This volume argues for the importance of social structure, for analysis within the discipline of sociology. It presents an introduction to the idea of social structure, laying out the range of difficult issues which arise in analyzing social structure. It examines the meanings of the term, the history of its usage within sociology and looks at the more recent developments in thinking on social structure. It sketches a synoptic model for analyzing social structures showing how its disparate elements might each be studied using a toolkit of approaches and conceptual resources to analyze...