Convergence theorists enjoy an almost unique intellectual position: they are supported by both academics and non-academics without really having been subject to a comprehensive analytical examination. Theirs is an hypothesis encompassing many, if not all, spheres of so-ciology, and applicable to the whole of the industrialised world. By implication it also involves the future of all the industrialising nations. It is this very breadth of scope which has denied it the enquiry it deserves.

The Otto di Guardia was a powerful magistracy established in the late fourteenth century just after Florence's experiment with democratized government (1378). The new regime was much perturbed by fear of revolution and replication of the terrible events of the Ciompi uprising. Intelligent commentators such as Francesco Guicciardini were to argue a century and a half later that formation of the Otto had saved the Repub- lic from anarchy. Without the fear of this dread tribunal, seditious and factious Florentines would certainly have toppled the regime. Many modern interpreters of these events follow this grand generalization, but few have bothered to study the day-to-day activities of this court or in fact of any of its adjuncts.

Thus far, two quantitative studies of Catholic sainthood have been attempted. Altruistic Love by Pitirim Sorokin,1 which deals with the entire history of Christianity, established the patterns of saintly behavior over a two-thousand-year period. Although many of Sorokin's analytical categories are useful, his conclusions are rather broad and do not take sufficiently into account changing conditions in church history. His geographical subdivisions, for example, which are based upon the twentieth-century nation-state, are anachronistic when applied to a medieval context. No distinctions are made between the various genres of freeman, e.g., the old feudal aristocracy and the urban-dwelling nobility, although their interests were often in conflict. Nor does Sorokin consider the role of the papacy and the political crosscurrents-Guelph vs. Ghibelline, Englishman vs. Frenchman, heresy vs. orthodoxy-which determined the function of a saint's cult and the likelihood of his being venerated in any particular epoch. Frequently these saints became the objects of cults not so much because of their personal piety but rather as a result of their political activities, family connections, or membership in an aggressive religious order. Nor does Sorokin consider the many local saints, whose worship was restricted to one or several dioceses and who failed to gain international recognition. Such relatively obscure individuals, the sources of much local pride, were often the objects of more active and long-lasting cults than their well-known confreres.

There are at least two reasons which might be cited for undertaking the historical and comparative investigation of revolution. The first is the desire to make a revolution, the second is the desire to prevent it. Perhaps nearly everybody is susceptible to the one reason or the other, but there is yet a third reason that gives the study of revolution an outstanding interest and significance, even though its appeal is doubtless much more limited than the first two. This is that the understanding of revolution is an indispensable condition for the fuller knowledge and understanding of society. Depending on how we define it, revolution may be common or uncommon, frequent or rare. But in the case of societies, nations, and communities that have experienced revolution, we cannot claim to understand them adequately without understanding their revolutions. In a deep and therefore a non-tautological sense, it is true that every people gets the revolution it deserves and equally true that it gets only the revolutions of which it is capable.

This paper examines convergence theory in relation to welfare-the institutional pattern of a society concerned with meeting needs. In contemporary industrial societies needs are met through a variety of patterns, viz. social services, tax rebates, fringe benefits provided by enterprises, mutual-aid, and voluntary and charitable assistance. The question is whether in the course of transition from early to advanced industrialization, Western and communist societies have become more alike in respect of such institutional patterns.1 The proposition has been examined in relation to evidence drawn from one communist and one Western country and the underlying theory criticised in the light of evi-dence.

Religious reformations are normal historical occurrences. Some stress salvation by faith or through love of the deity. Others have stressed morality either as the primary obligation of the believer or as one of the primary obligations. An examination of a number of such reformations should further our understanding of the historic pattern of religions. A complete survey of the subject is not possible here, but a preliminary investigation is a necessary first step and does produce significant conclusions. The concern here is not with the mere presence in religions of morality, which all the historic religions exhibit. Rather the interest is in those movements that have laid a particular stress on morality and the absolute necessity of moral behavior.

Murder has both an attractive and a repellent quality. The tingling, fearfully pleasurable sensation of reading or hearing about murders makes them popular in literature and in the media. George Orwell perceptively sums up this human reaction when he says of one of his characters, “Mother preferred the News of the World which she considered had more murders in it.” The fascination with split heads, spilled brains and dismembered bodies was a dominant theme of medieval as well as of modern literature.

