ABSTRACT

The transformation of power situations into power relationships and structures may be observed within social groups of the most diverse types. Some of the power structures observed the first time have vanished, new ones have been created; others have been transformed, both from the quantitative and qualitative viewpoints: they have increased or decreased in dimension or passed from one class to another. Their interrelation has also changed: power systems have been disbanded, new ones created, older ones transformed as regards the intensity of hierarchization. Establishing power by struggle for supremacy is a phenomenon we are able to observe in animal kingdom. A concrete power structure in which obedience had become merely automatic would be doomed to destruction because acquired tendencies of submission must occasionally be revivified by voluntary obedience. Concrete power structures have a kind of "natural history": they are created, develop and eventually decline. It is obvious that, some agreement concerning the temporal identity of power structures is necessary.