Urban sociology impresses by the vastness of its field, its richness, the collections of data, the sophistication of its theories, and by its failure to provide sociological rules of wide application. Its subject matter does not lend itself to simple treatment and many of its principal theories had to be rejected after testing (yet we still carry several of these like millstones around our necks). At this pace progress is slow and we hold no hope of catching up with the current world urban growth. Urban sociologists must take Queen of Hearts' advice and run with all their might to stay in the same place.

The territories of the circum-Caribbean region contain some of the most complex societies in the world. Their complexity lies not in their size, degree of internal differentiation or technological development, but in the dependent and fragmented nature of their cultures, the ethnic diversity of their populations, the special nature of their dependent economies, the peculiarities of their political development and the apparent incoherence of their social institutions. It has been suggested that many Caribbean societies have no history of their own but should be viewed as an extension of Europe. Dr. Eric Williams, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, has recently written in reference to his country:

On August 31st 1962, a country will be free, a miniature state will be established, but a society and a nation will not have been formed.

The history of agrarian reform is as long as the history of the world, extending back into medieval, ancient, and biblical times. Like many other socio-economic and political movements, agrarian reform movements have been sporadic and discontinuous, although the last two centuries have witnessed almost continuous reform attempts commencing with the French Revolution. These attempts have become very common during the last two decades and have become part and parcel of United Nations programs. Though the literature on reform is extensive, there has been no endeavor to review reform movements in a historical perspective, or to synthesize the knowledge that can be derived therefrom and utilize it in guiding or evaluating reform. The need for this cannot be overestimated.

Recently, in this journal, René Millon and others discussed the results of their study of irrigation agriculture in the contemporary social setting of the Teotihuacan Valley, Central Mexico. In introducing their study, the authors briefly noted comparable investigations (including my own) and came to the general conclusion that “any system of irrigation agriculture creates its own distinctive potential for both cohesion and conflict, whatever may be the social system of the people who practice it.” Do social systems play as passive a role in determining the social effects of irrigation agriculture as the statement implies? I wish to suggest a distinction which may be important in seeking answers to this question and then to briefly compare certain aspects of Millon's Mexican example with my own study of irrigation agriculture and social organization in the Southern Euphrates Valley of Iraq.