The Work of Pickering and Luhmann Theoretically Viewed from within Current Social Work Practice

In his book The Cybernetic Brain Sketches for Another Future Pickering (2011) disseminates the English cybernetics in a very practical manner by presenting few central scholars and their actual doings. Furthermore, he elaborates further his own thinking presented in 1995 in the The Mangle of Practice Time, Agency and Science. The work of Pickering has been influental in the field of science and technology studies.

The theory of social systems developed by Niklas Luhmann has been widely utilized when studying social work and social services. In this paper the contribution of Pickering is brought into a dialogue with Luhmannian theories of society. This is done in order to achieve new understanding useful when studying the mangle of practice in current social services dealing with new innovations and technologies.