility of the arguments depends on structural conditions, argumentative changes also shed light on changes in these conditions. We argue, more particularly, that the orientation of the debate shifted from religion vs. science to politics and to the economy, and that the ways in which education had to position itself and ensure support for its expansi…
The ‘Hidden Curriculum’ of Vietnam’s English School Textbooks
National Identity and National Territory
The Classical Canon and its Limitations
Making a Career in Academia
Subject specialties as interdisciplinary trading grounds
Familie und Schule
Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit einigen Merkmalen der Innendifferenzierung des Erziehungssystems, d. h. der Differenzierung zwischen Familie und Schule. Ausgehend von der Idee der funktionalen Differenzierung diskutieren wir zunächst die Ausdifferenzierung des Erziehungssystems und die Rolle, die Schulen dabei gespielt haben. Anschließend analysieren wir die Beziehung zwischen beiden Subsystemen aus der Perspektive der strikten und der losen Kopp…
Crowding-In and Crowding-Out. Studying the Relationship between Sustainable Citizenship and Political Activism in Flanders
This study examines whether pro-environmental behavior crowds-in (associates positively with) or crowds-out (displaces) political activism. This research is part of a broader debate on the nature of individual pro-environmental behavior and whether it can be considered a political act. Studies generally show a positive association between pro-environmental behavior and political activism. However, few have differentiated between types of pro-envi…
Inequalities in the growth of Web of Science
Publikations- und Evaluationspraktiken in wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften, 1930–2020
Wissenschaft wird häufig als selbstorganisierendes und selbstkontrollierendes System beschrieben, und die wissenschaftliche Fachliteratur mit ihren Peer-Review-Verfahren als das Grundmodell dieser Form der Selbstorganisation. Der Genese dieses Modells wurde jedoch bisher kaum historisch-soziologische Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet. Die vorherrschende Perspektive hat eher dazu ermutigt, zeitgenössische Ideen über gute und schlechte Wissenschaft auf frühe…
Educational expansion and socio-geographical inequality (Belgium, 1961–2011)
This paper presents a sociologically informed analysis of the historically changing relation between education and society. Using a set of socio-geographical methods and longitudinal data from population censuses, we explore changes in the forms of educational inclusion and exclusion in the period 1961 to 2011. We analyse, more particularly, changes in the geographical segregation and clustering of both high- and low-schooled individuals, while g…
Functional Differentiation and University Expansion in Chile
Over the last few decades, education has acquired a fairly robust social identity worldwide and participation in higher education has also become increasingly common. Building upon Luhmann’s theory of society, in this paper we analyze the expansion of higher education in Chile, specifically looking at the transformations the Chilean higher education system has undergone and the interactions between this system and its social environment. We will …
Making science international
Drawing on the evolution of socio-geographical imaginaries of scholarly journals published in Chile, this article provides a picture of the socio-historical trajectories of internationalization of scholarly journals and communities in that part of the (semi-)periphery of science. In order to break with the presentism of many contemporary discussions, the analysis covers a relatively long period of time, from the end of the nineteenth century unti…
Sociology in Great Little Belgium
How does education function
Niklas Luhmann speaks of the function of education in relation to modern society. Only within modern society, he argues, is it possible to speak of the differentiation of a specific function system of education. It is, more particularly, the differentiation of other function systems that leads to the question about the function of education. I look closely at Luhmann’s analyses of the function of education and make a plea for a socio-historical a…
Internationalizing a national scientific community? Changes in publication and citation practices in Chile, 1976-2015
Internationalization pressures are omnipresent in the world of science. Scholars and administrators now often make use of international impact as a yardstick by which to assess the quality of national scholarship. However, little is hitherto known about the effects of the internationalization incentives at the level of specific national scientific communities. This article presents an analysis of the forms of internationalization in Chile over a …
Sociology in Belgium
This chapter starts with a sketch of the sociopolitical context within which sociology developed in Belgium. Afterwards three core aspects of the history of sociology are discussed: the rise of social science and the social statistics of Adolphe Quetelet in the mid-nineteenth century, the different ideological settings or pillars within which the first sociological institutes emerged in the period around 1900, and the expansion of the Dutch-and F…
Who Had Faith in Sociology? Scholarly and Ideological Divergences in Belgium around 1900
ArgumentThis paper examines the early institutionalization of sociology in Belgium. It displays how different intellectual and social contexts bred their own research interests and research approaches. It shows, more particularly, how ideological affiliations and divisions defined the setting within which this new discipline had to develop in Belgium in the decades around 1900. As a consequence of the ideological controversies, sociology had diff…
