In her introduction, Susan Kus emphasises culture as being meaningfully constituted within historical and intersubjective contexts, and describes the need for a greater dialogue between the social sciences and philosophy. The question of the legitimation of a sociopolitical order in complex societies is seen as concerning the relationship between the social order, a natural order and the individual. It is the ‘naturalisation’ of the social order which is taken up as the focus of the discussion. A distinction is made between legitimating strategies, a distinction between the confounding of the social and natural spheres of activity and representation on the one hand, and the bringing of order different from that inherent in physical nature on the other. Means for the constitution of a legitimating order in spatial relationships are examined in relation to ethnohistorical evidence from the Merina of Madagascar. The spatial layout of the regional settlement pattern and within settlement pattern is shown to play a role in a legitimation of the social order in which the natural and the socially constructed are both involved.