Edited sentence: (The two metaphorically come into conflict in the novel's dinner party sequence; the Velmian dinner party is based on guests exchanging food in a pattern of constant circulation, which the Thants disrupt by assuming themselves to be superior to the other guests and refusing to accept food from them.Reflecting these philosophical orientations, Family societies tend toward hierarchical organization, while Sygn societies tend toward networks of exchange among equals.Societies aligned with the Family take the human nuclear family as the basic template for all human relations, of which all variants are considered imperfect copies; the nuclear family plays the role of the transcendental signified, a universal concept from which all other concepts are derived.Societies aligned with the Sygn reject any transcendental signified and instead focus on the idea that all ordering principles are contextual instead of universal; they Sygn emblem, the cyhnk, symbolizes this through the fact that cyhnks from different Sygn groups share a similar underlying structure but always differ in detail, with no one version of the cyhnk considered the ideal form.The two galactic factions, the Sygn and the Family, are representations of opposing modes of thinking as conceived in poststructuralist philosophy