Unintended consequences of job formalisation
This article focuses on the shift from informal to formal employment in the sugarcane plantations of Alagoas, Northeast Brazil, and its unintended consequences. Drawing on the employment experiences of sugarcane cutters, the authors stress the main mechanisms that produce precarity within formal employment structures. Precarity is forged by means of employers' hiring practices, which turn formal employment contracts into insecure and temporary on…
Familia y escuela
The focus of professionalization in the system of education has traditionally been on teachers in the school context. Much less attention has been devoted to the parents and family education. This focus on teaching and its professionalization has certainly to do with the fact that (almost) everyone can become parent, but that entry into teaching can be regulated and controlled. But the professionalization of teaching not only affects education in…
Familia y escuela
De manera tradicional, el análisis del proceso de profesionalización en el sistema de educación se ha enfocado en el rol de los profesores en el contexto escolar. En comparación, mucha menor atención se ha prestado a la educación impartida por parte de la familia y, especialmente, los padres. Este énfasis en la enseñanza y su profesionalización tiene indudablemente que ver con el hecho de que, si bien (casi) todos pueden convertirse en padres, la…
Sociology in Belgium
Autopoiesis and socialization
In 1984, Niklas Luhmann published Soziale Systems in which he applies the idea of autopoiesis (= self‐production) to social systems. Abstracted from its biological connotations, the concept of autopoiesis leads to a sharp distinction between different kinds of autopoietic organization, i.e. between life, consciousness and communication. According to Luhmann, the relationship between social systems and human beings cannot be adequately analysed ex…
Scientific Communication
The rise of scientific specializations and disciplines depends on the formation of specialized scientific communities. The establishment of specialized scholarly journals facilitates the formation of such communities or networks. Publications, especially articles in specialized journals, have become institutionalized as the 'ultimate' form of scientific communication. Specialized journals fulfil a key role in the scientific disciplines. They both…
Parsons, Luhmann and the Theorem of Double Contingency
This article analyzes the ego/alter ego constellation of social interaction. Every social interaction constitutes a situation with double contingency, which is recognized as such by both sides: both know that both know that one could also act differently. The circularity of the relationship brings about indeterminacy; self-commitment would presuppose that others commit themselves and vice versa. How is this infinity problem solved? How can we acc…
Soziale Beobachtungsraster
Seit dem Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts wurde im Bereich der Statistik (Staatswissenschaft) eine Lawine von ‚gedruckten Zahlen‘ produziert. Ein prominentes Beispiel dafür bildet die Bevölkerungsstatistik. In der historischsoziologischen Literatur werden den Daten, die in den vorhergehenden Jahrhunderten gesammelt und verarbeitet sind, viel Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet. In diesem Aufsatz wird aber vor allem fokussiert auf die Evolution der statistischen Met…
The Historical Triangulation of Education, Politics and Economy
In the course of the long 18th century, basic conceptual and discursive changes took place in the western world. Even words which remained the same took on new meanings.The new concepts indicate how the social reality is comprehended in the modern era. Various segments of the population relied on them to act, to understand, interpret and reform reality.These concepts are crucial to the discursive constitution of the world. They take part in the d…
How is Education Possible? Preliminary investigations for a theory of education
The following text is the result of our ongoing discussions about the notion of intersubjectivity and its significance for an understanding of the process of education.Rather than merging our sometimes diverging ideas into one single line of argument, we decided to try if we could make the movement of divergence and convergence of our thoughts visible in the text itself. Although we definitely explore different pathways, these pathways lead to a …
Dewey’s Transactional Constructivism
Journal Article Dewey's Transactional Constructivism Get access Raf Vanderstraeten Raf Vanderstraeten Correspondence: Raf Vanderstraeten, Institut fur Weltgesellschaft, Faculty of Sociology, University of Bielefeld, PO Box 100131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany. Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 2, May 2002, Pages 233–2…
Talcott Parsons and the enigma of secularization
During the last ten or fifteen years of his life, Talcott Parsons (1902-79) discussed religion and secularization in a number of papers and essays. This work was left unfinished; in the last book that he saw into print, Parsons depicted these papers and essays as work-in-progress. This article focuses on Parsons' approach to secularization in this late work. Building upon his AGIL-scheme, Parsons analyzed the relation between processes of inclusi…
The Social Differentiation of the Educational System