'A revolution', writes Samuel P. Huntington in Political Order in Changing Societies, 'is a rapid, fundamental, and violent domestic change in the dominant values arfd myths of a society, in its political institutions, social structure, leadership, and government activities and policies'.1 In The Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Lenin provides a different, but complementary perspective: 'Revolutions', he says, 'are the festivals of the oppressed and the exploited. At no other time are the masses of the people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order'.

A shared sense of discovery and frustration prompts us to write this article. Independently, from our anthropological, historical and sociological research in Zaire over a period of many years, we have been impressed with the pivotal role of religion and magic in that society. The recurrence and development of religious movements in Zaire throughout its known history is an archetypical expression of that predominance. In our view, these movements are an integral dimension of the cultures common to most parts of Zaire and to contiguous areas in Central Africa. A systemic feature of these cultures is that they are conducive to the emergence and evolution of movements with distinctive symbols, rites, beliefs and values. In turn, these movements constantly enrich the underlying cultures from which they emanate.

Politics became a revolutionary activity for the people of France in 1789. In a few months they learned how to formulate their interests, organize to demand changes, and mobilize to achieve their goals. This politicization was most intensive in the towns because it was there that people met most frequently to confront the constitutional and political issues posed by the bankruptcy of the crown. Many townspeople had been at least vaguely aware of the constitutional crisis since 1787, but their political education did not begin in earnest until the spring of 1789 when they participated in the many long and often agitated meetings to elect deputies and draft grievance lists for the meeting of the Estates General.

Revolutions have been studied for many different reasons—some involving the scholarly task of understanding the transformations of societies, and some involving the pragmatic problems of promoting or preventing revolution. However, the contributions to the study of either orientation and of the social sciences as a whole remain quite unimpressive. Analytical talent and availability of information are not in question here. On the contrary, few fields in social science have produced a comparable array of theories and findings. Some practitioners are even asking how the embarrassment of riches can be reduced: a veiled recognition that perhaps something has gone wrong.

A host of social movements which had as their goal the improvement of the living conditions of the working classes emerged in England in the 1820s and 1830s. Owenism and Chartism come first to mind, but historians have recently acknowledged the social significance of a number of less well-known groups that proclaimed the benefits of temperance or mechanics' institutes or phrenology or infidel missions. The birth control movement in its early years has as yet received little attention from the historians of the English working classes. A possible reason is that the opposition of the 'pauper press' to the movement has led later observers to adopt the view that it was simply a middle-class Malthusian crusade which set out to convince the poor that the only escape from poverty lay in individual self-help. In what follows I shall sketch out the general lines of argument advanced by the advocates of birth control and their antagonists in the working-class movement. The purpose of the paper is not to provide yet another history of the first neo-Malthusians, but to use the arguments their activities elicited to gain a better understanding of nineteenth-century working-class culture.

The Mexican ejido, the Soviet kolkhoz, the Chinese commune and the Tanzanian Ujamaa village have all been encouraged by governments as a means of reorganizing the countryside on a communal basis. Few policies have had so profound an effect on people's lives as have those associated with the collectivization of agriculture. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the degree of similarity in the collectivization experiences.

Recently attention has been devoted to the use of apparent eclipse references in African oral traditions for dating at least a few remembered events with some certainty and precision. Unquestionably the few such references in these sources could be invaluable in charting islands of absoluteness in a sea of relativity. In fact their very importance demands that their study should, from the very beginning, be undertaken as carefully as possible, following the example set in refining the paths of African eclipses. One way in which a higher level of critical analysis can be attained is by bringing the rich comparative data to bear on the problems associated with the interpretation of historical eclipse references. This paper attempts to initiate this process by discussing some results of research into eclipse references preserved in oral historical sources and by scontemporaneous chroniclers and observers.

‘Peasant revolution’ is an anomalous concept. The oppressed in past class societies have been predominantly peasant,1 and this situation continues in the contemporary world, if the definition of ‘peasant’ includes the dependent agricultural producers of the Third World. However, the distinction between humanistic sympathies and political realities led Marx, and subsequent theorists, to a negative view of the capacity of peasants to carry out successful revolutions. According to this reasoning, the parochialism of peasant life precludes the scope of comprehension, organization, and program required to overthrow the existing class structure. These limitations have led, over and over, to abortive revolts, to the impossibility of purely peasant revolution.