The radical novelty of modern society consists of the global autonomy and dynamics of communication systems such as the economy, polity, science, law, health, the arts, sport, and intimacy. They are at the core of our living environment. With this systematic study of functional differentiation in sociology, Rudolf Stichweh fills an astonishing gap in sociological research. To do so, he combines essays and case studies instructive for both practicing social scientists and the general public interested in a sociological understanding of modernity.

Rudolf Stichweh, born in 1951, is a professor of sociology at Forum Internationale Wissenschaft and the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. His primary fields of research are the theory of world society and functional differentiation, the comparative study of democracies and autocracies, the history and sociology of science and universities, the study of inequality and asymmetrical dependencies in human societies, the sociology of the stranger.