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This volume features the latest scholarship on cognitive processes in interpersonal relationships. It explores such questions as: What special knowledge must a person have to participate in a relationship? What particular language structures do people typically use in entering or conducting relationships? Contributors examine the cognitive processes that individuals bring to relationships, ranging from their thought patterns and attributional styles to the ways in which they recall relationship events and use shared knowledge

(Originally published in John A. Hall & Ian C. Jarvie's [Eds], Transition to Modernity, 1992 [see abstract 93c01707].) Ernest Gellner's theory of the transition to modernity (1988) is criticized for not identifying genuinely unique characteristics of modern industrial societies as they developed in Europe. Japan in the 18th & 19th centuries is shown to have exhibited some of the features of modern, rationalized society that Gellner finds in Europe. It is argued that, since the Japanese & the Chinese were developing rational, scientific cultures independent of European influence, it was only a matter of time before they developed industrial capacity independent of that influence. It is contended that the one trait that sets Europe off from Japan & China is the degree to which the concept of individualism accurately describes social organization. Several aspects of individualism are related to the historical growth of European productivity, but individualism does not seem to be a necessary ingredient for economic growth, as contemporary Japan demonstrates. 10 References. H. von Rautenfeld

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations has been among the world books for over two hundred years and has gathered a mythology, which does scant justice to the actual book. One reason for this was that the Wealth of Nations was one of a series of studies through which Smith hoped to complete his system of moral, social and natural philosophy. The Individual in Society illustrates this system, especially in relation to Smith's other major work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and examines its relation to the Wealth of Nations. Included are: * Chapters on the views of important commentators such as Zeyss