ABSTRACT
This chapter tries to explicate the concept of hierarchic structure, to demonstrate its consistently pivotal but too often unconscious and incomplete role in describing social phenomena, and to suggest ways of systematizing that role. It discusses the principle of hierarchic structure will be applied to the description of complex social phenomena by taking into account the four variants of hierarchic structure. The chapter attempts to develop a "vertical" relational complement to the primarily "horizontal" relations. Taking off from Georg Simmel's description of "concentric" and "juxtaposed" subgroup relations, four variants of hierarchic structure were presented and the generalized principle of such structure was formulated. Hierarchic structure was claimed for each component of the generic definition of social phenomena and a general method for identifying levels in each hierarchy was proposed. Finally, all four variants of hierarchic structure were applied to the generic components of social phenomena as ways of emphasizing hierarchic complexity in such phenomena.
