Bounding Luhmann: Different Strategies to Appropriate Foreign Knowledge

Abstract

Chapter 2 shows that three generations of scholars have been involved in the reception of Luhmann’s systems theory in Hispanic America. While the first one was oriented toward teaching, translating, and writing introductory studies on Luhmann’s works, the second and third, more research-oriented than the previous one, have been involved in putting the theory into use (second generation) and hybridizing it (third generation). In this chapter I show the different boundary work that they have undertaken and the possibility of Luhmann’s theory finding a place in the landscape of imported theories from the metropolitan center.