Center and Periphery, cities, states, empires
Niklas Luhmann, more 'systems' perspective relating to our current 'origins' theme
Niklas Luhmann wrote:
In premodern times, advanced civilizations were based on differentiation forms able to take account of and exploit dissimilarities at structurally crucial points. When fully developed, they used both stratificatory differentiation and center-periphery differentiation. In this respect they could be described as aristocratic societies or also as urban societies, even though the attributes applied to only a small section of the population.
The beginnings of center-periphery differentiation were already to be found in segmentary societies, above all, when such a society assumed a dominant role in long-distance trade. [From a historical point of view … [much] research [on this topic] has been motivated by an interest in broader economic and cultural contexts and not primarily by comparison of the evolutionary value of various differentiation forms]. But this did not yet call segmentary differentiation into question. This happened only when the dominant position of the center was used to establish other forms of differentiation and, above all, greater role differentiation (“division of labor”).
Center-periphery differentiation resulted when centers differentiated out. It was, as it were, at home in the center. The center with its own advances and differentiations therefore depended more on this differentiation form than did the periphery. The periphery retained the segmentary differentiation of family households and was therefore able to survive even without a center.
Depending on the intensity of contacts, additional differentiations could occur within the periphery. A half-periphery then had closer relations with the center, chiefly of exploitation but also of protection; whereas little more was known of the more distant periphery than that it existed. There could also be a multiplicity of centers, one of which exercised hegemony over the others. Such repetitions also localized sensitivities to change. Unlike differences in rank, they were not necessarily a mark of stability.
Also and especially when the form of differentiation is regarded as the decisive property of a societal formation, it should be remembered that this does not suffice to describe the genesis and problems of these highly cultivated societal systems. Apart from nutritional and demographic conditions, another factor has to be taken into account that complicates the picture. Compared with segmentary societies, the number and complexity of external contacts made possible by the formation of a center (but also of an upper social stratum) increased immensely. The system had to provide the necessary information processing capacity and organize it hierarchically. This also increased the sensitivity to information that had an only indirect impact. At the operational level, the possibilities for communication grew, which in a number of cases resulted in the formation of large territorial empires. They were naturally far fewer in number than segmentary societies but still numerous enough to make the development of evolutionary competition and selection conceivable.
Even in the archaic world of tribal societal systems, communication was possible beyond system boundaries — communication with neighboring tribes, even a certain amount of long-distance trade. There were even first signs of larger systems forming, but they were then identified concretely in space and were not seen as differentiated systems with external boundaries. Even in tribal societies, cosmology was accordingly geared to a center-periphery distinction; or at least segmentary societies saw themselves as the (sole) center of the world and as the designated point of reference for the creation of the world and humanity. This changed with the spread of cross-border communication. There had already been far-reaching trade relations between tribal societies. I shall speak of a new form of differentiation only where structural peculiarities in centers are determined by the maintenance of a difference between center and periphery, based in modern terms, for example, on capital accumulation.
We know little about the transitional period, for archaeology, like ethnology, with its investigative focus on isolable entities, has paid little attention to this process. The insipid term “diffusion” has been applied to farther-reaching relations that have left on-site traces. However, we may postulate that the growing complexity of crossborder communication and its increasing consequences had at least three effects: (1) the emergence of forms of territorial differentiation, (2) reflection (typically in religious form) on one’s own identity and distinctness, and (3) an interest in effectively controlling events beyond the borders, thus a tendency toward expanding territorial rule. There were accordingly centers that elaborated a symbol-bound, meaningful priority for the center from which they could pursue missionary goals, while others limited themselves to organizing power and resources, to exploiting the periphery. A multinational semantics relating to empire building came into evidence in the Near East at the latest in the second millennium BCE.
Research on ancient Mesopotamia has demonstrated such a development through its semantic (“geographical”) results. The oldest model appears to have consisted in a strict separation of habitable and inhabited land from the surrounding wilderness. In one’s own, civilized land, people could live, build, establish cults. Here there was memory and civilization. The environing wilderness was full of surprises and horrors. This was still the model underlying later reports about the heroic expeditions of kings into the wilds. Expeditions could have been military or commercial in nature. They were styled as heroic deeds and made the subject of legends because the environment was still taken to be a dangerous, unknown wilderness. As trade grew, this geography shifted to a description of traffic routes. The semantics of the transport route had the advantage of giving expression to proximity (accessibility) and distance (otherness) in one symbol. It did not have to rely on identifiable linear boundaries drawn in space between center and periphery. Center and periphery remained a form of difference.
The extension of communication possibilities beyond the bounds of the empire made it necessary to distinguish between people who belonged to one’s own sphere and those who lived beyond the borders. This required, first, a generalized concept of humanity (with consequences for the cosmology in force in the empire, and, in particular for religion) and divisions that were conceived from the perspective of the center and confirmed its self-conception. We could speak of a universal semantics based on the particular. At any rate, the world had to be completed through differences and through an awareness of boundaries, and not only, as in segmentary societies, by assuming that similar conditions continued under the “and so forth” principle, but by incorporating the otherness of the other.