In line with a long sociological tradition, Niklas Luhmann has analysed the basic characteristics of modern society in terms of social differentiation. Luhmann has focused on the forms of differentiation, and argued that modern society is differentiated according to subsystems that concentrate on one function (e.g. the economy, law, science, politics, education). In the first part of the article, I explore the backgrounds of this systems-theoreti…
Religious activism in a secular world
In Europe, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are characterised not only by processes of secularisation, but also by religious reactions to the perceived secularisation of society. In the Catholic Church, the rise of active congregations constitutes a prominent part of this reaction. With their work “in the world”, the members of the active congregations (brothers and sisters) had to represent and disseminate religious values in a modernising…
Observing Systems
Burying and remembering the dead
In cemeteries, we do not remember our dead privately or quietly, as for example, in prayers. Instead, we do so publicly and visibly, so that what we do (or do not do) can be noticed by the public. But how do we remember and commemorate our dead at public cemeteries? Based on mixed-methods analyses of the markers for the dead at cemeteries in a religiously relatively homogeneous (namely, Catholic) region, three recent socio-cultural evolutions are…
Professions in organizations, professional work in education
Professions are occupational arrangements for dealing with human problems. Professional 'people work' requires a certain interactive closeness; face-to-face communication is prominent in professional-client relations. This also seems the case in the educational system. But in education, organization provides the raison d'être of this profession. This organizational infrastructure enables and delimits educational interaction. The school bureaucrac…
How Is Education Possible? Pragmatism, Communication and the Social Organisation of Education
peer reviewed
Making science international
Drawing on the evolution of socio-geographical imaginaries of scholarly journals published in Chile, this article provides a picture of the socio-historical trajectories of internationalization of scholarly journals and communities in that part of the (semi-)periphery of science. In order to break with the presentism of many contemporary discussions, the analysis covers a relatively long period of time, from the end of the nineteenth century unti…
Internationalizing a national scientific community? Changes in publication and citation practices in Chile, 1976-2015
Internationalization pressures are omnipresent in the world of science. Scholars and administrators now often make use of international impact as a yardstick by which to assess the quality of national scholarship. However, little is hitherto known about the effects of the internationalization incentives at the level of specific national scientific communities. This article presents an analysis of the forms of internationalization in Chile over a …
Who Had Faith in Sociology? Scholarly and Ideological Divergences in Belgium around 1900
ArgumentThis paper examines the early institutionalization of sociology in Belgium. It displays how different intellectual and social contexts bred their own research interests and research approaches. It shows, more particularly, how ideological affiliations and divisions defined the setting within which this new discipline had to develop in Belgium in the decades around 1900. As a consequence of the ideological controversies, sociology had diff…
Household and State-istics
Statistics originally meant state-istics , a scientific representation of the state for governmental purposes. It did not just cover the growing need for information in the emerging nation-states, but also contributed to establishing a new idea of government. This paper analyzes the rearticulation of the household within modern state-istics. The Belgian population censuses, which were first organized by Adolphe Quetelet, provide the material for …
The Making of Parsons’s The American University
Cultural Values and Social Differentiation
(2002). Cultural Values and Social Differentiation: The Catholic pillar and its education system in Belgium and the Netherlands. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education: Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 133-148
The School Class as an Interaction Order
Drawing on the works of Erving Goffman and Niklas Luhmann, it is argued that face-to-face interactions establish realities sui generis . They have a life on their own, and make demands on their own behalf. They are able to constitute their own boundaries by means of an intricate interplay of processes of reflective perception and communication. Even an organizational setting cannot determine this interaction order; it can only change the conditio…
Educational expansion in Belgium
Modern society is characterized by the form of functional differentiation. This Form organizes communication processes around special Functions to be fulfilled at the level of society. The inclusion of individuals into these functional subsystems is, in modem society, not determined by birth. An individual's career is the temporal structure of the process of inclusion. These structural characteristics affect the development of the educational sys…
Functional Differentiation and University Expansion in Chile
