The private sphere and the public sphere seem to be universal, though they take on various institutional forms and have different scopes in different types of cultures and societies. The private and the public can be grasped in categories of a general evolutionary process. In egalitarian societies (such as in bands of hunter-gatherers) these spheres appear in the simplest, often vestigial forms. But even here one can see a remarkable conflict between them, manifesting itself in the effort to subordinate the private sphere to the public sphere, though as a rule in rudimentary form.
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