Movie Jungle Fever and Social Systems Theory

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Movie Jungle Fever and Social Systems Theory

The Social Systems Theory comes out of a General Systems Theory which was developed by biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy in 1936. His hunch was that if multiple disciplines focused their research & theory development efforts, they would be able to identify laws & principles which would apply to many systems. This would allow scholars & scientists to make sense of system characteristics such as wholeness, differentiation, order, equifinality, progression & others. In particular the theory endeavored to show that many of the most important entities studied by scientists - nuclear particles, atoms, molecules, cells, organs, organisms, ecological communities, groups, organizations, societies, solar systems - are all subsumable under the general rubric of system.

More than 50 years later, the work in understanding systems has evolved to the point that we incorporate many of the concepts into our everyday language. We speak of a health care system, a family system, body systems, information systems, banking systems, political systems, etc.  One of the reasons we do this is because the amount of knowledge & information available has increased tremendously during this time period. We cannot know all there is to know. We seek some way of ordering what we encounter to avoid being overloaded with information. We focus in on small areas of knowledge rather than trying to comprehend the whole. 

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There are several types of Social Systems. Let’s take a look at them using the movie “Jungle Fever” to explain their essence.

 The three major perspectives of organizations are a rational system, a natural system and an open system. But in generally in the movie we saw the closest attention is paid to a mezzo open system (the main heroes and their environment), organization of which is open to and dependent on the environment and circumstances, there are connections both with external (such as society, traditional moral principles, social opinion) and internal (feelings, relationships, fears, motivation) components.

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