Integration through Differentiation
.. the dimension of Physicality ..
In the 1950s structural-functional social science identified the paradox of integration through differentiation. In accounts focusing on developments from Roman times onwards the integration was achieved by the creation of political, legal or religious ‘centres’ toward which all differentiated autonomous and productive or institutional units could be reoriented. But structural functionalists were less persuasive in their theoretical assumptions about prehistory. They often relied overly on deterministic ideas about ‘ascriptive’ stratifications that apparently preordained political influence or one’s place the division of labour. This was partly true for sex and race. In meeting their sociational imperatives to ‘border, bond and bind’ small prehistoric groups would probably have been cautious about incorporating people who were visibly and immutably different in skin colour or ethnic physiognomy. However, other status or role ascriptions were amenable to change through individual effort. Individuals were not locked into social roles, acquired beliefs, or customs and conventions merely by dint of their individual sex, personality profile, intelligence, age, or physique. Even in the unequivocal case of binary sex differentiation, men and women still could vary their natural roles and influence through learning, negotiation and assertiveness.
Despite the deficiencies in the early versions of structural functionalism, the paradoxical concept of ‘integration through differentiation’ still offers us the clearest perspective on prehistoric sociation. The newborn societies could thrive as unified purposeful groups only by unleashing their own internal forces of differentiation, which allowed them to shape their particular political and economic destinies.
It is clearly true that the most consequential, dynamic and adaptive differentiations were those existing between men and women. Biological sex differentiation was the incubus of all complex human interactional integrations. So the logical way to begin the analysis is by examining how sex differentiation combined with differentiations of intelligence, personality, physique and age. Only then will it be possible to know how the ‘natural’ human psychological and physical differentiations might hypothetically have interacted with the ‘artificial’ economic and political divisions of labour.
The sexual division of labour provides the obvious initial avenue for entry into an exploration of the three vital variables identified in a previous section: political method, material function, cognitive differentiation, viewed as a) political labours of governance, welfare and stabilisation, b) material labours of subsistence, safety, and shelter, and c) mental labours for knowledge acquisition and rational calculation.
Physicality
In order to directly bring the discussion down to earth we begin not with psychology but rather with the various dimensions of body ‘physicality’ insofar as they impinge on sociational tasks of decision making processes that represent or resemble the tasks of governance. A large part of what we refer to as prehistoric ‘governance’ relates to activities in which differences of physique affected the sexual division of labour.
“So much had the fine physique and the personal vigour of this robust race worked on my imagination.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1856, English Traits vi. 110
Viewed in isolation some of these physical ‘differentiations’ — e.g. muscles, fat, body hair, voice pitch, and hormones — look trivial. But taken together they represent real features of enablement and constraint. In the case of each of these differentiations we need to know where, why and how they might have facilitated or impeded progress.
The purpose of the differentiation schema is to reveal how voluntaristic actors took initiatives, innovating and throwing off the restraints of previous sets of evolutionary selections, customs and conventions. The physical characteristics, though subject to various positive and negative aspects of the ageing processes, and though oftentimes improvable and manipulable with practice, can be impediments or facilitators in relation to those categories of the mind relating to intelligence and personality.
“It is by exalting the earthly, the material, the physique of our pleasures, by veiling these ideas ... that we alone can prevent them from disgusting.” Lord Byron, 1813, Journal 13 December in Letters & Journal (1974) III. 239
Yet it would be a mistake to fall into the trap of ‘physique’ determinism. If there is a choice to be made between the utilitarian values of ‘physique’ as distinct from creative dimensions of mind it is clear that the scope for instrumental manipulation through initiative, willpower and agency lay mainly on the side of personality and intelligence. So, although we must begin with human physicality, we end with human psychology.
By Michael G. Heller
Up next: Acoustics, Beards and Chess
My Theory & History of Society began chronologically on Substack in Sept 2025 with The Politics of Becoming Human. Research began in 2020. Extensive filings of all bibliographic academic material, draft proposals and new theoretical concepts are archived from 2022.
Feedback, enquiries, copyright
Reply to the email or HellerFiles@gmail.com. This publication is recorded for referencing and copyright under the ORCID publications ID https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0935-0826
Illustration
The Roman Antiquities, Plate XI Urban Walls by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1756 Italy