ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the social structuring of aggression in Western society, rather taking for granted that there is an adequate reservoir to motivate the familiar types of aggressive behavior. It discusses four aspects or structural-functional contexts. First, the kinship system in its context in the larger society, since this is the environment in which the principal patterns in the individual personality become crystallized. Second, the occupational system, since this is the arena of the most important competitive process in which the individual must achieve his status. Third, the fundamental process of dynamic change by which traditional values and sentiments are exposed to a far more drastic and continuing disintegrating influence than in most societies. And fourth, the set of institutional structures through which aggression becomes organized in relation to a small number of structurally significant tensions, rather than diffused and dissipated in an indefinite variety of different channels without threatening the stability of the social system.
