This article proposes the possibility of recombining the analysis of culture and social structure. In the first part it analyses the reasons for the dissociation between these two types of analysis since the sixties, in close relation with the growing criticisms of the structural-functional school. Its basic assumption is that any new attempt must be based on new ways to combine the analysis of the crystallization of different aspects of social structure in processes of social interaction in which individuals act as autonomous agents and where power and control are also connected with different aspects of 'culture'. It illustrates the possibilities of such an approach through two case studies: first, the comparative political dynamics of two centralised agrarian Empires - the Byzantine and the Chinese; second, within the realm of the sociology of religion, different meanings of other-worldliness and impacts of such sectanan orientations on civilisational dynamics.