The other in the autopoietic social systems theory: law fragmentation and Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

There is a social group in Brazil which is found to be in a protective core no longer separated from the social system itself. They’re systems that do not communicate with one another, each with its own legal rationality. One, enforced by the part of the Brazilian population which makes use of legal discourse (“official law”) and a second, addressed to the others (“street law”). The issue in Brazil is presented in the following terms: What happens when “street law” starts communicating with Law? The proposal is, based on the theory of social systems as developed by Niklas Luhmann, Gunther Teubner and Jean Clam, to allow for a new form of observing this phenomenon. The necessary communication between social subsystems enables answers that are peculiar in a highly differentiated, peripheral and third-world society such as Brazil.