The human history has evidenced various systems of hierarchy and power, various manifestations of power and hierarchy relations in different spheres of social life from politics to information networks, from culture to sexual life. A careful study of each particular case of such relations is very important, es-pecially within the context of contemporary multipolar and multicultural world. In the meantime it is very important to see both the general features typical for all or most of the hierarchy and power forms, (...) and their variation. This set of issues has been treated by a series of international conferences titled ‘Hierarchy and Power in the History of Civilizations’ held in 2000–2006. Most articles of this volume were originally presented at the 4th conference of this series (Moscow, 2006). Needless to mention that all those presentations have been substantially re-worked for the publication in this volume. The relations of hierarchy and power are relevant for all the spheres as they penetrate the whole of social life, establishing a sort of framework for the human agency. Cultural sphere is not an exclusion, although reflection of power relations in culture has its specific traits. First, within the cultural sphere power relations are usually informal, as they are more connected to traditions than to norms. Second, in cultural sphere there are less power institutions which have legal right to the coercion. (shrink)

There are very significant conceptual links between theories of social macroevolution and theories of the World System development. It is shown that the growth of the World System complexity and integrity can be traced through a system of phase transitions of macroevolution. The first set of phase transition is connected with the agrarian, industrial, and information-scientific revolutions (that are interpreted as changes of “production principles”). The second set consists of phase transitions within one production principle. These phase transitions are analyzed (...) on the basis of the World System urbanization dynamics, but they can be traced with respect to the other (cultural, economic, technological, demographic, political, etc.) dimensions of the World System development. (shrink)