**5. Conclusions**

In summary, a 'guiding thread' for carrying out analyses is to see that social structures involve, above all, the ways in which social groupings are involved in (strategies and tactics) drawing on and creating ideologies, resources and contacts to maintain and/or change their position within the broad social order. But their collective abilities to carry out such 'projects' will vary considerably.

In this chapter I have advanced a concept of a multi-dimensional approach to social structure. Several elements have to be assembled to understand the whole, and this chapter has laid out an extensive conceptual toolkit from which appropriate ideas can be drawn to accomplish particular types of analysis. It is hoped that the reader will press the material covered in this book into practise.