However, the literature offers no clear picture about the external boundaries of such major complexes, empires, or “world systems”; widely differing results are forthcoming depending on whether trade, military control, or cultural diffusion is assumed to be the underlying rationale. This can be answered with the thesis that the boundaries lay where the center saw them, regardless of how neighborly contacts might unravel on the periphery. And the center had to decide the extent to which, for example, trade interests required military protection and how relations between bases and the surrounding territories were to be handled.
At any rate, the low degree of control over communication prevented the development of a political order that could be seen as a precursor of the modern territorial state. [Most of the literature takes a different terminological option, speaking even at this point of the “state formation”, which makes possible a rough distinction between pre-state and state societies. But this blurs the differentiation of a specifically political system identified as a “state”, a distinction that arises only in early modern times. In the early structures of rule, I instead stress the primacy of the differentiation of center and periphery.] Very typically—and in unrelated cases—the center saw its task as cultivating the cosmic relations of society, performing the appropriate rites, and maintaining a corresponding politico-religious bureaucracy, leaving the regulation of economic relations and disputes to family economies and possibly to corporations specially established for the purpose (temples and guilds). It is not by chance that, under these conditions, neither civil law nor the market-type conditioning of individual conduct developed.
Formally, the center-periphery schema has widely varying applications. We can take cities as centers. We then inevitably have to recognize a multitude of such centers with corresponding (rural) peripheries. Another example is the formation of empires, which can regard themselves as the center of the world and relegate everything else to the periphery. Until well into the nineteenth century, for instance, China considered itself to be the “one empire under heaven,” and not, for example, a culture — let alone one country among others. The differentiation form was thus also a cosmology.
Little is known about the inception of empires. The spread of communication practices beyond tribal boundaries will have been encouraged by trade. It will also have been promoted by the military necessities of security and by cultural (religious, missionary) expansion, especially after the invention of world religions. A secondary development was the nomadization of peripheral regions that lived under the influence of an empire and not infrequently copied imperial governmental institutions. Ports in foreign territory and the “dual economies” to which they gave rise are also to be seen in this context. Probably the most striking characteristic of these empires themselves was their bureaucratic form of government and the stratification reduced to differences in wealth and opportunity it concealed.
No high communicative density can be assumed internally either. The majority of the inhabitants of such empires were presumably quite unaware that they lived in an empire (which we can easily visualize with the aid of maps). Imperial ideologies, such as the Confucianism of China or the scriptural world religions remained largely unknown or were familiar only in popular derivations; and members of the bureaucratic elites are also unlikely to have taken much interest in what was happening in the heads of simple folk.
In order to define the concept of empire more precisely, I shall take it to mean historically a quasi-natural by-product of the expansion of possibilities for communication. As we have seen, the lack of definitive borders therefore belongs to the form of empire. Instead of borders, we find horizons that determine what can be attained and vary accordingly. An empire is thus the meaning horizon of communications, of the communications of bureaucratic elites, who assume their empire to be unique and accept spatial boundaries, if at all, only as temporary limitations to their factual sphere of influence. The (provisionally) last instance of such an empire is likely to have been the Soviet Union, in the context of the Communist (Third) International and a scientifically predicted world revolution.
Such bureaucratic empires could possibly be seen a special differentiation form not provided for in our catalog. But they only constituted an elaborated form of the center-periphery differentiation with the empire and imperial bureaucracy as the center. At any rate, these empires experienced structural problems, namely, with diffusion and control, typical of this differentiation form. The written word was indispensable for keeping track at least at the center and for consolidating the communications issued from there. Writing systems like the Chinese or a standard language (the Akkadian of cuneiform, Arabic in African territorial empires, Latin in the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages) will have been important, making the network of records and messages independent of the vernacular and able to operate without translation problems. On the whole, however, the thematic reach and degree of control that could be achieved should not be overestimated. The effective possibilities for communication (the postal system of the Roman Empire is to be seen as an enormous effort in this context) remained limited and did not suffice for the factual exercise of power. The authorities had to make do with collecting tribute, recruiting forced labor, and engaging in punitive action resembling military campaigns. Given the limited information and control possibilities, obtaining obedience by merely threatening sanctions was practically excluded. For this reason the power potential actually available was low, and occasional but drastic action encouraged the rural population to adopt a contact avoidance stance and to maintain primarily segmentary differentiation. [Typical examples are reported from China. This could provide an explanation for many a peculiarity of ancient Chinese society, such as the multifunctional strength of the extended family and the guild system with functions of protection against politics, as well as the lack of civil law comparable to that of Rome or England. Not least of all, these relics of protective mechanisms could also explain why the transition to modern civilization has proved so much more difficult in China than in Japan. In strong contrast, the European Middle Ages had developed a high degree of individualization in property with effective legal protection, particularly in England. See Alan MacFarlane, The Origins of English Individualism (Oxford, 1978).] It was also typically difficult to keep the local aristocracy under control — for example, through enforced presence from time to time in the capital (Japan). The differences that arose between the cultural centers of the empire and rural life are all the more striking: a clear motive for the emergence and self-interpretation of so-called Hochkulturen [high cultures]. A corresponding split in the semantics into high tradition and little tradition, or gradation on a folk/urban continuum was the result.
