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Abstract. "Structuralism" and "functionalism" facilitate an analysis of the evolution oi economic thought as a series of cultural, institutional, and socioeconomic challenges and responses. The methodologies of "structuralism" and "functionalism," like Hegelian dialectics, 1 to which they are closely related, do not consider thought systems or socioeconomic systems in terms of fixed and stable relationships but in the light of dynamic processes of change. They emphasize communication, feedback, and continuity. The aim of these methodologies is to facilitate the analyses of changes in interrelationships which constitute the processes of evolution. The economist is concerned with the theoretical analysis of socioeconomic processes. His task can be facilitated by describing and analyzing structural‐functional relationships of the economy and its parts. However, the methodologies of structuralism and functionalism cannot be used to predict theoretical developments. At best they can be utilized to select from some set of possible alternatives.

Jurgen Habermas's Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns ([Theory of Communicative Action] 2 vols, Frankfurt: 1981 [for abstract of English translations, see IRPS No. 41/88c00922 & 88c00923]), is critically examined, challenging especially the claim that it is a self-contained & internally consistent unified whole. Specifically, the idea that the theory of communicative action automatically leads to the dualism between life-world & system is called into question. Habermas's stress on rationalization processes is said to originate in the same pressures as fundamentalism's attention to the same. In Collective Action vs. Functionalism?: Some Remarks concerning Hans Joas's Critique, Thomas Saretzki defends Habermas's work as an attempt to clarify the foundations of social theory rather than the metatheoretical work criticized by Joas. An alternative reading of Habermas's two-level concept of society is contrasted with Joas's interpretation. A. Waters

Intro -- Contents -- 1. Functionalism Historicized -- 2. The Functional Reduction of Kinship in the Social Thought of John Locke / Thomas de Zengotita -- 3. Robertson Smith and James Frazer on Religion: Two Traditions in Birtish Social Anthropology / Robert Alun Jones -- 4. Tribal Exemplars: Images of Political Authority in British Anthropology, 1885-1945 / Henrika Kuklick -- 5. Englishmen, Celts, and Iberians: The Ethnographic Survey of the United Kingdom, 1892-1899 / James Urry -- 6. Dr. Durkheim and Mr. Brown: Comparative Sociology at Cambridge in 1910 / George W. Stocking, Jr. (Editor) -- 7. Radcliffe-Brown and British Social Anthropology / George Stocking, Jr. -- 8. Function, History, Biography: Reflections on Fifty Years in the British Anthropological Tradition / Hilda Kuper -- 9. Miscellaneous Studies: From Philology to Anthropology in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Germany / James Whitman -- Information for Contributors -- Index.