Abstract
AbstractThis article highlights the territorial and functional embedding of world regions within a functionally differentiated world society, as well as the heterogeneity between different (local) practices of functional differentiation within world regions. Its argument proceeds in two steps. In a first step, it discusses the distinction between regional variationsoffunctional differentiation versus regional variationswithinfunctional differentiation as an important tool in order to characterize specific variations of structural patterns. In a second step it turns to the Middle Eastern case, arguing that while at first glance this may be a candidate for a regional variation of functional differentiation, a closer look reveals that it has been characterized by a very specific variationwithinfunctional differentiation for quite a while. The article concludes by using these observations for some thoughts on the functional differentiation of world society more generally.
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