Hindus regard all humans as fundamentally unequal. Hindu society is organized around groupings of people into ranked castes. On this there is general agreement, as Dumont's apt characterization, Homo hierarchies, affirms and attests. No similar agreement exists, however, as to the criterion of caste rank. On the one hand, attributional theorists such as H.N.C. Stevenson emphasize the physical nature of a caste and its placement on a continuum of purity and impurity, with the more pure castes held to rank above the less pure. On the other hand, interactional theorists like McKim Marriott emphasize the coded exchange between castes of culturally valued foods and services, with the givers of food held to rank above the receivers, and the receivers of service above the givers; here it is not the religious values of purity and impurity, but behavioral dominance that seems to be at issue.

The parish guild, or miyaza, has been studied by Japanese scholars from various perspectives and disciplines. While not wishing to disparage other approaches to the subject, in this paper I shall treat the institution as a socio-religious monopoly. A monopoly, by definition, is a group that restricts or denies resources, services, or markets to other segments of a society. While the word is generally confined to economics—where one thinks of medieval guilds and modern cartels—the concept can be profitably extended to other areas of society. The sociology of religion, for example, provides us with a wide variety of monopolies. These groups restrict access to the sacred, just as economic monopolies corner markets. Access to the sacred can be controlled in various ways—e.g., by maintaining an exclusive kinship tie with the gods (clans), by means of a purity-pollution complex (caste), or by control of a sacramental system necessary for salvation (sacerdotal priesthoods).

Social reformers must often make difficult political decisions as they define an ideology of change, and the strategies and tactics to be implemented on its behalf. As Peter Gay observes, “A democratic Socialist movement that attempts to transform a capitalist into a Socialist order is necessarily faced with the choice between two incompatibles—principles and power.” An emphasis on the purity of principles may help to sustain the identity of the movement. But it may also expose the movement to repression by governments that have as their policy the control of dissent, and insistence on society's conformity to the central value system they seek to protect. On the other hand, accommodation with the established order—however justifiable it may be as a means of working for social change from within the existing institutions of society—runs the risk of exposing reform movements to the danger of cooptation and absorption by that order, particularly if the reform movements are weak to begin with or if the pressures upon them to sacrifice their principles for the national good become irresistible.

In the period since the end of World War II, the Japanese economic achievement has been of prodigious proportions. During this period, its growth rate—an average of almost 10% in GNP per year—has been the highest in the world. Japan has become the third-ranking industrial nation and its world standing, in terms of per capita GNP, has risen from fortieth in the early 1950s to twelfth at the present time. Growth so sweeping and rapid inevitably has brought a multitude of changes, not least in the composition of total output. At a highly accelerated rate, industries have declined, others have blossomed, new industries have appeared, and the importance of various sectors of the economy has changed. Amidst the continuing adjustments and readjustments, it is of interest to consider the nature of the impact on Japanese industrial organization. More specifically, what has been the effect on economic concentration and monopoly in Japan?

In administrative districts throughout Taiwan, political factions resembling political machines compete for political offices and the attendant rewards of power, profit, and prestige. The forces that unite a faction and divide it from its opponent(s), however, vary from place to place. In many areas of mixed ethno-linguistic settlement—such as Taoyuan and Hsinchu counties—a Hokkien-based faction competes with a Hakka faction. In Kaohsiung Municipality, the urban destination of considerable rural outmigration, native-place associations form the core of the political factions. These ethnolinguistic and native-place lines of factional alignment and division offer no surprises. On what bases, however, do political factions align and divide in relatively homogeneous districts? This article, the result of eighteen months' field research in one such rural Taiwanese township, attempts to answer this question.

The industrial sector of China, as of Japan and many other nations, is a “dual” economy. Jobs with radically different labor productivities tend to receive different wages; thus, there are many kinds of labor-capital relations. Some workers perform their duties—often with the aid of machines—on a relatively permanent basis; these people have secure job tenure. Others are marginal workers, “lumpenproletarians” as Marx called them; sometimes they have jobs, sometimes they are unemployed. Often these are seasonal farm workers. They live in factory dormitories when they can obtain temporary positions in the city, and they keep strong ties with the rural villages from which they came.