ISSN : 1225-598X
Niklas Luhmann is one of the most contentious and difficult theorist in sociology but follow-up studies on his theory gradually increase for recent 10 years. The purpose of this study is to observe how follow-up studies use the difficult concepts of Luhmann. Unlike previous studies, this study adopted a keyword rather than an article as the unit of analysis because keywords are linguistic constructs that can make concepts observable. The study analyzed co-occurrence of keywords in 139 articles retrieved from social sciences category in Web of Science DB. The key findings were following: the most important keywords were the name of Luhmann(Niklas Luhmann) and theory(social systems); keywords were grouped into 4 clusters(social systems theory, systems theory, legal system and political system, the significant of Luhmann’s theory from the viewpoint of the history of social theory); topic terms were systems theory, communication, Autopoiesis, risk, legal system, functional differentiation, environment, social theory, sociological theory, structural coupling, systems and evolution. The significance of the study is following: the study gives keywords as useful access point for beginners of Luhmann’s theory; the study proves that content analysis by keywords network can be applied to trend analysis of difficult theoretical researches.