Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book contributes to an understanding of social structure on the basis of an analysis of the social processes that govern the relations between Individuals and groups. It sets the theme of the analysis by outlining how more complex social processes evolve out of simpler ones and have their ultimate source in psychological dispositions, and by posing the inherent conflict between reciprocity and imbalance in social life. The book explains how social expectations modify reactions to experiences in exchange relations and power structures. Legitimation transforms power into authority and thereby into an important resource for the stable organization of collective endeavors. The book focuses on the interdependence between substructures of diverse sorts in a larger structure, some encompassing others and some intersecting, and it indicates the kind of analysis required for a systematic theory of social structure.