Among the several elements of social and cultural structures, two are of immediate importance.  These are analytically separable although they merge in concrete situations.  The first consists of culturally defined goals, purposes and interests, held out as legitimate objectives for all or for diversely located members of the society.  The goals are more or less integrated—the degree is a question of empirical fact—and roughly ordered in some hierarchy of value.  Involving various degrees of sentiment and significance, the prevailing goals comprise a frame of aspirational reference.  They are the things “worth striving for” (1968, pp. 186-187).