In the center, stronger, wide-ranging sorts of differentiation and facility sharing developed. This favored and was enabled by a development that could be described as the densification of interaction networks. Internally more complex as well as regionally more extensive contacts were maintained at the center of empires than under the local conditions prevailing on the periphery. Local conditions, including language, could differ enduringly from place to place and remain ignorant of conditions elsewhere. National languages developed only with the printing press. The center justified itself as center in terms of a cosmological construction. The written recording of authoritative texts gave rise to infallible semantic stability. Even during the chaos of war during the migration period, people in Rome spoke of the Pax Romana and hired the invading barbarians without further ado as mercenaries.
One of the most important aspects of the center-periphery schema was that it enabled stratification in the center (whether in sufficiently large cities or in relation to empire building) far beyond what had been possible in small societies of an older type, in particular the possibility for a nobility to separate themselves off through endogamy, while retaining the exogamy precept of segmentary societies for the individual family. Since relatively few families could belong to the nobility if resources were to suffice and the distinction were not to be devalued through overextension, stratification required a sufficiently large marriage market, thus a larger territorial catchment area or a more densely populated capital. In this regard, one side of the center-periphery distinction, the center, also offered a chance for other forms of differentiation, above all stratification, to develop. It was, in brief, a differentiation of differentiation forms, with persisting segmentary differentiation in the country and established stratificatory differentiation in the city.
Empires can therefore combine two differentiation forms on the basis of dissimilarity and develop them in this combination: center-periphery differentiation and stratification. The bureaucracy-based government that empires develop is the form that makes this combinatory gain possible by differentiating itself. For this reason, contemporaries concentrated, as historians were later to do, on the glories of this unitarist form of bureaucratic government, which made rule by the ruler possible and also legitimated itself through him. Above all, the stratificatory structure of society was visually but not functionally relegated to the background. The bureaucracy, which regarded itself officially as the center, formed the visible structure of the empire and was responsible for its religious and ethical self-presentation. The exercise of political power and of religion was not to be separated. The position structure of the bureaucracy required and enabled a considerable degree of mobility, so that stratum differentiation was concealed and prevented from structural and semantic closure. [It is doubtful whether Ancient Egypt or China, the most impressive prototypes of bureaucratic empires, can be described as stratified societies, despite considerable and stable differences in wealth. However, more exact studies of bureaucracy-related mobility available on China soon show the influence of stratification, precisely because of the examination system based on performance criteria.] But it had an indirect impact by regulating access to educational and career opportunities. Last but not least, protection played a considerable role in social stratification as an internal instrument of power and a coupling mechanism.
In any case, stratification remained so strong that an extensive empire could be governed neither with nor against the nobility. The governmental system could not operate solely with delegated power [In the sixteenth century, this postulate came to be termed “sovereignty”; and it was only in the seventeenth century that it could be effectively enforced in some territories, above all in France.], it had to rely on independent, local sources of power, which meant the landed property of the nobility. Rules such as the selection of provincial governors from families who were not established locally and their frequent replacement reflect this problem. Under these conditions, rivalry often developed within the nobility itself, factions formed, kings were assassinated, and whole families were eradicated in a vicious circle in which the nobility sought to influence government affairs and the king sought to maintain control over those by whom he wished to be influenced. Early modern raison d’État theory was still essentially determined by this view of the problem, even though the modern state had already begun to undermine it structurally (and not only in the form of political consultancy).
Descriptions of the world and the empire elaborated under these conditions proceeded from the center, but for the sake of completeness also covered the periphery and everything that needed to be considered beyond the order typical of the empire. They claimed exhaustiveness (and hence excluded alternatives). They cut across dissimilarities, territorialized them and thus established the unity of the different through an invented spatial order. With modern eyes we read them as an unfolded paradox resolved into spaces. The extraordinary longevity and stability of these order models can therefore probably be explained by the structural relevance of the problem of the unity of the different in the empire and by the effective satisfaction of a semantic need of the ruling classes …
… The evolutionary potential of bureaucratic empires, as of other forms of advanced civilization, is considered to have been relatively low. With a remarkable dynamic of rise and fall, with frequent geographical shifts of center, and with a precarious balance between political authority, religious elites, and an aristocracy based on ownership of the land, circular developments tended to emerge, variations in the framework of the stabilized dissimilarities, but no transition to a fundamentally other form of differentiation. Collapses led to attempts to reestablish the differentiation form of center and periphery and, within it, stratification. Functional complexes, especially religion and (after the introduction of coined money) the money economy, adapted to this order and its territorial regimes. After all, it is hard to imagine that religion or trade constituted a different, independent society. Or when it came to such notions as Saint Augustine’s theory of the two civitates, it had to be made clear that only one of these kingdoms could be of this world and the other was for the hereafter.
The Source:
Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Volume 2, translated by Rhodes Barrett, originally published in German under the title Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, Band 2, Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1997, Stanford University Press 2013 [pp. 42-50]
NB For ease of reading some noteworthy narrative footnotes are included directly alongside the corresponding text using the bracket format [ … ] in italics.
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.