In this book, the author proposes a new fundamental approach to the study of one of the most central concepts in social analysis, that of social structure. He provides a critique of the leading models and argues that each is inadequate to the task of explaining the complexity of structures that make up society and the processes by which these structures are formed and are interlinked. A new conceptualisation of the processes of societal formation is then presented, drawing on recent developments in the physical, biological and cognitive sciences. This new conceptualisation allows for the multiplicity of processes of structuration, which the author refers to as logics, some of which function at the individual or ‘micro’ level, others at the organisational or ‘meso’ level, and still others at the society-wide, or ‘macro’ level. The author terms this new conceptualisation a theory of heterarchy, and it is the first truly comprehensive theory of societal structuration.