The approach to the civilizational dimension in sociological analysis presented here is based on a shift in the comparative analysis of institutions that took place in the early 1970s. This was essentially a move from a strong emphasis on structural differentiation, as well as to some extent on ecological factors, as the major criteria according to which societies have to be compared (an emphasis to be found in many of the evolutionary approaches of the 1950s and 1960s), to a perspective that stresses the interweaving of structural aspects of social life with its regulatory and interpretive context. The central analytical core of the concept of civilization as presented here – in contrast to such social formations as political regimes, different forms of political economy, or collectivities such as “tribes,” ethnic groups, or nations, and from religion or cultural traditions – is the combination of ontological or cosmological visions, of visions of transmundane and mundane reality, with the definition, construction, and regulation of the major arenas of social life and interaction.