Page 136 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

113 The Development of Normative Structures

from the social environment of those alien to the empire. But
since collective identity could now be secured only by way of
doctrines with a universal claim, the political order also had to
be in accord with this claim—the empires were not universal in
name alone. Their peripheries were fluid; they consisted of allies
and dependents. In addition there were barbarians, whom one
attempted either to conquer or to convert—aliens who were po-
tential members but who, so long as they had not the status of
citizen, did not count as fully human. Only the reality of other
empires was incompatible with this definition of the boundaries
and social environment of an empire. Despite the existence of
trade relations, and despite the diffusion of innovations, the em-
pires shielded themselves from this danger; among themselves
they maintained no diplomatic relations in the sense of an insti-
tutionalized foreign policy. In any case, their political existence
was not dependent on a system of reciprocal recognition.
The limits of this identity formation manifested themselves
inwardly as well. In societies organized along kinship lines col-
lective identity was correlated, in most cases, with individual role
identities established through kinship structures. Within the
framework of mythological world views there was no stimulus
to develop identity beyond this stage; individual discrepancies
could easily be accommodated in the roles of priest and shaman.**
In highly stratified civilizations, on the other hand, the integrating
power of the identity of the empire had to confirm itself precisely
in unifying the evolutionarily nonsynchronous structures of con-
sciousness of the country, the aristocracy, city tradesmen, priests,
and officials, and in binding them to the same political order. A
broad spectrum of belief attitudes toward the same tradition was
permitted; what was for one something like a myth that could
still be connected with magical practices was for others a tradi-
tion of faith, however supported by ritual. The dogmatic organi-
zation of doctrinal knowledge often displaced even the weight of
tradition with the weight of arguments and replaced an attitude
of faith based on the authority of a doctrine with a theoretical
attitude. But this universalistic potential could not be released
on a large scale if the particularity of domination and of the
citizen’s status, which was merely concealed by the empire’s claim