Since the mid-1960s, and with growing intensity in the 1970s, there has been an increasing sense throughout the Western world that the institution of the nuclear family has entered a state of crisis. By ‘crisis’ we mean that increasing numbers of people in and out of families have been questioning the legitimacy of this institution, its necessity, and the soundness of the claims it makes on most of us.

Studies of political machines in American cities have typically been concerned with voting patterns that have allowed machines to control municipal governments and with the mechanisms of machines themselves, which keep political operatives active in city precincts. The presence of ‘material incentives', defined as tangible rewards in the form of city jobs, business opportunities, easements from city regulations, and gifts, is the factor most commonly understood to account for both voter support for machines and for the motivation to participate in the work of machine politics.

Weber could very well have been referring to the England- Scotland borderlands when he characterized the basic relation which ‘transcends the boundaries of neighborhood, kinship, group or tribe’ (Economy and Society, I: 637) as taking one of two forms—war or trade. He also said of the market, as a particular form of the trading relation: ‘It is […] only this physical assemblage which allows the full emergence of the market's most distinctive feature, viz. dickering’ (Economy and Society, I: 635). The lamb auctions which are the focus of this paper do involve a physical assemblage of individuals from different sides of the border who dicker over the value of lambs. But as implied by Weber, this is not just a simple trading relation. It is a meaningful exchange of value in which sheep embody for the Scots a distinctive world and in which the haggling over the price of sheep is about the distancing of this world from the over-whelming social, economic and political power of England. In sum, auctions in the Scottish borders occur at and are partly constitutive of social boundaries.

The interrelation between creative artists and their public, and active participation on the part of the public in the ‘social production of art’ seems to be a point of consensus in recent sociological literature on art (Becker 1982; Peterson 1976; Wolff 1981). The theoretical consensus is based upon empirical studies which, while focusing on the public, attack a variety of questions. Some of them deal with the socioeconomic characteristics of groups which appreciate different kinds of art and with socioeconomic bases for different kinds and degrees of art appreciation (Bourdieu and Darbel 1969; DiMaggio and Useem 1978a, b). Others try to explain the emergence and/or success of certain styles by the demands and interests of the public. To the extent that ‘public’ refers to the immediate social networks of the artists, such as colleagues, friends, critics, patrons or art dealers, details of influences can be frequently traced in artistic subjects and techniques, and the existence of influences can be verified by investigations of correspondence, memoirs and other documentary material (Haskell 1963; White and White 1965; Zolberg 1982). But these are of little help when it comes to the large impersonal public whose members are unknown to the artist or, as a rule, to the historian and the sociologist as well. For earlier periods, until about the middle of the nineteenth century, it is possible to make plausible inferences. Publics interested in and supporting art and artists were as a rule aristocratic, clerical or upper bourgeois groups, whose tastes and views have been recorded (Baxandall 1972; Watt 1957).

Du point de vue historique, l'expansion de l'enseignement s'est faite progressivement du cycle primaire au secondaire, puis au supérieur. A chaque étape, la demande d'éducation a développé sa dynamique propre, qui n'a pu être influencée politiquement que de façon limitée et a conduit chaque fois à une expansion du système éducatif au niveau supérieur.