Over the last few decades, education has acquired a fairly robust social identity worldwide and participation in higher education has also become increasingly common. Building upon Luhmann’s theory of society, in this paper we analyze the expansion of higher education in Chile, specifically looking at the transformations the Chilean higher education system has undergone and the interactions between this system and its social environment. We will …
How does education function
Niklas Luhmann speaks of the function of education in relation to modern society. Only within modern society, he argues, is it possible to speak of the differentiation of a specific function system of education. It is, more particularly, the differentiation of other function systems that leads to the question about the function of education. I look closely at Luhmann’s analyses of the function of education and make a plea for a socio-historical a…
Unintended consequences of job formalisation
This article focuses on the shift from informal to formal employment in the sugarcane plantations of Alagoas, Northeast Brazil, and its unintended consequences. Drawing on the employment experiences of sugarcane cutters, the authors stress the main mechanisms that produce precarity within formal employment structures. Precarity is forged by means of employers' hiring practices, which turn formal employment contracts into insecure and temporary on…
Educational expansion in Belgium
Modern society is characterized by the form of functional differentiation. This Form organizes communication processes around special Functions to be fulfilled at the level of society. The inclusion of individuals into these functional subsystems is, in modem society, not determined by birth. An individual's career is the temporal structure of the process of inclusion. These structural characteristics affect the development of the educational sys…
Autopoiesis and socialization
In 1984, Niklas Luhmann published Soziale Systems in which he applies the idea of autopoiesis (= self‐production) to social systems. Abstracted from its biological connotations, the concept of autopoiesis leads to a sharp distinction between different kinds of autopoietic organization, i.e. between life, consciousness and communication. According to Luhmann, the relationship between social systems and human beings cannot be adequately analysed ex…
The School Class as an Interaction Order
Drawing on the works of Erving Goffman and Niklas Luhmann, it is argued that face-to-face interactions establish realities sui generis . They have a life on their own, and make demands on their own behalf. They are able to constitute their own boundaries by means of an intricate interplay of processes of reflective perception and communication. Even an organizational setting cannot determine this interaction order; it can only change the conditio…
The School Class as an Interaction Order
Drawing on the works of Erving Goffman and Niklas Luhmann, it is argued that face-to-face interactions establish realities sui generis . They have a life on their own, and make demands on their own behalf. They are able to constitute their own boundaries by means of an intricate interplay of processes of reflective perception and communication. Even an organizational setting cannot determine this interaction order; it can only change the conditio…
Observing Systems
How is Education Possible? Preliminary investigations for a theory of education
The following text is the result of our ongoing discussions about the notion of intersubjectivity and its significance for an understanding of the process of education.Rather than merging our sometimes diverging ideas into one single line of argument, we decided to try if we could make the movement of divergence and convergence of our thoughts visible in the text itself. Although we definitely explore different pathways, these pathways lead to a …
The Autonomy of Communication and the Structure of Education
Traditional analyses of education are subject centered. Education is either viewed from the perspective of the educator (teaching, parenting) or from that of the pupil (learning, child development). These analyses do not facilitate the study of education as a social phenomenon. This paper aims for the clarification of the 'conditio socialis' of education. It highlights the autonomy of social systems vis-à-vis their environment. Communication is d…
Dewey’s Transactional Constructivism
Journal Article Dewey's Transactional Constructivism Get access Raf Vanderstraeten Raf Vanderstraeten Correspondence: Raf Vanderstraeten, Institut fur Weltgesellschaft, Faculty of Sociology, University of Bielefeld, PO Box 100131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany. Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 2, May 2002, Pages 233–2…
Cultural Values and Social Differentiation
(2002). Cultural Values and Social Differentiation: The Catholic pillar and its education system in Belgium and the Netherlands. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education: Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 133-148
Parsons, Luhmann and the Theorem of Double Contingency
This article analyzes the ego/alter ego constellation of social interaction. Every social interaction constitutes a situation with double contingency, which is recognized as such by both sides: both know that both know that one could also act differently. The circularity of the relationship brings about indeterminacy; self-commitment would presuppose that others commit themselves and vice versa. How is this infinity problem solved? How can we acc…
An Observation of Luhmann's Observation of Education
Dans cet article, l'A rend compte des ecrits de Niklas Luhmann concernant sa theorie des systemes sociaux. L'A s'interesse ici a une application de la theorie des systemes sociaux a la sociologie de l'education et a l'autoproduction de l'individu dans le systeme educatif, en confrontant les points de vue de Luhmann sur la communication et surtout la socialisation avec les ecrits de Durkheim, Parsons et Bourdieu
