It is well known that the contents of a series of fundamental concepts handled by social- human sciences is quite controversial in the works of reference. Any dictionary of sociology or cultural anthropology would offer us the picture of the "semantic pluralism" of such basic concepts as social structure, institute, culture and, more recently, that of globalisation. Thus, the term social structure is defined in both social anthropology and sociology by the term institute, whose semantic field is not clear- cut even within one and the same school. In ethology, the term social structure is used to designate the relationships among individuals, animals, or groups using biological (age and sex) criteria.
Culture - a concept of utmost importance in both understanding the motivation of human behaviour and making out how does the social whole function is "too amorphous, hazy and, purely and simply contradictory" (Veselkin, E. A., 1991). There are several main causes to that:
Terms bearing on one and the same phenomenon have been formed in different fields of knowledge over different historical times to meet different theoretical and practical needs. Therefore, these same terms have drifted over social-cultural times and space, from one investigation field to another, where they acquired different connotations, according to school and discipline. Such semantic syncretism was made easier by the lack of a theoretical model of the social whole integrating the object of research, of a model acknowledged by all those working in the field of the social-human sciences. An example is the term institute adopted by modern lawyers from Roman law and used in the philosophy of law (Willms B., 1971). Hence it has migrated into sociology and ethnology, adding new connotations;
The complexity of social-human phenomena, allowing their tackling from different perspectives; causes the delusion that "actual research" would not really call for a theoretical model of the whole, and that "contextual theories" would suffice - namely, they would be adequate to the object. The lack of a theoretical model of the social whole as a reference system acknowledged in various social-human sciences has caused differences in the languages describing the same phenomena1 .
As for the culture concept, it has two main semantic fields, either of them having its own scope of origin, own history and language. One of them is fed by ethnology, by social and cultural anthropology, while the other has been developed by theorists and historians of arts, religion, philosophy of science; by culturologists. The first one generates many definitions (Kroeber A.L. & Kluckhon C., 1963), while the other is based upon the general view on culture as a field of creative spiritual activity. Yet, either field shares the tacit assumption that there are, within the social whole, a number of phenomena having certain functions even though the sphere they are manifest in, which is culture, is quite controversial. However, there are some standpoints denying the existence of such a sphere where culture might distinguish itself. They identify it with the social whole, as a result of human activity (Gehlen A. 1971), or with creativity.
We believe that a deideologized operational theoretical model 2 of the social whole is needed, one applicable to the analysis of both complex contemporary societies and the archaic, tribal ones, since both of them belong to the same class of systems - the class of social systems. Such a model would allow specifying the contents of a series of concepts (e.g., those of social structure, institute, culture). It would create a unitary criterial reference system operational in all social-human sciences, as well as a basis for unifying, to some extent, the language. In short, all that is necessary for effective communication between different schools. Such a model would offer the possibility of outlining the content of the culture concept and the objective structural and functional status of culture. This present study is an attempt in that direction.