Falling Asleep and Waking Up: Social Determination of Sleep [2005] (original) (raw)

The aim of this brief essay is to sketch research possibilities of sociological systems theory concerning sleep as a social phenomenon. To call sleep a social phenomenon implies asking a specific type of question: How does sleep appear in social contexts? A sociological view rules out the bodily functions and presuppositions of sleep and takes them for granted. To be sure, this doesn't preclude a look at how social life may disturb, change or settle corporeal activities and if (and how) it might have an impact on the biochemistry of sleeping. You don't sleep well upon impending dismissal. We keep this secondary question in reserve and will first try to get an idea of how this (non-) activity most of the vertebrates indulge in is practiced and observed in social reality. Sociological systems theory asserts an unsurmountable chasm between organisms, consciousness and social systems as to their fundamental operation. The latter is the decisive constraint. Those systems may be structurally coupled somehow and causal and other influences crosscutting them cannot be denied. But the main question remains how each of them sustains its identity without dissolving into its environment thus becoming indistinguishable. It follows from this assertion that the first specification regards the systems reference with respect to which sleep is going to be examined. You get very different answers either you go for the immune system of a human body or the societal system of religion. As for sociology a social systems reference obtains. The fundamental operation reproducing and being reproduced by social systems is communication. One could specify further with respect to society or one of its functional systems or organization and interaction respectively. But I will try to keep the discussion on the level of self-similar structures for all social systems, i.e. the level of social systems in general. Those systems theoretical ideas lead to a tangible consequence regarding sleep: sleep cannot be a social operation. Social systems do not sleep (imagery excluded). Formal organizations, seminars or the legal system don't have beds and homes and if all the members of a seminar fell asleep at once it wouldn't be the seminar sleeping. A social system communicates or it doesn't. Hence we have to look at sleep with reference to the problem of reproduction of communication. So it can't be the act of sleeping itself which is crucial in this respect. Rather it is the salient fact that one who sleeps cannot participate in communication. However, absent persons and