Interaktion und Organisation im Erziehungssystem
Erziehung ist in der Moderne meistens organisierte Interaktion. Wir werden voraussetzen, dass die kleinste, noch organisierbare Einheit des Erziehungssystems die „Unterrichtsstunde“ ist, also ein zeitlich begrenztes, nach spezifischen systemischen Prämissen ausdifferenziertes Interaktionssystem unter Anwesenden. Im Erziehungssystem gibt es keinen Ersatz für das, was in konkret bestimmten Interaktionen zu leisten ist. Aufgrund der periodischen Wie…
Education and Society
Journal Article Education and Society: a Plea for a Historicised Approach Get access Raf Vanderstraeten Raf Vanderstraeten Correspondence: Raf Vanderstraeten, University of Leuven (Belgium) and University of Bielefeld (Germany), Department of Educational Sciences, Vesaliusstr. 2, 3000 Leuven, Belgium. Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Philosophy of Educ…
The Social Differentiation of the Educational System
In line with a long sociological tradition, Niklas Luhmann has analysed the basic characteristics of modern society in terms of social differentiation. Luhmann has focused on the forms of differentiation, and argued that modern society is differentiated according to subsystems that concentrate on one function (e.g. the economy, law, science, politics, education). In the first part of the article, I explore the backgrounds of this systems-theoreti…
On Secularization
Soziale Beobachtungsraster
Seit dem Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts wurde im Bereich der Statistik (Staatswissenschaft) eine Lawine von ‚gedruckten Zahlen‘ produziert. Ein prominentes Beispiel dafür bildet die Bevölkerungsstatistik. In der historischsoziologischen Literatur werden den Daten, die in den vorhergehenden Jahrhunderten gesammelt und verarbeitet sind, viel Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet. In diesem Aufsatz wird aber vor allem fokussiert auf die Evolution der statistischen Met…
How Is Education Possible? Pragmatism, Communication and the Social Organisation of Education
peer reviewed
The Historical Triangulation of Education, Politics and Economy
In the course of the long 18th century, basic conceptual and discursive changes took place in the western world. Even words which remained the same took on new meanings.The new concepts indicate how the social reality is comprehended in the modern era. Various segments of the population relied on them to act, to understand, interpret and reform reality.These concepts are crucial to the discursive constitution of the world. They take part in the d…
Säkularisierung als Inklusionsproblem
Der Aufsatz analysiert die historischen Veränderungen, die im christlichen Europa traditionell mit Säkularisierung identifiziert wurden. Im ersten Teil wird auf Analysen von Talcott Parsons und Niklas Luhmann Bezug genommen. Das Problem im Religionssystem wird verbunden mit gesamtgesellschaftlichen Transformationen, insbesondere mit dem modernen Problem der Inklusion von Individuen in Funktionssystemen. Im Allgemeinen geht es um die Frage, wie un…
Familie und Schule
Widmet man der historischen Evolution der Erziehung Aufmerksamkeit, dann springt die schnelle Expansion der Schulerziehung seit etwa der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts ins Auge. In einem begrenzten Zeitraum wird die Schule zu einer selbstverstndlichen Station im Erziehungsprozess fr fast jeden Heranwachsenden. Der Erziehungsprozess ist dabei auf (wenigstens) zwei unterschiedliche Milieus verteilt: Erziehung findet in der Familie und in der Schule sta…
Professions in organizations, professional work in education
Professions are occupational arrangements for dealing with human problems. Professional 'people work' requires a certain interactive closeness; face-to-face communication is prominent in professional-client relations. This also seems the case in the educational system. But in education, organization provides the raison d'être of this profession. This organizational infrastructure enables and delimits educational interaction. The school bureaucrac…
Zwischen Profession und Organisation Professionsbildung im Erziehungssystem
Die Idee, dass es eine besondere Art von Berufen gibt, die Professionen genannt werden, ist nur vor dem Hintergrand der europäischen Wissenschafts- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte angemessen zu verstehen. DerBegriff der Profession bezog sich auf bestimmte — vor anderen ausgezeichnete — akademische Berufe. Der Gesichtspunkt, der diese Berufe hervortreten ließ, war zunächst, dass sie mit einem Korpus gelehrten Wissens befasst sind, in den man durch die…
The Americanization of Social Science
Modes of Individualisation at Cemeteries
Permanent individual gravemarkers were established as social norm for large populations in the nineteenth century. These markers typically display a range of matters-of-fact about the dead: name, age or dates of birth and death, family status, social position, profession, religion, etc. They also include symbolic figurations, which communicate in a more implicit way how the survivors remember their dead. Against this background, this paper analys…
Disziplinbildung. Zum Wandel wissenschaftlicher Kommunikation in der Soziologie
Sociology (53 obras) · Political science (37 obras) · Social science (34 obras) · Philosophy (28 obras) · Epistemology (23 obras) · Computer Science (21 obras) · Law (20 obras) · Law (13 obras) · Philosophy (12 obras) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (11 obras)