Economics, " L'économique: un concept doublé from an anthropological point of view and opposes market economies to " gift " economies. For him it is the market economy that leads per force to K modernization " without enriching a society necessarily in either a human or material sense. He points out in this connection how highly advanced social systems have been forced to deal with their poor via intricate social legislation, an indication that the poor do not disappear within " modernized " societies as had been anticipated for the longest time. Obviously, Delobelle is well aware that he deals with ideal types which in historical situations do not appear in their pure form but adhere to many different manifestations where they do occur. The second type of papers involves three case studies undertaken in some of the world's most highly industrialized nations where economie development is no longer the real focus of attention while social change efforts are intensified. Thus Ulf Himmelstrand in his paper: " Socialism and Social Liberalism in the Context of Swedish Societal Change " makes it clear that Swedish society is not primarily striving for greater material benefits but rather for a more even distribution and equalization of the power of societal decisions. As a result there is (apart from opposing interests of labor and capital) a confrontation between social and private economies, the latter represented by the " psychologically more privatized tax payers David C. Pitt describing " Social Change in Australia and New Zealand " comes to the conclusion that the main issue here also is egalitarianism and a chance for participation. Pitt views the social development processes in these two countries, in spite of ethnic overtones, with optimism and considers the actions of pluralist subcultures ultimately as beneficiai to social integration and wellbeing. When Suzanne Lie writes about " Resistance to Change: The Case of the Consolidation of Norwegian Communes she finds that basically the resisters to change in Norway fear that with the amalgation of communes, which had been planned to achieve greater efficiency in locai administra-tion, centralized power would impinge on the decisional capacity of the individuai. Resistance was strong enough that the Norwegian parliament decided to reinstate the old boundaries in 11 out of 25 protest cases. There remains the question of the representativeness of these rural communes for the country a large. In short: when the talk is about choice between socialism and freedom, a recent slogan of conservative parties during Western German elections, this is obviously a slanted statement. But there remains little doubt that vii