ABSTRACT
The basic intent of the following chapters is to explore not the core of a social system but its borders, not its substantial contents but its channels of communication to and from other systems. In other words, this book is fundamentally oriented not so much to a “functionalism of distinctions” which emphasizes the typical characteristics and the internal coherence of single social systems, but to an emerging “functionalism of links,” which stresses the importance of the several bridges which, at various levels, mutually connect the different social systems.
