What is meant by “patronage”? The term appears with increased frequency in anthropological analysis. Indeed, it has become a major concept in the study of peasant societies, somewhat analogous to the concept of the “big man” in certain kinds of chiefdoms, or “fission and fusion” in lineage-type societies. There is, however, considerable ambiguity in the meaning given to the term. Consider, as examples, the following three excerpts from recent anthropological studies:

Patronage is founded on the reciprocal relations between patrons and clients. By patron I mean a person who uses his influence to assist and protect some other person, who then becomes his “client”, and in return provides certain services for his patron… Patronage is thus the complex of relations between those who use their influence, social position or some other attribute to assist and protect others, and those whom they so help and protect.

In the decade and a half from 1931 to 1945 Japan confronted a series of domestic and international crises culminating in the national disaster of World War II. Many authors - both Japanese and Western - have portrayed this period in terms of the labeling generalization “fascism”, suggesting that Japan's experience ran parallel to that of such European countries as Italy under Mussolini and Germany during the Third Reich. My object here, after first attempting to explain how and why this interpretation arose, is to take issue with it, but in criticizing the use of the label fascism I do not mean to fall back to the position that what happened was simply sui generis, a somehow “unique” Japanese response to the troublesome developments of the interwar world. Fascism has the virtue of being a comparative concept, and if we throw it out we need to seek other comparative concepts to test as possible replacements.

This essay deals with factors that contribute to the emergence of egalitarian ideologies, tracing the social processes they entail and analysing their consequences for social life.

This article is an attempt to survey, in a thematic fashion, the history of whiteaboriginal relations in Western Australia. Although it is based on research into the period from 1897 to 1954,1 the author believes that the more recent developments have not basically affected the validity of the comments here presented. He is also convinced that, speaking broadly, they are applicable to the Australian scene as a whole. The article should therefore be of interest to the students of white-aboriginal relations anywhere in Australia.

In the thirteenth century the county of Flanders was the leading commercial and industrial region of Western Europe. It had easy access by water and overland routes to the German Rhineland and to the fairs of Champagne. As the Italians from the later thirteenth century began to use a direct maritime link with the North, Bruges, on the North Sea, became the major clearing house for goods coming from Italy and the Hanse towns of northern Germany. Flanders originally had a large wool production; this led to its early preeminence in textile manufacturing. Although the growing urbanization of thecounty soon severely curtailed facilities for grazing, Flanders easily obtained English wool, which was simultaneously of a higher calibre and a cheaper price than the native product. At a time when the towns of northern Italy were still very largely finishers of cloth brought from outside, the towns of Flanders, and particularly the five great towns of Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, Lille, and Douai, had prosperous industries in textiles of varying types, but specialized in luxury cloths designed for export.