ABSTRACT
A society consists of the interrelated social groupings and segments, communities and organizations, within it. These interdependent collectivities of various kinds constitute the substructures of the large social structure, both in the sense that they serve as its foundations and that they are its internally structured subunits. The complex interplay between substructures gives the social structure encompassing them its fundamental characteristics and is the source of the dynamic forces governing it. The dynamics of macrostructures rests on the manifold interdependence between the social forces within and among their substructures. When the universalistic standards of various substructures in a collectivity conflict, they constitute particularistic standards from the perspective of the encompassing social structure. The differential distribution of rewards associated with the status structure in a collectivity, however, alters the situation, creating differences in incentives for mobility between members. The free flow of intergroup mobility adjusts the substructures in a macrostmcture.
