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Anthropological studies of religion have been largely concerned with belief, with ritual, and with the general integrative significance of religious institutions for society. But many issues in the power relations of religious affiliation are still not clear. The political implications of religion involve grave practical as well as theoretical problems. Abstractly, religion and politics are often conceived as opposed; concretely, they interact. While religion can be a powerful political instrument, it can also adapt to political ends and generate its own political structures. In contrast to the broadly affirmative role assigned by anthropologists to religion in society is Karl Marx's thesis of religion as political ideology. Reasons for granting some validity to this position but also for questioning its basic assumptions are given. The whole analysis is illustrated by a wide range of examples, from Polynesian ethnography to the history of Christianity and of Islam, and the situation of religion in modem socialist states.

Phenomena identified as spirit mediumship seem to be world wide and to be recognizable from an early period in human society. Attention has been paid to them by writers of classical antiquity of whom, from an anthropological point of view, Jane Harrison was one of the most noteworthy. Influenced by Durkheim and by Rivers, she recognized the importance of collective elements in religion and of the need for a knowledge of the social structure to gain an understanding of any particular cult. Robustly she argued, "What a people does in relation to its gods must always be one clue, and perhaps the safest, to what it thinks." Knowing that her attempt to build a bridge between anthropology and the classics was viewed sceptically in some quarters, she countered trenchantly "It is only a little anthropology that is a dangerous thing."

Introductory comments on 8 essays dealing with the soc preconditions to econ growth & related issues of leadership. All the essays are case studies by writers with personal experience in the types of societies discussed. It is found that consensus is assumed to be a prerequisite to effective econ action, with leadership a function of the situation. The significance of the leaders depends on the kind of job to be done & upon the structure of power in the society. A basic incongruity between backward & advanced sectors in many societies seeking econ growth produces a radical dichotomy of econ aims & potentialities. Substantial econ development will then require replacement of leader groups. One of the most useful analytical functions of sociol'ts in the study of leadership for econ growth lies in the fields of recruitment & replacement, values & aspirations, & the bases of authority & of sanctions. Since leaders cannot be created but only stimulated to appear, a country cannot invest in econ leadership but in those categories of persons which historically have been seen to produce leaders. Finally, the essays make clear the need for more comparative sociol'al res into the character & soc framework of leadership. J. Field.