A review of current, apparently conflicting, general models of social
organization in the sociological literature reveals that such models differ along two
basic dimensions: 1) primary causal emphasis (cultural or morphological); and 2)
major structural focus (on societies, organizations, aggregates, or groups). Eight
fundamental kinds of models thus emerge that appear on the whole more com
plementary than conflicting and also offer possibilities of combination both in ex
tant and novel ways. Our results suggest considerably more general conceptual
unity than is often currently attributed to either sociology or cultural anthropology,
and thus have particular implications for the pursuit of holocultural comparative
research.
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